Day 11: Walking Tour

 

Whew!!!! I am glad it was not as hot today as it has been I was starting to wonder if I was going to make it or if I was going to start melting. Today we started out with two very good speakers, who did appreciate we were teacher’s and gave us some great material and different perspectives I have never thought of or heard about when it comes to Franklin and the black soldiers of the Civil War, it was great material and I also want to thank the Professor’s and Scott for the Coffee and goodies.

After hearing our two speakers and taking care of some personal business Lauren and I struck it out on the walking tour of some of the sites we did not catch last week. Since we both work for Connect we decided our pictures and materials we collected today would all be focused on enhancing the unit at our school. It was a great afternoon and we do feel like now we have seen almost everything the historic district has to offer. It was nice to walk a few blocks and not feel like we sweated off 5 pounds in the process. I have decided to let my pictures do the talking on this blog so enjoy the slide show below and above if your wondering thats Kyle’s dog being held by Betsy at the Betsy Ross house. The only thing I can say in conclusion is this in year’s past the time spent on Philadelphia might have been half of a class period, from this point on we will have enough material for 3-4 days on Philadelphia in our early US History unit.

 

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Day 10: American Philosophical Society

 

Once again we got the chance to experience the things that the tourist’s wish they could see and experience. We were able to see documents that only very special people get to see and we were lucky enough to have a museum all to our own which was also a great honor. To have the chance to see the documents we saw today is once again a chance to touch history in a special way and appreciate the fact that you have places like these that preserve our history and don’t let it be lost forever and as a teacher I am forever grateful. The one thing I take away from today and how I would use it in my classroom is that I think a talk about museums and the treasures they hold needs to be had with our students. I think they need to understand that Museums keep items that are not digital and nor mass produced, that some of these items are one of a kind and once they are gone they are gone forever and that some it may be the last link we have with some of the most famous people in our history. We as teacher’s need to get our students to appreciate our museums and take a little bit longer when they look at something, read about it and see just how that item may have affected their life in some way or that the person who made, or created, or wrote something may affect their life day after day.

One personal note and I was appreciative of them letting us in to see their collection at the Philosophical Society but at the same time I feel the need to take my hat off to the Boston Historical Society that we visited last year. Thus far the museums we have visited have had some amazing artifacts but the way we have been treated by some of their staff pale in comparison to those fine people up in Boston. In Boston they treated us as professionals, and gave us the respect as a group we deserved, they seemed happy to have us, had materials for us, coffee and treats and they didn’t treat us like “we” were a group of 30 middle schoolers they treated us like adults and professionals and I appreciated that. I do have to take one thing back the Constittion Center here did also treat us well but between the snobiness of the Washington Crossing guides and the male Guide at the “Philosophical Society” I do not feel the folks here in Philadelphia  understand just what a big deal it is for us to come out here.  Now the people of the town have been very nice and several have given great advice on the best place to eat and directions, except for a few unhappy waiters not waning to do seperate checks. I will get off of my soap box now.