Wednesday night we started our program with dinner and an orientation meeting at Season's restaurant at Market Square. There are 22 teachers, plus one experienced teacher/peer facilitator, plus the staff and interns for the Williamsburg Foundation.
The teachers come from all over. There is one other teacher from California (far northern California!) several from Texas, and some from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, New York, and I am sure I am forgetting someplace. Almost all of us teach 8th grade history. A few teach other subjects (one art teacher).
We spent some time talking about what we will be doing this week, and what kinds of activities we will be able to take back to the classroom. All but one of the teachers are in public schools, and their experience is clearly very different from mine at Castilleja.
One of the things I will need to focus on is keeping my enthusiasm for things that are new to many of the people on the trip, but because of the DC trip not new at all to me. The good news is I am not lost, and I can help people with directions and stuff like that, but the bad news is that for the main sites I have heard some version of the program (in some cases 7 times!), and it can be difficult to be as excited about it this time in the heat and humidity. But if I focus my attention on the student experience, and on what kinds of things I can do with the information, I should be able to get something new out of the things I have seen and done before.
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