Walking Tour (Day 10- 6/11/08)

*Click on video in left corner to play music

Guest Lecturers

We started the day off with two great guest lecturers. The first one, Professor Waldstreicher, did a wonderful speech on Ben Franklin and his part in both the anti-slavery movement and the fact that he also had slaves. I thought it was very interesting to hear his story of Ben Franklin since it is different than the typical story that is usually heard. I really liked listening to his story of Franklin’s life, and I look forward to reading his book Runaway America. Our second lecturer, Bob Engs, also did a great job. I really enjoyed hearing his lecture on the Great Slave Rebellion. Something I could see using with my students were his 4 questions: would they be better, did they want their freedom, would they fight for their freedom, what would they do without their freedom. This would lead to a great discussion with my students. I also liked the electronic archives he gave us- any resources are useful to teachers!

Walking Tour

We took a great tour around to all of the sights today and got to take a lot of pictures! I love this because I will get to share all of these with my students and they will get to somewhat see them! The places we visited: Franklin Court and Printshop (there was a great museum underneath!), Carpenters’ Hall, the City Tavern for lunch (great food, and a great atmosphere!), Elfreth’s Alley (very cool houses to live in, except I don’t think I would want that many people gawking at where I lived), Betsy Ross house (just briefly), Christ Church Burial Ground (very peaceful, even though it was in the heart of the city), and then a brief walk around just a little bit more and then we headed back to Penn’s campus. It was nice to get to visit these places at our own pace and really enjoy them. My students will really like learning about all the “cool” (middle school word) places I visited.

Hope you like the slide show of Philadelphia- I thought the Bruce Springsteen song was appropriate. You can even click on the song’s video and see more pictures of Philadelphia!