This document discusses ways that Longfellow National Historic Site is promoting interdisciplinary programs and attracting new audiences through various activities, even with a small budget. These include living history tours and presentations that incorporate architecture, poetry, objects, and cultural traditions to provide different perspectives on history. Hands-on activities like an architecture scavenger hunt and measuring a tree engage visitors in exploring the site from different angles.
7. Whatâs your story? Shatter expectations! Home of _______? Slaves or Servants Kids War Family Ghosts Pets Location Objects inside A place in time House (even some poems!) 3
8. How to Make New Connections?(or accommodate different learning styles, link to other disciplines) Living History Tours Activities (explore, make, measure, perform) Objects (analyze, compare, imagine) Words, Stories & Images 4
22. Curriculum â Make Something! Created by Medfield middle school students to fulfill social studies class assignment 14
23. Measure!! How tall is that tree? Find a stick and hold it at its base vertically, making certain that the length of the stick above your hand equals the distance from your hand to your eye. Staying on ground level (or on the same contour as the base of the tree), move away from the tree while sighting the trunk base above your hand. Stop when the top of the stick is level with the top of the tree. You should be looking over your hand at the base of the tree and, moving only your eyes, looking over the top of your stick at the top of your tree. Measure how far you are from the tree and that measurement - in feet - is the tree's height. http://www.americanforests.org/resources/bigtrees/ http://www.fw.vt.edu/4h/bigtree/height.htm Longfellow American Linden Tree 15
35. THE AMERICAN TIMES A Satire in Three Parts By CamilloQuerno Hear thy indictment, Washington, at large; Attend and listen to the solemn charge: Thou hast supported an atrocious cause Against thy King, thy Country, and the laws; Committed perjury, encourag'd lies, Forced conscience, broken the most sacred ties; Myriads of wives and fathers at thy hand Their slaughter'd husbands, slaughter'd sons demand; That pastures hear no more the lowing kine, -- That towns are desolate, all -- all is thine; The frequent sacrilege that pain'd my sight: The blasphemies my pen abhors to write; Innumerable crimes on thee must fall -- For thou maintainest, thou defendest all. . . . What could, when half-way up the hill to fame, Induce thee to go back, and link with shame? Was it ambition, vanity, or spite, That prompted thee with Congress to unite; Or did all three within thy bosom roll, "Thou heart of hero with a traitor's soul?" Go, wretched author of thy country's grief, Patron of villainy, of villains chief; . . . The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution By Winthrop Sargent Printer: Collins Philadelphia, 1857 Limited Edition of 99 copies HW Longfellow's copy: #63 25
Questions raised in workshop description:How do we attract visitors of different ages & interests?How to incorporate different learning styles â tactile, visual learners & so onHow to link history to art, history to poetry, science or math to history
Have you ever been told on the spur of the moment that you had to do something new?Do you get tired of seeing the same faces at all your programs?Maybe thereâs a fairy godmother out there just waiting to give you money. Have you ever heard your staff say, âIf I hear myself tell that story one more time, Iâll ____? âI canât stand to hear myself give that talk any more.âSo maybe the old stuff isnât good enough. Perhaps not, particularly at a time when many organizations are vying for the visitor dollar. Relevance is vital.
What do you think of when I say Henry Longfellow? (wait for response). Nothing, a bridge? If you know he was a poet, then you probably think â childrenâs poet, long gone, not relevant! I canât tell you the number of times people are amazed that George Washington lived here . Did you know there were slaves in this house?Or they ask if there are ghosts. Well, these are all opportunities. Hereâs what we have done.
Letâs look at some of the ways we try to make our place exciting. These are not new ideas, but may just need a little tweaking.
But you donât have to have professional actors do living history. These are middle and high school students â Concordant Volunteers. The students did research in our archives, interviewed family members, researched independently to create their characters. Each of these persons lived or visited the house. Would younger visitors respond to these students? You bet! All these young people from the past all lived in or visited the Longfellow House.
Are the interesting people all in the past and dead? No way.How can we get at information about the past to do historic interpretation?Interviews with previous residents of the house & descendents to supplement archival materials for their living history presentations.
Is there anyone here who hasnât been on a historic house tour?How do they work? Youâre led through the rooms, told not to touch, and often donât get a chance to ask questions. And then youâre out the back door.Wait a minute!! Iâve got questions. Where did they go when they had to go? Where are the bathrooms? Whatâs behind that door?For school vacation week this year a ranger developed a tour called âToilets, Closets, Attic,Basement.â While the tour took the form of a traditional house museum experience â a tour -- this was a new angle. Checking out the back halls, closets, and so on. People love to peek behind the scenes.
Now, letâs take the objects! Wait, we canât take the objects. We canât even touch them!What about the building? Itâs the biggest object weâve got. Letâs deal with that!Weâre not open year round and people canât get inside, but they can always walk the grounds and explore.This year to celebrate the house 250th birthday we looked at the building.
Each year the site participates in Cambridge Discovery Days. This year it was entitled: Cambridge: From the Ground Up to celebrate the buildings and architecture of Cambridge.
Talk about energizing your staff. This booklet was the brainchild of 2 student rangers at the house. They wanted something else to do. They were bored.The beauty of this kind of activity is that people can do it anytime. The house doesnât have to be open. You donât need extra staff. We always are getting the question, âCanât I go through the house on my own?â Well, no, but you can do this on your own.The student rangers also created bookmarks as freebies to people who completed the discovery.
They made the activity fun. Presented new words â contrasted them with familiar words.Do you have pizza on your piazza?Does your house need or have dentil work?
You knew I would have to get to poetry!
Rededication of the Longfellow House after a 4-yr. closure in 2002. Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the U.S. and local students who turned the poem âThe Buildersâ into a rap poem â thus making it new again.
Do you learn by listening? I donât. Iâm a visual learner. Some people need to touch. In a historic house museum, good lord! No way.How about model making? If we wanted to get a scale model of the house as it was in 1759, weâd pay a lot of money. We got this on for free thanks to three students from Medfield.Their social studies project was a major effort. They had to select a historic house, visit it, research its history, measure its dimensions and create a scale 3-dimensional scale model and write a paper about the house. These students made two field trips to the house, physically measured the outside dimensions, studied floor plans, researched on the Historic American Building Survey website to view the measured drawings.
While weâre on the subject of measuring things, how about looking at the landscape and consider the trees.
What does Japan have to do with this colonial house in Cambridge or this 19th century American poet?Letâs look at the family and their travels.Students from SHOWA volunteered.
Objects â we canât touch them, but we can make replicas. On the left is a paper object from Japan with the image on the reverse side next to it. On the right is an activity of paper folding which the children worked on during the Japan Cultural Day. They colored the images on both sides and then folded the paper so that various images became visible on the opposite side.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and present some of the ways we at Longfelloe NHS have tried to make our story more interesting, to attract new audiences, and to give learning experiences to our guests who all learn differently. Thanks.
If youâve ever met a costumed interpreter (even Mickey Mouse at Disneyworld), how did you react? You probably felt pretty comfortable about getting into the fantasy of the experience. Pretending, which is so natural to a child, gets lost as we grow up! Living history interpreters free us from our defined roles. Weâre free to be anyone. And donât we all love that idea of traveling back in time? I got to meet President Lincoln this summer (with about 150 other people). How did we all react to the experience? When he and the First Lady walked into the performance space, everybody stood! And when he took questions, people asked serious questions about the Civil War. This kind of event does cost money. These living history presenters are professional actors from SoloTogether, a group that meets regularly at the site.
There are many layers of history at the site â colonial, Loyalist, American Revolution, 19th century poet, and 20th century family. This year we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the building of the house. Here you see the parlor of the house today and contrasted with an 1909 photo of family members celebrating the 150th anniversary of the house by reenacting a party which Gen. and Mrs. Washington held in the home in January 1776.
The building, the architecture! Not even considering who lived here, we can work with the building. What I hear from visitors, esp. those on the West Coast or Midwest, is the comment that here in Boston history is everywhere. We see it every day. Hereâs an opportunity.These buildings are not all alike. Why is that?
This activity led to poetry. How accommodating Longfellow was! He wrote a poem about architecture. What a guy!
While weâre talking about poetry. . .letâs look at history through poetry. Take Longfellowâs famous âPaul Revereâs Ride.â Okay historians, maybe you think itâs infamous. Itâs not accurate. Please give Henry a break. He knew it wasnât accurate. That wasnât the point. Okay I know whatâs running through your minds right now, âListen my children and you shall hear . . . Yadda, yadda. But why do we always have to look at history from our side? Turn the coin please.Did the Loyalists write any poetry about the Revolution? Oh, did they!
What did the loyalists say about these rabblerousers? Whatâs nice about this poetry is that itâs in the public domain. Itâs not copyrighted. Itâs free. We used this comparison exercise in a workshop for teachers at the Paul Revere House early this yea. .