It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the day at Winterthur, it’s just that I think I could have enjoyed more. I enjoyed the Children’s Enchanted Forest. 

 

I overheard a couple of children questioning one another as to how Howard got into the bird nest.  I told them that he flew.  They stopped and looked at me and for a second I think they thought about it.  I smiled and they ran off to find the real way.   

I was disappointed in the fact that we only saw 1 ½ stories of the 9 story house.  It was nice, but it wasn’t amazing.  I never did get to see the film they all talked about.  The teacher lessons we participated in were fun and I think my students would enjoy them, but they weren’t directly related to Winterthur.    

 

The one crucial way in which it will affect my student’s learning is that I realized the need for an introduction.  Too many times we assume that our students have the background knowledge necessary to proceed into a new lesson and be successful.  As an educator, you can never assume anything about your students.  You need to write the objective on the board and clearly introduce the lesson so they know what the expectations are.  This was not done for us at Winterthur.  We were presented with all types of new information in the library with no introduction.  As an adult, we feel comfortable expressing our desire for an introduction while making our confusion apparent.  Students don’t have that luxury.  They are frequently afraid to question a teacher for fear of getting in trouble or looking stupid in front of their classmates. When we talked to the education director about the lack of an introduction, she excused it with the fact that we were behind in time and figured we would get it eventually.  How many times do we do that as educators?  “Oh, I only have 20 minutes so I’ll just skip this part.”  All in all, I guess I learned a lot.

                                                                                    

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