Teaching the 4th Grade Curriculum

One of my closest friends, Matt, who knows nearly everything about me from many interesting nights, has a blog that chronicles his triumphs and defeats and everyday life in the teaching world of the NYC Schools. I admire him for his bold, adventurous move that took him out of comfy Columbus-town and into the big city. After all, we are of the same sign and our inherent need to seek new challenges keeps us going. I understand.

I also admire Matt because he has always told us that teaching High School science is exactly what he wanted to do after his Masters in Geological Sciences. Well, he's doing it, and doing it well. He has found himself at the Manhattan village Academy, a super swanky school that has departments and courses such as Music History and Conceptual Physics! Matt's teaching stories on his blog prompted me to think about my own teaching stories and life at the Park teaching the 4th grade curriculum.

4th graders are amazing beings. They have this incredible aptitude for soaking up new information, thinking freely, and asking intelligent questions... For the most part. I have found that the kids I teach that come to the park are only as good as their teacher. That is, if the teacher has created a positive environment for them to feel at ease with answering questions and thinking outside of the box, then it is going to be a great day for me and they will get a lot out of my presentations.

You can tell a good teacher from a bad teacher as soon as they step off that field trip bus; subsequently, you know if it's going to be a good or bad class. The bad teachers step off that bus agitated from the ride, ready to take their own field trip from teaching. The kids are disorganized and out of control. If they have no construct for discipline in the classroom, they sure as hell are not going to behave on a field trip. This situation leaves me feeling helpless with the kids. It is not my place to discipline, yet the teacher stands there and does nothing, or instead screams at them. I try my hardest but those kids get very little benefit from my teaching. I feel like a failure on those days.

One of my worst days was just this past Monday when I headed out to Oak Hill Elementary to teach a group of K-5th graders at an after school program. The organizer told Ranger Megan there would be 25 kids. We planned a program for 25. When we showed up, the number was up to 98 and was going to take place in the extremely echoy gym. After 5 minutes of freaking out, we calmed down and adjusted the best we could. We had the teachers pull the 4th and 5th graders around to our sides since we know they would be the ones to get the most out of what we had to say. Well... Chaos erupted. The K-3rd graders were totally squirrelly. They ALL had their hands up. Not that they had questions... unrelated comments really: "Ummm, my cat at home caught this mouse." Or the classic, "I forget." The 4th and 5th graders decided to go crazy as well asking if they could touch all of our artifacts and ask equally irrelevant questions, "Um, is that like made of paint?", referring to our map of the United States. The explosion of the chit-chatty squirrliness was amplified 10 times over by the resonance of the gym. Megan and I tried talking over them... We tried not talking until everyone was quiet, we tried raising our voices. We even tried desperate pleas for attention.

Obviously the teachers saw this as fun break time, not an etiquette-driven guest lecture and activity and that attitude was reflected in the kids behavior. Amazing.

On the flip-side, I had a 4th grade teacher from Logan come to the park completely into her kids and into the subject. She spent some time going over the Park before the kids came. These kids were amazing forward thinkers. They asked me questions on some aspects of the Hopewell that adults don't even ask or comprehend. Their ability to absorb the information I told them was incredible. I asked them 3 things they learned from the day and they gave me 10 including, "after the Hopewell a new group of people came and buried their dead in the mounds too", one girl said referring to the Intrusive Culture.

It's really the every day teachers who are dedicated to what they do that make a difference and create an atmosphere conducive to learning and foster situations to test intellectual limits. I have no doubt that Matt will be one of these teachers.

Advice for the Weary College Senior

It's a chilly, dark and rainy day down here at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe. I am working alone, visitation is down, and the Park Service has switched over to the Winter Uniform. I was just asked for the thousandth time what the siren coming from the two prisons means. "No, prisoners have not escaped, it's the 4pm head-count."

I feel like hibernating. Instead I have been sitting here thinking about all the struggle I have been through over the past year on the quest to become a Classical Geoarchaeologist. I was prompted to write this post after browsing through several of Zu's postings. He too has shared some of my same struggles as a learned undergrad making his way through a senior honors thesis. The most important piece of advice I can give him (and I really hope he takes it), is to enroll in History 783: Honors Research. This was a pivotal class for me and was probably the only reason I was able to complete my thesis and get it defended before the end of last spring.
So what can Zu get out of taking this class?
1) Confidence
2) Motivation
3) A time table for completion
4) Long-lasting friendships with other theses students
5) A non-critical sounding board that offers practical writing advice
6) Advice for and camaraderie at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum
7) The opening of doors for other research forums and events
8) The building of close personal connections with advisors and professors as the undergrad years come to a close

I can't emphasize enough the importance of this class in shaping and defining my Senior year. (Props to my good friend Mark for taking the class.) This led to the successful completion of my thesis and earning Cum Laude and with distinction in History.

So hang tough weary college senior, now is your time to shine. Instead of shoving those history books under your bed, pull them out, dust them off and pump out a draft of that thesis. I know you are discouraged and the task seems impossible. I was there. I conquered.

If you recall, I was under a mountain of data that made no sense. I got frustrated and I cried, I procrastinated and tried to hide. But it IS possible and finishing is one of the most rewarding moments in life you will ever experience.

Oldest Noodles Unearthed in China

Yes, you read that correctly: Noodles... The oldest noodles unearthed in China.

I am amused by this article--I too first thought it was a joke. I had one of those "Wait, am I reading The Onion?"(try this) moments... Perhaps I had clicked on the wrong "Favorites" link. *checks* Nope, in fact the article I was reading came from the BBC News website, a very trusted and reliable news source. Amusement subsiding, I became fascinated. For one, I never realized there was an actual debate over who created the noodle first: the Italians, Arabs, or the Chinese. Secondly, I never thought archaeology could help solve this debate. It's AMAZING what my fellow archaeologists can find given the right depositional environment. The Pompeii of China--I never knew!

Read on:

Oldest noodles unearthed in China

The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China.
The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood.
Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.
Scientists tell the journal Nature that the noodles were made using grains from millet grass - unlike modern noodles, which are made with wheat flour.
The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food.
Professor Houyuan Lu said: "Prior to the discovery of noodles at Lajia, the earliest written record of noodles is traced to a book written during the East Han Dynasty sometime between AD 25 and 220, although it remained a subject of debate whether the Chinese, the Italians, or the Arabs invented it first.
Lajia is a very interesting site; in a way, it is the Pompeii of China Prof Kam-biu Liu
"Our discovery indicates that noodles were first produced in China," the researcher from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, explained to BBC News.
The professor's team tells Nature that the ancient settlement at Lajia was hit by a sudden catastrophe.
Among the remains are skeletons thrown into various abnormal postures, suggesting the inhabitants may have been trying to flee the disaster that was enveloping them.
"Based on the geological and archaeological evidence, there was a catastrophic earthquake and immediately following the quake, the site was subject to flooding by the river," explained co-author Professor Kam-biu Liu, from Louisiana State University, US.
"Lajia is a very interesting site; in a way, it is the Pompeii of China."
It was in amongst the human wreckage that scientists found an upturned earthenware bowl filled with brownish-yellow, fine clay.
When they lifted the inverted container, the noodles were found sitting proud on the cone of sediment left behind.
"It was this unique combination of factors that created a vacuum or empty space between the top of the sediment cone and the bottom of this bowl that allowed the noodles to be preserved," Professor Kam-biu Liu said.
The noodles resemble the La-Mian noodle, the team says; a traditional Chinese noodle that is made by repeatedly pulling and stretching the dough by hand.
To identify the plants from which the noodles were made, the team looked at the shape and patterning of starch grains and so-called seed-husk phytoliths in the bowl.
These were compared with modern crops. The analysis pointed to the use of foxtail millet ( Setaria italica ) and broomcorn millet ( Panicum miliaceum )
"Our data demonstrate that noodles were probably initially made from species of domesticated grasses native to China. This is in sharp contrast to modern Chinese noodles or Italian pasta which are mostly made of wheat today," Professor Houyuan Lu said.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4335160.stmPublished: 2005/10/12 17:29:06 GMT

So there you have it.

Fall Frenzy

Arizona Bound?

My last post included the more "far-fetched" option 5. This may not be so far-fetched after all. I was able to get in contact with the Graduate Studies coordinator, Marsha Schweitzer at Arizona State as well as Michael Barton, professor of Anthropology (not to be confused with OSU's own geology professor with the same name). My visit was wonderful--talking with Dr. Barton and the other graduate students was very helpful. I'm definitely going to apply there in hopes to work with Dr. Barton on his prehistoric site in Spain, which is funded for the next five years.

So here we are into October already. I can't believe it's that time to get those grad applications back out again. This year I'm enrolled in the Department of Continuing Education at Ohio State. I'm taking a graduate level Magnetometry class in the department of Geological Sciences, an Anthropology course, and I'm sitting in on Latin and Greek. I'm also continuing to work 4 days a week at the Hopewell Culture NHP.

Archaeology Merit Badge Clinics at Hopewell Culture

All in all, I have been a VERY busy woman. At the park I started a program so that the local boy scouts can attend two day clinics with me to earn their Archaeology Merit Badge. This is a very difficult badge to earn for the scouts since Requirement 8 calls for an excavation under the supervision of an archaeologist. Not many people have the qualifications, time, or dig site to offer this requirement--but the real life field experience is key for the scouts.

So back in August I began working with Tom Bain who is a Scout Master with Troop 38 in Chillicothe--he truly believes in the value of having the scouts work with the National Park Service. He is my biggest supporter for the clinics and a pleasure to work with.

I then took two weeks to prepare an entire two day clinic, complete with lecture materials, a slew of activites, and a site location back in the woods of the Chief Logan Reservation Boy Scout Camp in Jackson County. The site itself is a early 20th c. rural homestead, back before the Mead paper mill took over the woods for logging. The site includes an old foundation along a dried up creek, a debris-filled well, and a trash pile where a house may have stood.

The clinic went over extrememly well and at the end of the second day, most of the scouts had completed all requirements for the merit badge.

I held the second Archaeology Merit Badge Clinic at the park on October 1 and 2. The clinic filled up within hours of the notification! With refined methods and a better idea of the historic site we have been excavating, the second clinic went over even better than the first.

My vision is for this program keep expanding. My hope is that it will continue long after I am gone and that the park service will be able to obtain a set of permenant archaeological equipment and deem the site an "Archaeolgical Demostration Area" that is sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America and the National Park Service. I'm looking into doing a summer-long program out at the camp so that I can reach as many scouts as possible. With the encouragement of my boss, Chief Ranger Rick Perkins, I will be applying for the Parks-as-Classrooms grant in order to get funding for this project. What wonderful experience for me in my first supervisory role as an archaeologist! What a wonderful experience for the Boy Scouts of America!!

With all of this work I have been doing, it looks like I may be up for a promotion soon.

Ohio Archaeology Month

I have also been organizing "Hopewell Discovery Day: An Adventure in Archeology." This event will be held on Saturday October 15th from 10am-3pm. Attending this event will be several professional flint-knappers, Archeaological displays by the Mound City Chapter of The Archaeological Society of Ohio, an Atlatl demonstration and competition, Ranger-led Mound Tours every hour by yours truly, and much more. All fees are waived and all activites are free! This even it a part of Ohio Archaeology Month, October 2005.

ONCE IN A GENERATION EVENT!!!!

Another large event happening during Ohio Archaeology Month is Octagon Moon Rise. If you haven't heard, well then mark your calendars now! October 22nd marks a celebration of the 18.6 year cycle of the moon that aligns with the great octagon and circle at the Newark Earthworks. I will be out there in uniform that day talking about the Newark twin in Chillicothe that we call High Bank Works.

Hope you can make it out to these exciting archaeological events!