Hey y’all! I’ve been MIA for a few weeks because my schedule has been wacky. So here’s a long post to catch up on what I’ve been doing for the Memorial for the last three weeks:
Week Four
Week Four I didn’t actually drive down to Bedford to save on gas money and because we were basically getting prepared for WWII Day Camp & Spy Camp. I wrote up some lesson plans at home for both of the camps.
The first lesson was about censorship during WWII! The government was really strict about what kinds of information was allowed to get out to the public. They went so far as including photos with policemen and workers in the background so that the destruction in Europe looked under control, which was a picture I included in my lesson along with questions.
The second lesson was a jeopardy game on Soldier’s Gear in WWII. I created the game through an online template and came up with the information from the program kids sit through when they come on a field trip. You can check out the game here: jeopardylabs.com/play/soldiers-gear-jeopardy
The third lesson I came up with was one on Victory and the Aftermath of WWII. I used the SOL’s as a background for this with a lot of my information coming from a kid’s website (Ducksters Aftermath WII). I’m not sure how to link my PowerPoint here, but it was short, sweet, and to the point. It talked a little about the trials of war criminals and the UN.
I spent the leftover spare time I had that week brainstorming about my kid’s tour! I still have to get started on it, but I’ve just been thinking it through.
Week Five
Week Five was an exciting one as we had our WWII day camp! We headed down early Wednesday morning to get there in time for camp. Camp was from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM—Wednesday-Friday (June 24-26). It was a great experience getting to see how the kids learned from the history of the site and which activities they loved and how they learned best! I got to teach some of my lessons, too.
Each of us interns were assigned to a table of four kids. There were about 15 kids there that week. My table was amazing! They were super excited to learn and really happy to be there. They always went the extra mile. (Disclaimer: I can’t remember the actual order of events, but this is what I think they were 😉 )
Day One
The first day we spent a lot of time inside just kind of going over the basics of WWII. That day I got thrown into teaching my lesson on the Overview of WWII and it was awesome. They responded really well to the questions I asked and I was happy that I got the information across to them for them to absorb it. We went over the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers and the Leaders of each. It was really funny when I got to Stalin, because like some of the visitors to the Memorial (they had to put the Stalin statue into storage), some of the kids were upset that he was considered a “good guy.” We explained to them that although he wasn’t a good person he did fight with the Allies during WWII.
I also got to give the kids a quick tour of the Memorial that day. We were sending them on a scavenger hunt the next morning before the Memorial opened, so I had to go over where we were hiding the clues without them knowing that was what I was doing. They were very attentive and respectful and it was a great chance to see what caught their attention for the purpose of my summer project! The best part of the tour was again the wedding ring statue! I told the story and showed the kids when we got to it about the man who got his friend’s ring all the way back to the states through the entire war and how when they couldn’t find the friend’s wife they donated it to the Memorial. One of the girls who had been to WWII Day Camp FOUR years in a row didn’t know that. I taught her something new after four years! I felt WAY accomplished that day. 🙂
Day Two
The next day we started out with the scavenger hunt and my group won *insert victory dance.* A lot of the kids got mixed up by one of the clues, but they figured it out first and won even though they were one of the last groups back to the tent they took the time to get it all right and victory was ours!
Segueing from that—we talked about Victory that day! Paige and Cam, the other interns, gave lessons on the End of WWII and the Pacific Theater, respectively. We tried to wrap it up a bit that day. I gave a lesson using the ddaytovictory.ca website, which I highly recommend you check out if you have not yet. We were short on time that day but we ran through some of the videos of the vets and the weaponry. The kids really loved it and were really moved by some of the stories. They wrote newspaper articles about their days each day kind of like a diary and a lot of them at my table wrote about something they heard about on the website.
We did a few activities that day in stations. We did a tank game with water guns at my station. They paired up and one kids would shoot while the other would choose the best angle for them to get the most water into their buckets. Then they would switch. We had a rain in a jar game to represent the weather on D-Day. The kids got to look through some of the artifacts we had at another station. The last station was a Piggly Wiggly game where they used their ration stamps to go shopping as they would have done on the Homefront during WWII.
We ended the day brainstorming for our posters that each table was assigned for the Canteen/History Fair we did the next day for parents/visitors to come check out. My kids decided they wanted to build a Higgins boat and a mushroom cloud for our poster since we were assigned weapons from WWII. They came up with the information they wanted to put on the picture that they each had and then headed out for the day!
Day Three
On Day Three we did Victory Activities! The kids got to make Allied flags with markers and popsicle sticks. At my table the kids got to make V for Victory pins, which were super cute. At another table they wrote down what they saw about the artifacts. These activities were a good way to wrap up the week. I had to do my final lesson though about Victory in WWII. This was the lesson where I used the kid’s website for the SOL’s (Ducksters Aftermath WWII) and just did a super brief lesson! I asked the kids what might have happened if we did not win WWII and they reflected on that. I focused most of my lessons on the D-Day Memorial’s motto: valor, fidelity, and sacrifice, and I think the kids really understood those three things by the end of the week.
While we were in the tent, the WWII reenactors we had coming that day were getting set up, so when we finished with our lesson/activities we went outside. The guy playing General Omar Bradley lined them up military-style. Then his major taught the kids about all the stuff they had set up in their camp. He spent about 30/45 minutes going over that and then the General came back and taught them about the battles throughout Europe from D-Day to Berlin. The kids really enjoyed it and asked a lot of questions. We had to cut them short though because their families were coming for our Canteen.
The Canteen was really awesome. It was adorable to see how excited the kids were to show their parents what they had learned and how into it the parents were. We had each group standing at their own table so that they could teach the people coming up to them about their topic. My kids had their Higgins Boat and mushroom cloud set up. They liked each other so much they even got a group picture in the photo booth, which was awesome! It was great to see how much they could learn and open up in three days with each other and with me.
I think passing our knowledge of history down is really important otherwise it would disappear! And a camp like that was a great way to get the kids excited about our nation’s past and understanding that it being Americans comes at a cost to somebody, whether it be the soldier’s fighting, their families at home, or the destruction caused by the fighting.
Week Six
This week I also stayed home! Saving on gas is helpful, especially when I can create activities just as well here as in Bedford. Everyone is working hard this past week on things for Family Day that they have at the Memorial. We set up tables that represent the countries of the Allied Forces. I was instructed to come up with three activities: one for the Pacific Powers table about New Zealand or Australia; and two for the European Nations table about Greece, Czechoslovakia, or Belgium.
For the Pacific Powers table I chose Australia, and since we were allowed to talk about their culture OR role in the war, I chose the game Cricket, which was a huge part of their culture even during wartime. The articles I found were about how important Cricket was to the country and how its star players went off to fight in the war. However, the articles also talked about how it was played in the war camps by the British and the Australian soldiers and from these games came the newest star players after the war.
I came up with the instructions and a simplified version of the game (you can click if you want to see it bigger):
Then for the European Nations table I came up with activities for Greece and Belgium. For Greece, I found articles about how popular songs in Greece, even now, came from the WWII era. Greece was occupied by the Axis Powers during the war, and they suffered great losses. Most of their cities were in rubble and the destruction really ruined their spirits. I found a song called Cloudy Sunday and translated it for the worksheet for the kids. Then I gave them the opportunity to create their own song about a victory or loss they knew about for the U.S. in WWII:
The final activity I came up with was for Belgium! I used the Belgian Freedom Fighters and how they influenced the war in the lesson part of that activity, which I thought was imported especially after hearing Dame Mary speak (Dame Mary). I loved this activity. It was a little scary at first trying to figure out how I would make the men fit onto the template but once I figured it out I think it worked well 🙂 :
And that’s it for this super long blog post, I am going to write three paragraphs about readings in my book if you care to continue reading. As of right now, though, I have 70 hours in, which is half of my internship hours!
“At Historic Sites and Outdoor Museums: A High Performance Act” by William S. Pretzer
“Doing history publicly means acting as a politician, diplomat and translator, performer, curriculum developer and teacher, and, always, knowledge worker” (259). This quote encompasses what Mr. Pretzer says in his essay: a person’s specific job as a historian is not as important as how the person uses their knowledge to get as close to the audience as possible. He says that just doing what we want to do through research isn’t good enough as a historian, you must always know how to teach the information, too. Pretzer then goes through each role a historian plays. As a politician they have to listen to the constituents and create a meaningful interpretation. He uses Menlo Park, which was important to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison as an example. He could not just use one person or the other to represent, rather both needed representation. As a Diplomat, a historian has two jobs. When establishing a new site, it is establishing relations with the public and the professional worlds that surround that site. The second part of a historian-diplomat’s job is to produce usable public platforms. A historian as a performance artist has to understand the importance of audience needs in its exhibit preparation. You have to keep your audiences’ attention and provide them information in a way that they want to see/hear it. As a teacher, a historian has to facilitate others’ growth and push the students to come up with their own interpretation. Finally, the historian as a knowledge worker is someone who brings their intellectual and social skills to the table and works to make their institution better using those skills.
My response to Pretzer’s essay is again that the historian plays an important role in relaying history to the public. They play many different parts in the relaying of information. I think the most important part of relaying the information is the getting as close to the constituents as you can part. Without the public, public historians would not have a job. That statement sounds a little bit obvious, but so much goes into making sure that the public has a good experience. Public history is all about customer service. As long as one customer has a good time, it can bring so many other people to the museum/memorial and the knowledge of history can be spread. Everyone has something to bring to the table and I think those different skills create the defining experience for a visitor to a historic site. I think that it is important to understand all of the roles a historian plays in their public’s life. The attitude makes a difference, which I learned with the kids we taught at Day Camp. The happier we are to teach them about history, the more excited they are to learn about it.
“At Historical Parks: Balancing a Multitude of Interests” by Bruce J. Noble Jr.
A park is a legislatively defined dare that consists of a multiplicity of significant cultural resources (280). Parks exhibit a combination of natural and cultural resource types (280). Noble gives examples of legislative decisions that affect the historical parks in the United States. The Antiquities Act of 1906 sought to prevent the removal of archaeological treasures to anywhere outside the U.S. (281). The second was the National Park Service, which Congress created in 1916. The NPS was created to preserve and protect fragile resources while making them available to the public (281). The Historic Sites Act of 1935 authorized the identification of “nationally” significant historic sites that might warrant eventual inclusion into the national park system which led to the foundation of the National Historic Landmarks program which is still administered by the National Parks Service. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created a National Register of Historic Places. Parks, like public historians have a lot of culminating factors that make them what they are.
There was a lot of information in this essay about the legal aspects of a public site. This was eye-opening to me because I had never really thought about all that goes into making a historic site a national landmark. There are obviously things that need protecting but I did not think about them needing actual legislation. It makes perfect sense, though, that those places can focus on representing the history they are trying to and not have to worry about the artifacts or the land being taken away. Without the legislation the sites may not exist and the smaller parks, like individual houses, may not exist in the modern day. National parks interact with many volunteers and associations to make sure that the public has a pleasurable experience. There is a lot that goes into making sure a site is protected and functioning and I learned a lot from this essay about the legislation that makes it possible.
A Business: Hired, Not Bought” by Philip L. Cantelon
Cantelon starts his essay talking about the misconceptions people have about historians only being able to be teachers in the professional world. He explains how this idea exists because historians that are not teachers do not necessarily do a good job presenting their work. He explains how the field is starting to shrink and lose job opportunities for those coming out of graduate schools because the job market is no longer for those who have an inclination towards presenting history to the public. Instead, it is about making money. He talks about how historians that don’t teach actually still have to teach. He says that the difference is that the clients are more demanding. The business aspects of the history business is about selling themselves and their history. He discusses who hires historians and the difficulty of getting hired. However, he concludes with saying that the people in the history business are on their way out of the business so the job opportunities for young historians should be looking up.
This article made me pretty scared, honestly. It is already scary enough being a senior in college and trying to figure out which path I want to take; however, knowing that the job market is constantly fluctuating is even more terrifying. I am hopeful that everything I am learning at the Memorial adds to my resumé and can give me valuable skills I can add to a work environment. i am really passionate about bringing history to the public and I would love to do so no matter the avenue. Fingers crossed that he’s correct about jobs opening up in the business.
oh the places you'll go 