Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Make the Memories Last

Great WallMy husband and I have done a lot of traveling lately and recently went to Epcot. We enjoyed walking through the World Showcase and it brought back lots of great memories of places we have been.

We went through the China exhibit and saw places we actually visited in 2000. There were many cities, cultural, and historical sites that we saw in person! The movie we saw made us want to go visit again!

When we saw the Eiffel Tower, it brought back memories of our trip to Paris. I remember going to the Louvre and Versailles.

As we walked through Norway, I remembered learning a lot about the Scandinavians when I was in school as a child. My husband learned about them too and we grew up 800 miles apart!

When we started talking about what made some things more special than others, we realized it was because we actually saw things in person that we remembered studying when we were in school. It was so exciting to see these things in real life! But if you had told me as a child that one day this information would be important to you, I wouldn’t have believed it.

My husband remembers his third grade teacher making them memorize the poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. Whenever we are in a forest or he is impressed with the trees that surround us, he begins to recite that poem. It has stayed with him for over 50 years!

So when I am teaching a student something, I need to think about what future ramifications this information may have. They might not recall this information after the test, or even in the next five years but who knows when they may remember it on future travels or interactions with others. Hopefully they are studying places, people, or ideas that might impact them later in life. It might just help them when they visit places as a tourist, or actually help them with their jobs. I need to share with them how this might not seem important or relevant right now in their lives but it may be useful later on.

It makes me excited to think of possibilities for this information to travel across space and time.

Isn’t it great to be a teacher!

Image: 'Grande Muralha - Great Wall'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30578078@N00/247113681
Found on flickrcc.net

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