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I spent last week in an existential crisis about teaching. Came up with what I thought was a great idea, spent four days digging deep on it & planning, and then realized... this is a terrible idea. Between that & constant anxiety about COVID, spent end of week in tailspin 1/?
Everything about this year has been: Trial. Error. Error. Error. Try again. Success. Error. Error. I hit on something with the character videos, and then whiffed in trying to string them all together like a TV series. Spent Friday rethinking it all, & went back to basics. 2/?
The underlying concept of Bill Gladieux’s “Get Off Reynolds Road” project at Rogers was that you could find nearly every topic of American history reflected in Toledo. Assigning GORR doesn’t seem reasonable, so I decided to flip it... 3/?
Can& #39;t get kids in the classroom right now, but can get them out into the world more easily thru videos. Can record bits of teaching from anywhere, really. So why not make sure each lesson has a character appearance, or live bit from one of Toledo& #39;s many historic sites? 4/?
Sunday, I wrote little scripts of talking points, & my youngest son & I went on the road for a few hours to make "live from the scene" introductory bits, and mid-lecture bits to break up the classroom & introduce something novel. We started... 5/?
...in Grand Rapids at a Revolutionary War grave. Recorded a little bit about how the effects of the Rev reached all the way to where my Ss live. 6/?
then went to an abandoned 1-room schoolhouse to talk about the Land Ordinance of 1785 & NW Ordinance of 1787, and how it shaped where we live. 7/?
Went to the restored Miami & Erie Canal section at GR to talk about Henry Clay& #39;s American System 8/?
Did three separate videos at Fallen Timbers Battlefield (and *nearly*-adjacent monument) to discuss peopling of the Old Northwest after the Revolution and the conflicts between westward-moving Americans and the Native nations 9/?
Then yesterday, went downtown to talk about the French trading post that existed near Fort Industry Square (and a separate video here talking about growth of US in 1830s). 10/?
Hit Sacred Heart Church, whose cornerstone is in German, to talk about the lasting remnants of first-wave immigration into the area in the 1840s 11/?
