Gettysburg

After today I’ve decided I’m a whole to part learner which is a great disadvantage if you’re trying to learn either history or math.  Fortunately, in the past two years on our trips to both Boston and Philadelphia, I’ve been able to put together a few pieces of the puzzle into a unified whole, or at least bigger chunks that are fitting together.  That’s what our trip to Gettysburg did for me with today.  Not only did we have an excellent tour of the Battlefield that helped pull together and unify some bits and pieces there, but the visitor’s center had an excellent walk through display which put Gettysburg into the context of the war as a whole.  One of the puzzle pieces I was missing was the role the border states played in the Civil War. The interactive display in the visitor’s center, and with the help of Matt, I now understand that the situation in these states was never clear cut. I should have known this by now, not only that factoid, but the big idea about history   that nothing is simplistic.  It’s the gray areas that define and deepen understanding and also make history such a fascinating discipline to study. 

I’d like to say that I have a clear idea about how I will translate this learning into the classroom, but this trip and the Boston trip as well have so enriched and rounded my historical understandings of American History, that I am convinced the best thing I take into the classroom is my increased content knowledge.  One thing that was obvious in the classroom last year, after the Boston trip, was my ability to elaborate answers to my student’s questions.  Instead of parroting back an answer to a question according to the way it was presented in the textbook, I could provide anecdotes, extra information, and pose questions for my students in order to get them thinking for themselves a little more and considering some of the bigger ideas about change and human choices.

 

So specifically, many lessons could be spun out of the information presented today.  One obvious one would be a comparison of numbers and percentage of deaths at Gettysburg which were phenomenally high, but so were other battles such as Chancellorsville and Antietam.  Numbers could also be compared to percentages from the Revolutionary War.  I think you could also work in a lesson on any aspect of Lincoln or the Gettysburg Address in either a President study or by revisiting the Declaration of Independence and how it affected Lincoln’s thoughts at Gettysburg.  The material we learned today as well as from Boritt’s book open up endless possibilities including a look at how the war affected both the town and the people of the community after the battle….  As with the other days on this trip, it was full, but I can’t stop writing without mentioning our visit with Gabor Boritt.  It actually was our first stop for the day, and one of the most delightful. We spent about 30 minutes at his farm and he spoke of his book “The Gettysburg Gospel” and some of the information in it. He didn’t really offer anything new that wasn’t presented in the book, except maybe the fact that it is unknown where Everett slept.  I was under the impression after reading his book that Everett was one of the people who shared a bed with another visitor since Lincoln was given the only “single” room.  Now I’m going to have to go back and reread because Boritt very cleverly wrote his way around this issue or else I missed this point entirely. Anyway Gabor, the man, was a real treat.  His place was beautiful, and his Boxers entertaining.