What an exhilarating presentation!  Quality stuff, interesting speaker, empathetic walk-throughs of the material.  Everyone in that room was involved evaluating what pieces of the DBQ they were already doing, what new pieces they felt they could add, and what new areas in which they could apply the process.  All this from a guy who didn’t know what he was trading in the stock exchange!  Amazing!

We already have the students report on a photograph from the Civil War, and it would be a natural step in that lesson to find documents related to a question to support the lesson.  Maybe we’ll have the kids research and find documents.

In discussions of the presentation and the material, we came across a different conundrum- if students did units like these every year in ways appropriate to their grade level, The high school teachers could receive learners that know the process, know how to question documents, and know how to write.  Should a district require a program like this at each grade level?  If it were a mandated program from the Administration, would it be effective?  Do we teachers have an obligation to tell the teachers in levels below us what they should be doing?

The afternoon was a walk through areas destroyed by the 1871 fire.  When building homes of wood and paving streets with tar-soaked wooden paving bricks, maybe you should expect trouble.  Why did they continue building with wood?  For that matter, I have a map of Boston, circa 1765,  which list fourteen or fifteen major fires since in settling of the town.  Americans knew the risks.  Did they continue because of accesible materials?  Did they build of wood because of the tremendous growth rate?  Or was it solely out of habit?

Where people tried to find protection