ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Lessons
ROAD T ON THE
he middle school field trip. Once a common experience for many children, educational visits to museums, battlefields and the like became most uncommon in 2020, when COVID-19 precautions prevented many in-person activities. At Northeastern Middle School in York County, Pa., social studies teacher David Raymond ’95 had a solution: “Lessons on the Road.”
Now a series of 28 videos and counting, “Lessons” features Raymond; Mike Graham, a science teacher; Eric Gimbi, a social studies teacher; and Alex Raymond, David’s son and videographer. The videos align with the eighth-grade curriculum and are filmed with that age group in mind. The three teachers determine which segments they’d like to narrate, and then each does his own research on the topic. Titles include “George Washington’s Mount Vernon — Mansion’s Interior,” “James Buchanan’s Wheatland,” “Reddy Kilowatt — York History Center,” “Mechanical Advantage & Simple Machines,” and “18th Century Medicine, Smallpox Inoculation, and Amputation.” “There are a million videos out there about Mount Vernon,” Raymond says. “But we try to look at it from a kid’s perspective. The walls in one room are this vivid green, so the lesson was ‘What’s up with these walls? Why are they green?’ And we talked about wealth in that era meaning that you could use copper in construction and then we talked about the science of how copper oxidizes.” Some videos feature exhibits at the York County History Museum, which hosted video production while it was closed to the public during the pandemic. Periodic Presidents, a producer of historical infographics and other products that “make history cool,” is a new partner. “It’s been fun,” Raymond says. “It’s allowing me to reinvent and reinvigorate. I don’t want to be that person who gets burned out in the classroom.
CAL U REVIEW
“I love my job. I always say, ‘I don’t go to work; I go to school.’”
link
For a link to watch ‘Lessons on the Road,’ visit calu.edu/review.
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