Home Sweet Home

So I have returned from my 8 day field study of the underground railroad. It is so nice to be home. The trip was great and i gained so much insight and knowledge. Not to mention the people that I met and the projects that we are going to being developing. This year there was a smaller group of teachers attending the trip. I think it really changed the dynamic of the group. We became a tight knit group and really established some goals for helping each other teach the material we learned about while on the trip. My big project this trip was creating a virtual tour of all the sites we visited using google earth. I hope to log each historic site and then create a link that will be full of images and sound bites and video clips also links to other sites and resources for students and teachers to make the history more accessible to everyone. It is going to be a large amount of work but the end product will be a great resource and will really help people know who I am and put my name out there for future job prospects. This trip and last years trip have really opened doors for me and helped me make some great networking connections. there are a few more projects and ideas that have some from this trip but I will have to hold of on them till i get this one completed.
Another part of the trip that is exciting is the service learning portion. Service learning is something that has been around for a while. Teachers connect classroom content to service projects. For example a teacher teaches about the role quilting played in family history and as a class they create a quilt. The quilt is auctioned off and the students select a charity to donate the money to. There are also other ways students can perform service. The whole point is to teach students the importance of being positive contributers in the communities in which they live and give them ownership of the information they are learning. I am excited to see the projects that come from this trip. Every teacher is requited to use the information they gained on the trip and create a service learning piece.
Ryan and Katie were happy to see me and I was happy to see them. Ryan would not let me out of his sight without grabbing his diaper bag and wanting to get in the car. He was not taking any chances of me leaving again i guess.