[Lots of balls in the air this Fall, all of which could use input and ideas from y’all! So I thought I’d share a handful here, and also ask to hear about some of what you’re juggling for a crowd-sourced weekend post o’ solidarity and support!]
On the happily
long afterlife of a very early online piece of mine, and a request for input on
its newest iteration.
I haven’t gone
back and done a thorough search (I’m all for Googling myself, but past a
certain point it feels a bit too narcissistic even for our selfie age), but I
think it’s quite possible that my first non-blog piece of online writing, the
first piece I composed specifically for another online site, was this September
2013 piece for ConnecticutHistory.org on “Yung Wing, the Chinese
Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut.” I can’t remember exactly
how or through whom I got connected to that great site, much of the content of
which is I believe produced or at least curated by students at the University
of Connecticut; but I know both the initial contact and the piece itself were follow-ups
to both my Chinese
Exclusion Act book and the
ongoing series
of book talks I was giving on that project throughout that summer and fall
of 2013.
I may not know
exactly how it started, but I do know that this very early piece of online
writing has surprisingly and delightfully continued to find new readers over
the 8 years since, many of whom have reached out to me (not sure why certain pieces
of online writing lead to that kind of contact and conversation more fully, but
I sure always enjoy it when they do—so if you’re reading this, write to say hi!). The most reach
such contact was from Rebecca Furer, a Program Consultant with the educational
resource Teach It Connecticut. Teach It
works, in Rebecca’s words, “to put Connecticut-based primary sources into the hands of
grade 3-12 educators,” and she’s hoping to add an activity about the
Chinese Educational Mission. My piece has apparently been one of the resources
she’s been working with, and she reached out with a generous invitation for me
to help create that activity (likely for high schoolers, although the level can
vary and is at least somewhat up to me) and its assorted primary sources, contextual
materials, guiding questions, and links/additional resources.
I’m not looking
to outsource that work, I promise; but at the same time I’ve never created a lesson
plan or resource specifically geared toward high school students (or middle
school either), and so if you have any thoughts on what can make for the best
and most successful (or, y’know, worst and least successful) such plans and
resources, you know I’d love to hear them! Whether in comments here or by email, I can tell you that I
will greatly appreciate and benefit a lot from whatever you’d like to share,
and thanks so much in advance!
Next work in
progress tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Ideas about this work, or work in progress of your own you’d share?
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