A side quest for an historian who has gotten sucked into Historical Fiction – again. I admit – I wrote the title for this newsletter first, and as a result I am imaging something out of Jasper Fford’s Thursday Next series or out of Kate Quinn’s new book, The Astral Library. And considering that I was just listening to the most recent episode of What Should I Read Next? where Anne and her guest were talking about The Astral Library and the point in the book in which Anne of Green Gables comes up, I’m not really surprised. But I digress. I have been […]
Concord in the Mid to Late 19th Century
Concord in the Mid to Late 19th Century Home of Transcendentalist Writers, but also my Great-Great Grandfather “At the end of [the Milldam Street’s] short length, Walden Street branches abruptly to the left. Speedily quitting the clustered buildings of the town, this street leads across a mile of Concord’s level meadows until it begins to climb a wooded slope. […] In the woods to the left lies ‘Fairyland’ with its pond, beloved in Concord for its natural beauty and its earliest skating.”1 Sometimes the best entry points into history are the places it touches you […]
Rescued by the Library
I have been – for several weeks now – thinking that I needed to get to the library to do newspaper research. Then about two weeks ago found myself saddened that that was unlikely to happen given the current health crisis. As far as I was aware at that point, the only currently accessible copies of the newspaper I wanted were on microfilm. But occassionally, good deeds do come back around. Last year, I wrote a letter of support for that library to get a grant to have their newspapers digitized. Lo and behold: the […]
EDU-6920: Education Research
Guiding Question: How can data collection and analysis improve my practice? Data collection and analysis are key tools in fully understanding everything that happens and how your students are learning. While I was using these tools in my dance teaching classroom and not in a school classroom, I found it important to try using these tools in this environment because it is so much harder to collect data in a dance classroom where the students often do little to no writing. What I was able to look at was keeping more reflection journals and including […]
EDU-5026: Partnering with the Adolescent Learner
Guiding Question: What is the role of a teacher in a secondary learning-centered environment? In a word, I would say that the purpose of a teacher is to be a guide. You are quite literally guiding students through their year(s) in your classroom. You have all the necessary tools and research to back them up and push them to explore the world around them. The real trick is that as a guide, you are pushing them to take an interest. You have to be careful that you don’t over push to the point of teenage […]