I have been very fortunate to have visited Philadelphia quite a few times, but every time I go to the historic sites I am always amazed at how much more there is for me to learn/find out about.
The day started out at one of my favorite places- Independence Hall. I truly feel like when you walk through the doors you are walking back in time, how amazing! When I teach about the Constitutional Convention one of the things I have my students do is reenact the convention as the delegates- even turning my classroom into the inside of Independence Hall (as much as possible!) I love to show my students pictures of the room so they can actually picture themselves sitting in the same chairs and debating from the same tables. One thing I don’t share as much with my students is how much else went on at Independence Hall in addition to the writing of the Declaration and Constitution (I suppose those are pretty important!)
I loved our tour guide today- what a refreshing take on everything!! Having the right person show you their love of history makes such a difference- I wish I could package Pat up and take her back to my classroom!
Something that surprised me today was when we went to the Quaker Meetinghouse. First, I was not expecting an actual Quaker to talk to us. Also, I was surprised at how many practicing Quakers there still are. I know 300,000 is not many, but it is 300,000 more than I thought there were. I had really not ever thought about it, but just assumed that Quakers were from the colonial time period so it was very interesting for me to listen to Neil, I was pretty fascinated with the history he shared with us today. Just think if everyone in the world followed their motto of “SPICE”- we sure would live in a different place.
Can’t wait for another great day tomorrow!
*Just a note, I changed my header to the boat houses on the Schuylkill River. Coming back into Phily tonight we went on the expressway that went past the houses and they were all lit up, it was a beautiful site! Seeing the crew boats on the river in front of the houses is one of my favorite sites in Philadelphia. It always reminds me of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (remember Fresh Prince of Bel Aire!!) singing in the video Summertime. For those of you who don’t know, that is Will Smith before he became cool!
