Obama Gets Advice From Navajos Students

I can not help sharing this story from NPR.

Fourth, fifth and sixth grade students from Eagle's Nest Intermediate School, located on the Navajo Nation reservation in the desert of northern Arizona, wrote letters to President-elect Barack Obama describing their lives and asking questions. I was struck by the profoundness of many of the letters that described poverty and illness. Others made me chuckle (I wonder if Obama does listen to Hannah Montana's music). Excerpts of the letters can be found here. The audio of the students reading from their letters can not be missed.

TAH Project Directors Conference

Last week, I attended the Teaching American History (TAH) Project Directors Conference in New York, NY. This is an annual meeting intended to "promote an interactive learning and information exchange process between and among the Teaching American History (TAH) grantees and the U.S. Department of Education."

One of the highlights of the conference - besides a session on how to make and use foldables to teach social studies - was a keynote address The Gilded Age: Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution, Big Business, Labor Activism, Mass Immigration, and the ‘New Woman’ by historian Edward O'Donnell. His multimedia presentation focusing on analyzing images renewed my love of the Gilded Age, a period (post-Civil War - 1890s) so coined by Mark Twain because of the glitter on the surface masking the corruption on the inside.

In spite of the chilly weather, I was able to enjoy the city by the best mode of transportation - walking. I would have liked to make it out of Mid Town more, though. I did get to the Lower East Side to visit the Tenement Museum. I took the newest tour, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. Our small group started in front of the building at 97 Orchard Street to discuss the connotation of a tenement. Terms such as crowded, dirty, unsanitary, and the like are currently associated with tenement; however, in the mid to late 19th century tenement simply described a structure housing three or more unrelated families. We use the more cosmopolitan, French-derived word - apartment - to describe the same structure. The museum does a wonderful job of telling the individual stories of families who lived in the building and tackles larger issues such as discrimination, urban development, health legislation, and building codes.

I forgot my camera and have no photographs to share. Ask Mary to see her Central Park photos, though.