As part of the Fellowship I received last year from Teachers for a New Era, I designed a non-residential Learning Community and a 1-credit course called Pre-Teaching Secondary English, open to freshmen and sophomores who think they want to be high school English teachers and who likely will apply to the Neag School of Education during their sophomore year. The INTD course is complemented by a section of Freshman English themed around Education. A couple students are in both classes. The FE course is taught by an English graduate student named Heather who happens to be a certified high school English teacher in New York state. I also have a sophomore student leader named Sarah who is assigned to my INTD course by the FYE program. She serves as a mentor to the enrolled students and functions for me much as a grad student might. This means that I get to come up with ideas for the course and the learning community but Sarah does most of the work to make it happen. She gets academic credit for this, and the experience enhances her candidacy for the school of education.
All of this is new to us, and Sarah and Heather have been tremendously helpful to me in conceptualizing the course and planning readings, assignments, classroom activities, and extra activities like this field trip.
All of this is new to us, and Sarah and Heather have been tremendously helpful to me in conceptualizing the course and planning readings, assignments, classroom activities, and extra activities like this field trip.
We had a beautiful fall day for our trip, and as the majority of us waited in the parking lot for a couple of students who drove directly themselves, we listened to the Park River as it rushed beneath us. You can actually hear it through a prominent storm drain near the stairs to the main entrance. Jeff Mainville met us in the lot and walked the nine of us along the north side of the house, bypassing the reception desk in the lobby of the visitors center. As we walked, Jeff provided some historical background about the area and the house. Once inside, we had the luxury of having the house to ourselves. I have taken the tour many times in the past. It’s a great tour, but typically there is a tour group just in front of you and another just behind, and you have to keep moving. On this day, we were alone, and the tour took a leisurely hour. Jeff’s focus was on curatorial aspects, like the architecture or the furniture. He could tell us the make and model of each chair, as well as when it was acquired by the museum. Knowing these were future teachers he had on his hands, and that I could practically give the tour myself, Jeff encouraged the students to ask questions that might be more relevant, and invited me to chime in. We even got a tour of the servants’ quarters, which is usually a separate tour.
Afterwards, the students and I were treated to a 90 minute lecture and discussion by Craig Hotchkiss on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that placed the novel in its proper historical context. Craig was a social studies teacher at South Windsor High for 33 years, and has evolved into a expert on Huck Finn. Like Jeff, knowing that he had future teachers for his audience, Craig customized his talk to accommodate pedagogical concerns, and opened the talk to a more meta discussion of the teaching of the novel. We discussed challenges to the book, notably the still recent one in Manchester, and looked closely at historical events surrounding the writing and publication of the novel. We also looked at Twain’s life and his support for African-American scholars and artists in order to put Twain’s attitude and intentions in a better and more accurate context.
Most of the students took copious notes and asked great questions, even though we had gone well into lunch time and we all were becoming distracted by hunger. We ate in the Japanese restaurant there in the visitors center and had great conversation over food. Our driver still had time before he had to return the van, so this left the students time to explore the galleries downstairs and to peruse the bookstore and gift shop. I walked away glad that I had sacrificed a little weekend rest to give these ambitious future teachers such a worthwhile experience.
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