The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of new experiences while at the museum.  From cataloging steamer trunks to researching military uniforms, I have been working outside of teaching in the exhibits and have been collaborating with the archives department.  In the trunks, we housed former educational teaching aids that have gone out of date but are still a valuable resource for the next generation.  It was my job, along with my partner Amanda, to sort through the remaining trunks and catalog the items and place them in more compact and document safe boxes.

The military uniforms we are housing are from World War II and include several medals and ribbons.  I took it upon myself to learn more about these uniforms and started investigating what each pin meant.  Starting with the "crossed cannons" pin with 881 displayed above them, I knew to look for the 881st artillery.  After finding the battalion, I discovered they were attached to the 69th Infantry Division and assigned to the Rhineland in the Spring of 1945, one of the last big pushes by the Allied forces after the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944.

Combat information about the 69th Infantry Division can be found here:

69th Infantry Division - Combat

Historiographical information about the 69th Infantry Division can be found here:
69th Infantry Division - History

Under the "Company Photos" tab you will find pictures of the various attachments, including the 881st Field Artillery Battalion:
69th Infantry Division - Photos

You can find pictures of our uniforms under the "Photos" page of this blog.

Continuing with my teaching trunk, I am editing my lesson plan to better fit the grade level.  Increasing student involvement while decreasing the teacher's presentation time is key to promoting a learning environment that gives the student the best opportunity to learn.

Over the past week I have had the opportunity to teach the Native American Exhibit to the Fourth Grade classes that visit us on their field trip.  From this room, I have learned and thus taught about the 3 Sisters (in our garden the corns, beans, and squash), the various tools the Timucuans used made out of bones, sinew, and other animal parts, and the different types of living structures they used throughout the seasons.

The Fourth Graders can be a little wild at times, but I have learned it is all about classroom management.  In my Education Minor we are covering different techniques to keep the students interested in the material as well as how to help them make the leaps and connections without telling them the answers.  In the Native American Exhibit I am having to practice wait times to give the students the opportunity to guess at the answers or lead them to the correct conclusions.  Asking them the question "If these Native Americans in this boat have crops, furs, and jewelry in their boat and they are headed to another island, what might they be going to do?" provokes the correct answer of "Trading with other tribes."  This allows the students to practice their critical thinking skills and realize that the Timucuans were able to produce a surplus and establish a local economy.  After discussing the daily life of the Native Americans we conduct an activity where the students are handed a picture of an animal that is located somewhere around the room; it can be painted on the wall, a skin of the animal, a shell, bones, or even a stuffed representation.  The students are to find their animal and stand near it so that we may survey the room to understand the possible uses of that animal by the Native Americans.

Over all, this experience has provided me with the opportunity to grow as an educator and has proven to me the importance of museum education as a way to introduce students to the topic of Social Sciences before they experience it in the classroom.

This past week, I worked primarily on research for the teaching trunk. Thanks to Dr. Barbara Gannon, a professor at the University of Central Florida, I was able to obtain the book Confederate Florida, The Road to Olustee by William H. Nulty and research the Battle of Olustee as Union General Seymour headed from Jacksonville to Lake City. This battle follows the NGSSS: SS.4.A.5.1 Describe Florida's involvement (secession, blockades of ports, the battles of Ft. Pickens, Olustee, Ft. Brooke, Natural Bridge, food supply) in the Civil War. I also created two assignments for the students; one is a Morse code translation for them to understand the technology of the time and the other is a crossword formative assessment for the end of the lesson (these files will be uploaded once the lesson plan is complete).

Next week I will have the opportunity to conduct a lesson in the Native American Exhibit for one of the 4th Grade student tours. In this exhibit I will take the students through a tour of the museum's garden explaining the Three Sisters Crops (corns, beans, and squash), and then conducting a lesson plan inside the Native American Room - which focuses on the local Timucuan Tribes. We discuss their various tools, agricultural life styles, and the local wildlife.

For research this week, I plan on examining the lives of an Antebellum Northerner, Southerner, and slave. Finding documents for these categories for students to read will be key in the lesson plan.

During my first week at the Public History Center in Sanford, Florida I was given the opportunity to view the presentations of the various exhibits, learning their displays, activities, and time periods.  After traveling through the exhibits, I began working on the first deliverable (a teaching trunk for local teachers who would like supplemental instructional materials for a particular topic), 4th Grade Civil War.  I began with a one day lesson plan and have the skeletal structure for it, I plan to have it finished the following week.  After the one day lesson plan, I will begin working on a 3-day lesson plan for schools who follow a block schedule.

 I intend to start teaching the exhibits next week as more 4th Grade classrooms come in for their field trips.

The five exhibits in the museum are: The Pioneer Exhibit - what life was like for the first settlers in the United States, the Native American Exhibit - what the daily life of a Florida Native American would consist of (specifically the Timucuans), the 1902 Classroom Exhibit - how the average classroom was run after the school house was built in 1902, the Talk of the Town Exhibit - a representation of daily life for families that lived in Sanford during the 1930's, and the Geography Exhibit - where students can learn about various countries, important cities, and geographical locations in Florida.

About me: I am currently a Senior at the University of Central Florida; I am a History major and a Social Science Education minor.  I have always been interested in history and the mysteries it holds, as people have shaped our everyday lives through their seemingly unimportant actions (or through ones they hoped would change the world).  I love to juggle, unicycle, stilt walk, and fire breath; I can also make over 150 different balloon animals and have worked in movie theaters and restaurants all over Central Florida.  After graduation, I plan to move to New York with my girlfriend in hopes to find museum work up there (while she looks for a job in fashion or theater).  We both love the constant hustle and bustle and cannot wait to see what the Big Apple has in store for us.

This blog is about my experiences as an intern at the Public History Center in Sanford, FL in partnership with the University of Central Florida's History Department.  While at the museum I am expected to learn the various exhibits, conduct presentations, archival techniques, and create a deliverable for the end of the semester.  This deliverable is to be a teaching aid for local schools and is known as a "Teaching Trunk."  These trunks are filled with lesson plans, supplemental reading, and activities for teachers to use in their classrooms on specific lessons.  The first lesson I will be creating will be for the Civil War Unit of a 4th Grade class.