Before the week I will spend in historic Boston, Massachusetts, I am up to bat for a pedagogy session in Wichita, Kansas. It's not a long drive through Kansas to get there, but things are pretty flat and straight through the vast farmland. The last time I was there with my family, we were still wearing masks because of COVID. At the time, we just skirted Wichita on our way to Hutchison to visit the Strataca Salt Mine and the Cosmosphere. It was rather hot outside and the car's air conditioning was working to keep up.
This time, it's business. I will present professional development for Wichita teachers in June, based on the Gilder Lehrman unit entitled The American Revolution: The Boston Massacre, "Yankee Doodle", and the Declaration of Independence, 1770-1776. That's not a new unit for me, as I have been looking at it for the session in Boston about a week and half later. However, with the Boston unit, I will have already met with the teachers three time previously. Therefore, I will have already presented to them some of the foundational material needed for the session. This will be my only contact with Wichita educators, though, so my approach will need to be different.
It's important that they understand the unit, but at the same time, it is a "how-to-teach" session, and there is a lot of explanation and demonstration that goes into that. Yes, we will look at Paul Revere's engraving of "The Bloody Massacre". Yes, we will look into Yankee Doodle's lyrics. Yes, we read through the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. But...we will need to think about the importance of making a proper analysis of primary source documents. We'll try out the strategies of shared reading, key word identification, text-based questioning, and more. Two hours seems like a long time, but there is so much that I could pack in that I'm really going to have to consider what can be left out.
At some point, as well, it becomes a matter of reading the crowd and discovering where they want to go with the day. Considering this is educational professional development in June, I suspect for many of them, they will want to go to the beach or on a cruise - anywhere other than a room for a meeting. I've been on their side of things, and I know how it feels to finish a school year and then be subjected to long, painful professional development. It has to be pretty good at that point to be effective. It's going to be hard to keep them interested and engaged.
This time, it's business. I will present professional development for Wichita teachers in June, based on the Gilder Lehrman unit entitled The American Revolution: The Boston Massacre, "Yankee Doodle", and the Declaration of Independence, 1770-1776. That's not a new unit for me, as I have been looking at it for the session in Boston about a week and half later. However, with the Boston unit, I will have already met with the teachers three time previously. Therefore, I will have already presented to them some of the foundational material needed for the session. This will be my only contact with Wichita educators, though, so my approach will need to be different.
It's important that they understand the unit, but at the same time, it is a "how-to-teach" session, and there is a lot of explanation and demonstration that goes into that. Yes, we will look at Paul Revere's engraving of "The Bloody Massacre". Yes, we will look into Yankee Doodle's lyrics. Yes, we read through the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. But...we will need to think about the importance of making a proper analysis of primary source documents. We'll try out the strategies of shared reading, key word identification, text-based questioning, and more. Two hours seems like a long time, but there is so much that I could pack in that I'm really going to have to consider what can be left out.
At some point, as well, it becomes a matter of reading the crowd and discovering where they want to go with the day. Considering this is educational professional development in June, I suspect for many of them, they will want to go to the beach or on a cruise - anywhere other than a room for a meeting. I've been on their side of things, and I know how it feels to finish a school year and then be subjected to long, painful professional development. It has to be pretty good at that point to be effective. It's going to be hard to keep them interested and engaged.
