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So recently, I won the trip of lifetime to Washington D.C. for a conference on clean energy and the youth surge to be included in decision making on their respective campuses and all over the country. While I was there I got to do a lot of interesting thins and meet really interesting people. It is amazing to be in a group of 10,000 people that are around my age and discussing how we can impact the world. I have to say that many of these people that I came in contact with seem a bit extreme in their thinking, but once you meet and get to know them they have some really cool ideas.
I had the pleasure of meeting Al Gore while I was there.
That was the experience I never thought I would have. You know how you plan out what you are going to say to them when they shake your hand? Well, I said nothing I wanted to. I didn't even get to tell him my name because I just was so nervous I was going to mess up talking to him. My roommate and myself were laughing because we didn't know how to address him: Mr. Gore? Former Vice President Gore? The Honorable Gore? We had no clue, but it was really interesting to meet him, and he actually thanked ME for being there? Crazy right? My parents were so thrilled like I was but that is a whole different story.
One of the things I was thinking about while I was down there was how I would use this experience in my classroom? While visiting on of t he Smithsonian Institutions it came to me, there are so many multi-modal exhibits in the museums that I could talk about with my students. The use of old fashioned televisions, interactive speaking tools, computers to better experience the exhibit and so on. There were so many different devices used. If I was covering a Holocaust book, or one of historical value I would take my students to those corresponding museums and I think they would have a wonderful time. I love Washington D.C. and I really want to live and work there some day. "If we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it," I think that is how the quote goes?
I am glad to hear that you had a great experience. I love how you thought of how to relate this experience to your future teaching. I think that it is important that we are always doing this.I agree that the Smithsonians are a great asset to us a teachers. If only we could just take our students where ever we wanted, right? haha I was thinking about my D.C. experience in 8th grade and I don't think that my teachers really prepared me for what I was going to see there. We just went. I think, because we may teach middle school, we could really make the D.C. experience exceptional for them if we included aspects of the trip in our classrooms before we went.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think that it would be great if we were teaching middle school to talk abou these kinds of things so that students can get a better experience out of D.C. I feel like most students just think of it as ancient history that no one cares about but it really has qualities that pertain to our students and literature today.
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