Day #11- Cooperstown

It was another long day, but it didn’t seem as over whelming as it had been the past few days.  We first started off at the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I have never been, but I had heard that it was a great place.  I had thought that we would do a little more with the educational side of baseball.  I thought that they would go into a little more than just showing the lessons on their website.  I have mentioned baseball in the classroom, but I really have just brushed by it and said, “This is the time when Babe Ruth played.”  I was just trying to get the students to see what was going on as far as sports were concerned in that area.  But most of my students would prefer me to talk about football or Basketball. With myself growing up as more of a baseball fan, it is surprising how little the students follow baseball, many of them think (and this could be up for debate) that baseball is no longer America’s Pastime.    

Looking at the lessons on-line I would be able to use a few of the lessons to get the students thinking about different topics such as Women’s Rights and Civil Rights.  Both lessons can show the inequalities that these groups had to go through.  In the Negro Baseball League’s section they had a timeline that showed what was happening during the Negro leagues as well as what was going on in the United States at the same time.  I’m kicking myself in the butt right now because I didn’t take pictures of the timeline, and I tried to look for it on the website but I did not see it.  I guess I could request it. 

The Fennimore Museum had some nice collections; I really enjoyed the dress exhibit as well as the Magnum exhibit.  The students are sometimes surprised when I talk about the way women dressed at the Turn of the 20^th Century; all they can think about are the girls now with their short shorts and being able to show skin.  They don’t realize what some girls go through to look the way that they do.  It is hard for them to imagine the girls trying to force their bodies to do something that they are not physically able to do.  This might help me explain it a little better.    

The Farm Museum was not my favorite of the trip, but it was nice and relaxing.  I did enjoy the gentlemen who showed us how the printing presses worked.  He had a Printing Press from the 1840s and the 1860s, and seeing the work that had to go into laying the individual letters has to be an art.

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