I found the Old Courthouse, now a historic landmark, fascinating. The Dred Scott case started at that courthouse. When the tour guide told us this, I got goosebumps : over the summer, I went to the federal Supreme Court, where the case ended. Full circles -- that have an infinite importance to the children with whom I now work. A women's suffrage case, Virginia Minor, started there as well. We got to walk into a courtroom and poke through the rotunda, but left fairly quickly after our tour.
Next we arrived at the City Hall. Our guide, an assistant to the mayor, took us to the meeting room of the Board of Aldermen. The students got to sit at the desks of the Alderpersons. The floor of the city was momentarily filled with a unique demographic and the question flitted through my head : what if these were the people running the city? Here the students, especially the 8th graders, asked a bunch of intelligent questions. After we ran out of Q&A time, we went into the Mayor's reception room, where the guide told us about the office of the mayor, the seal of St. Louis, and the St. Louis flag.
After a pit stop as McDonalds (pronounced MAC-don-alds by my kids) for a high-class lunch, we carried on to the wax museum. Wax museums creep me out in general, but I thought I could get through this one. Well, it was a house converted into a museum, which weirded me out, and as we approached the front counter, I had a gut reaction against the single wax figure there watching us. Luckily for me, though unfortunate for her, one student was not feeling well, so I sat in the hallway with her and avoided the displays. The kids seemed to enjoy it though, and this part of the trip brought them in touch with their heritage.
Finally, we stopped at the Scott Joplin house. The kids had told the Creighton volunteer with us that he "wrote the ice cream truck song." We walked through his apartment then listened to some of his music ("The Maple Leaf Rag") on a pump piano, that played for you as you plied the pedals. A couple of the kids really enjoyed playing it, although at least one show-off had trouble and was good-naturedly brought down a few notches. Sadly, we didn't get to watch their video on Joplin, because we had to get back to school.
My warm-fuzzy of the field trip came at the very end. The out-of-the-box student of Math Monster fame was chatting through his speech impediment with the ladies who ran the house. He came out with a job offer for as soon as he gets old enough to work -- in a year. He came out so excited and chatty and was still talking about it today.
Another warm-fuzzy came from having an outsider, our Creighton volunteer, there with me. She jumped right in, a natural at relationships and at people-herding. Also, she provided social analysis that is affirming to what I've seen this year, boosting my confidence in my judgement.
If you don't like wax museums, you would certainly not like Guatemalan churches...so creepy at first, but then you get used to it.
ReplyDeleteStatues or murals? There's one church here in which I feel claustrophobic because of all the people on the walls.
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