Though it was packed with students looking forward to the weekend, mobile unit 10 at Elephant’s Fork Elementary School was practically serene.

But the serenity didn’t last long. Fourth-grader Floyd Cain pushed fifth-grader Seth Carter’s “button,” and Seth erupted.

“He was the first African-American to play baseball,” Seth spouted, his face a study of concentration as he reached back into his memory to recall the life of Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton.

It was the school’s second annual Black History Month Wax Museum, and the button Floyd pushed — one of many such buttons pushed over and over again on Friday — was really just a colored circle Seth drew on a scrap of paper and taped to the desk.

“His hands spanned 10 inches, and he could hold a basketball like we hold a tennis ball,” Seth continued, schooling Floyd on the physical characteristics of one of many inspiring black Americans teacher Matt Sciarrotta’s students researched.

“And he also played baseball,” Seth continued.

The students gave a variety of reasons for selecting the historical figures they represented.

Rana Ceribasi, frozen in fleet-footed flight until her button was pushed, said she chose triple-Olympic gold medal track star Wilma Glodean Rudolph, “because she was an athlete, and I would like to follow in her footsteps, because I really like sports.”

“I’m inspired by her courage in overcoming polio when she was young,” Rana said. Then she assumed her running position and froze again, eyes locked on a scuffmark on the far wall, perhaps.

A fascination with the world’s most famous exhibition basketball team is what inspired Seth to choose Clifton. “I was going to see the Harlem Globetrotters last week, and I decided I would do someone from the Harlem Globetrotters,” he said.

Sciarrotta called the faux wax museum an “interactive way of learning.”

Students have to ponder what inspires them about the person they choose, how the person contributed to America and “how they made an impact,” Sciarrotta said.

To fine-tune their performance presentations, students critiqued one another, he said, offering up suggested improvements.

“The kids who did it last year were aware,” Sciarrotta said of the students’ understanding of what a wax museum is, “but most experienced it for the first time.”