Travel in Stages

Not travel in stages (giddy-up), but travel in stages.  This is how the day began with our trip down to Christ Church where we attended the Sunday morning service.  And so, literally it was stage one of our daily activities via subway to 2^nd and Market.  Stage two we tried to navigate by committee from the downtown area to the Philadelphia Art Museum, which was a little bit like working a hand saw with eight people grabbing the handle.

 

How many teachers does it take to change a light bulb?  Eight.  One to change the bulb, six to turn the switch on and off, and one to say, “There’s a bus over there. Let’s get on it.”  This whole trip was complicated by a bike race, creating detours everywhere around the city and a “helpful” subway toll booth operator who obviously forgot there was anything going on above ground and recommended the bus in the first place. But, “I digress,” as Carol Berkin would say.

 

Travel in stages.  This was the theme of the sermon at church which was quite thoughtful and well presented. The Reverend Susan Richardson talked about our journey through life and our relationship with God as a balance between two beliefs—one extreme is that God is a micro-manager ( in every single one of our daily decisions), and on the other extreme that God creates us and then basically says, “I’m done.  You figure it out from here.” 

In a much more eloquent way, Reverend Richardson made a case for a belief that is somewhere in the middle.  God does not micro manage, or abandon us to fend for ourselves, but guides and nudges us a little at a time.  We travel in stages.    

 

So this seems like a pretty good metaphor for history—American or other.  Change happens over time, and our visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum illustrated this perfectly. As we walked through the exhibits, we witnessed the record of change as seen stylistically and technologically.  The art spanned centuries and crossed cultures using media that ranged from wood, textiles, glass, marble, paint, silver, natural fibers and more.  Nothing in the museum was created instantaneously but evolved through the creative process, molded by culture and the historical time period. Travel in stages.

 

One of the great things about museums is you can get lost in them.  I got lost in a room full of glass and learned about a pit mold that takes three people to operate.  One person holds the mold open while the glass blower puts the chunk of molten material in it.  The mold is closed, the glass is blown to fill the mold (which makes the design or impression on the glass) and a third person finishes the lip of the bottle.  Pretty interesting, and I have to say I spent a little too much time in this room because I didn’t get around to seeing some of the other galleries.  I did, however, see Van Gogh’s sunflower and some paintings by Cézanne, Monet, Manet and Renoir.  I wish I’d had time to walk down and see Rodin’s  “Thinker” but by that time the bus was ready to leave for the final stage(giddy-up) of our journey back to the University of Pennsylvania.

 

One of the questions that is being asked on this trip, is, “How do you plan to use this information in your classroom?”  It’s my belief that anytime you can learn or see something new and enriching, this will translate into a higher quality of learning for your students. That’s what all of today was about.