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The City of Auburn’s Historic & Cultural Sites Commission Unveils a New Program “Exploring American History, Art and Culture in Auburn, NY.”
In hopes of encouraging high school students to visit Auburn’s museums, and learn more about American history, members of Auburn’s Historic & Cultural Sites Commission sponsored the program “Exploring American History, Art, and Culture in Auburn, New York” in collaboration with Auburn school teachers Jeff Alberici, Matt Drastal, Jennie Higgins and other colleagues. These teachers, and others in the field, have been perfecting these plans and accompanying materials for the past two years. All the information is in hard copy binders, on CDs, or can be downloaded under “Resources” from www.TourAuburnNY.com.
As part of the marketing campaign, promotional DVDs- or teasers- about the site locations were created to lure teachers to participate in the program. Some have been narrated by high school students to further encourage involvement and interest from their peers. The program’s material includes the following 10 lesson plans: Cayuga Museum: Phases of American History, Fort Hill Cemetery: Orienteering, Harriet Tubman: Alphabet Soup, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center: Analysis and Interpretation of Art Work, Seward House: Scavenger Hunt, Willard Memorial Chapel: Preserving our Nation’s History, Local Historical Figures: Leaders of their Time, Community Hunt for Local History: South Street, Saint Mary’s Church: Gothic Architecture and Harriet Tubman Home: Her Legacy.
Each lesson plan has a welcome letter and a list of resources from each of the site locations. All of the lessons have strictly adhered to NYS Learning Standards, making it easy for teachers to incorporate the information and experiences into their curriculum. Most plans lead students through the process of using primary information sources and research. The binder also includes teacher guidelines for planning a successful field trip.
To quote Jeff Alberici, “Our goal is to help make Auburn’s rich history accessible to as many educators and students as possible.”
Distribution of the information will include BOCES component schools and outlying schools. Lesson plan creators will also try and distribute copies of the CDs at regional and state social studies conferences.
Moving forward, the group will discuss a strategy for adding and distributing new lessons plans that will supplement the original ten. The teachers hope to create 1-2 more each year. There is also a collection of middle school lesson plans that should be available in the spring of 2009.
The Commission’s next collaborative educational project is creating pod-cast walking tours of the Historic South Street District and Fort Hill Cemetery. The tour’s length should be approximately 45-60 minutes, and they will be downloadable to I-Pods and MP3 players from www.TourAuburnNY.com. The South Street tour would run from the Seward House to the Tubman Home.
For more information about the Lessons on Auburn program, please call (315) 255-1658, or visit www.TourAuburnNY.com.
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