A Day at the Museum (Day 9- 6/10/08)

American Philosophical Society Library

Located in historic Philadelphia, this library seems to be a gold mine of artifacts. There are over 8 million manuscripts, 300,000 printed volumes, and thousands of maps and prints. Can you believe the plethora of artifacts they have in their collection? If I was a researcher I would be in seventh heaven as soon as I walked through the doorway! Even though I am not a researcher, as a teacher I could still appreciate everything that was inside their walls. I was fascinated with everything that was in the foyer. I couldn’t believe they even ended up with the journals of Lewis and Clark. It was so interesting to see that display- I loved how much they were able to cram into their journal, and I loved the picture of the fish too! When we went upstairs this time I knew we would have the opportunity to view artifacts. It was just a little disappointing that at the Franklin Institute they allowed us to touch and look at everything, whereas here they were a little stricter. I also loved being surrounded by the books- both from Franklin’s library and ones he published. I go over some of the quotes from Poor Richard’s Almanac with my students, and there were actually many copies on one of the shelves!! Oh, I wish I could show that to my students!

This is the part of the day that I think I would use the most with my students. I really stress exposing my students to primary sources, and obviously this museum was filled with them. Like I have previously stated, you can’t actually show your students the real artifact, but having them analyze them is still very meaningful (just a note- the National Archives website has some great worksheets that can be used to analyze artifacts). The letters that were shown to us today I think could easily be used in a classroom. I try to do this as frequently as possible because I think it is important for students to analyze how these people wrote, what they said, who they were writing to, and so on. You may think that students would not like to do this, but you would be surprised. I also saw in a brochure that many of their artifacts are available on-line; here is the website: http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole. Even though I would LOVE to show the real thing to my students, I guess living in Colorado we have to settle for the next best thing, looking at it online (I guess that negates what I said yesterday that I think we have too much technology and should live more like the Amish!)

Atwater Kent Museum

I was really looking forward to our afternoon at this museum because I thought it would be really interesting to hear about the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. I was a little disappointed we didn’t find out more information about this, however what we did learn was pretty interesting. I loved the artifacts that were on the table for us to view. I think the most disturbing, but also most intriguing, one was the slave shackles. I will definitely show my students a picture of that just to discuss their reaction. I think I would even make them stand the way the slaves would be shackled and then think about how long they would actually be able to last standing that way. Wow, hard to imagine we treated people that way. I was also very interested in hearing about John Brown. I really do not know much about him, but now my interest has been piqued!