Teacher Testimonials
The Ultimate Teaching Tool
For the last two weeks, I conducted two sets of two day teacher immersion workshops at Morristown National Historic Park (MNHP) and the Jacobus Vanderveer House (JVH). My biggest take-away so far from these sessions with teachers is that there is no limit to the use of our national parks and historic locations for our schools and students. The teachers on these workshops developed lesson summaries on topics as diverse as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) work at MNHP during the Great Depression, the nutritional and herbal uses of the colonial era garden to enhance food and life and lesson ideas probing the perspectives of Loyalists, Patriots, children, slaves, Native Americans and women during the Revolutionary War time period. Other teachers used the historic, cultural and recreational resources at MNHP and the JVH to create lessons on invasive plant species, tree canopy coverage and kindergarten level lessons on place over time and wants and needs as they related to the children of the Vanderveer and Ford families. My personal favorite part of these workshops was leading teachers on the process of “sit-spotting” in nature. This practice was done by Native American groups as a form of meditation and nature observation. We connected sit-spotting to everything our ancestors and elders learned about their world. For example, at MNHP and the JVH, nature awareness and observation utilized by inhabitants of these areas at different times led to very simple yet powerful outcomes. Their survival depended upon being nature-aware. Observation gave our ancestors the knowledge of the best direction to build the front of one’s home (south facing to gain the most Sun), the simple concept of selecting the best geographic areas for winter encampments, what herbs to use for medicinal purposes, the usage of plants to make linens, the best woods to use to make fires, build cabins and craft boats and so much more. More importantly, sit-spotting allows teachers and students the time and space to imagine what it was like to be that historic figure on that property during a specific moment in time. For me, that simple concept of experiential, nature and place-based education is probably the most powerful teaching tool we as educators still have in our bag of tools.
--Chris Bickel
Student Experiences
Finding Their Park
The Morristown Dream Rocket theme is Ingenuity in the Face of Adversity, and our Westside artists were especially creative with their interpretations of what that means.
Before students even visited our site, they were given a creative prompt which taught them about the Park's history, the Revolution War events we commemorate, and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) who helped lay the groundwork for historical parks around the country. With this information and the guidance of their outstanding teacher, Ms. Patricia Marinaro, students collaborated to see their artistic visions materialize.
Journals in hand, students set out to explore the resources that inspired their work. The framing narrative for the day was "assumption versus evidence" and this tool helped us analyze everything from historic landscapes and structures to park careers, preservation, and climate change.
See their work on our Flickr Album
(keyword Westside High School):
https://flic.kr/s/aHskoGuHyw
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Hiking the yellow trail from the Wick House
to the soldier huts with Ranger Gilson.
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Students were allowed to pick rhubarb with the gardener's
permission. Here they are visiting the Wick House, stalks in hand. |
Artifact Lab
Check out our Primary Source Seminar artifact lab in action. Humanities Institute students from West Orange High School learn about archival preservation. Here they examine laid paper, iron gall ink, watermarks, and eighteenth century script.
