Social World – Page 35 – Montessori Muddle

The Clinton Library

I have one student who intends to be president. He already has the date picked out. So the Clinton Library in Little Rock was a great stop on our immersion. It took a little coaxing to get him all the way through while some of the others, who were not as enthusiastic, waited patiently. I’m fairly sure he would have been happy to spent the entire day there.

The library is located on the Arkansas River. In fact, while it’s mostly built on the bluff overlooking the river, one side of juts out over the embankment, out over the flood plain. I suspect that if the river were to flood (which is perhaps unlikely with all the locks on the river), the supports for that wing of the building would be under water.

Inside the museum are displays about Bill Clinton’s eight years as president, a small theater with a video about Clinton’s life and some other odds and ends of the Clinton presidency (the limo, the replica oval office). The highlight was the replica of the cabinet room. Everyone enjoyed sitting at the table. After the initial rush for seats, it was discovered that they were all labeled for the different members of the cabinet, which was interesting enough as the all took at least a second to consider what their role might be if they were actually in the government.

There was also an exhibit with a number of Madeleine Albright’s pins, which she used to send messages to her diplomatic counterparts while she was the UN ambassador and as Secretary of State. You might not think that would particularly interesting to adolescents, but there were some spectacularly beautiful, jeweled insects that attracted the attention of some students, and an interesting RPG pin (from Pakistan) that attracted the attention of others.

Since we’d been doing museums and tours all day, everyone was tired by the time we’d finished the museum. It would be another hour before we got back to Lake Catherine so instead of just jumping into the van I offered them the chance to run around on the steep, grassy embankment, down into the floodplain. Instead they (mostly) opted to roll down. Fun was had by all.

The museum was a decent stop, worthy of an hour or two, but, with our current study of civil rights, and the age of our students, it could not match Central High.

Tour of Central High

101st_Airborne_at_Little_Rock_Central_High-ps — Memphis 10 and the Little Rock 9

It’s one thing to walk through a place where history was actually made, but having a tour guide who personally experienced part of it is pretty special. The Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site is the only national park with an active, fully functioning high school on site. So when you do the tour, you follow a ranger (wearing the same uniform and hat that they wear on the forest trails) through the halls of a school as scores of students stream past. It’s a little odd to say the least. The Central High students seem to take it in stride, because they’re probably used to it, but our students seemed a bit unsure about how to deal with it.

Jody Morris, born and raised in Little Rock, was our tour guide. She was a child (1st grade I think) when the schools were integrated, and she experienced the ostracism of having parents supportive of integration. Ms. Morris was able to speak with the emotion and authority of someone who lived through troubling times. I’m not sure that we could have had a better tour without having one of the Little Rock Nine there with us.

Much of what we saw is in the history books and the documentaries. On the tour you climb the same front steps in the iconic pictures of the students being escorted up the steps of the school (see above); you sit in the same cafeteria where Minnijean Brown was hazed; you can walk the same long blocks that Elizabeth Eckford did in front of the jeering crowd. The current students walking the halls, immunized to the weight of history by long experience, make it easier to identify with what it might have been.

Little Rock Immersion

[googleMap name=”Lake Catherine State Park” description=”Lake Catherine State Park” width=”490″ height=”490″ mapzoom=”12″ directions_to=”false”]1200 Catherine Park Rd, AR 71913-8716[/googleMap]

Just got back from an immersion trip to Arkansas. Every sixth week we get out of the classroom for the week and try to integrate what we’ve learned in the previous five. We’re out there, sometimes visiting somewhere history happened, sometimes hiking in the woods, and I wonder why we don’t spend all of our time outside the classroom. The kids get so much out of just exploring, and there is just so much that sparks the imagination.

Anyway, we hit Central High School, the Clinton Library and stayed and hiked at Lake Catherine State Park (see the map above). We also had a lesson on cameras that tied into our discussion of waves last cycle. I expect to post about each of these, they were all quite good.