[Northkeep] Gore Demo--This Thursday!

Jerry Herring j.t.herring at sbcglobal.net
Fri Oct 29 09:46:53 PDT 2010


For a person who loves words to be made speechless is a rare thing. Finding the 
words to express how proud I am of my friends and my students feels very 
limiting right now.  


I spent the first part of the day worrying that my students would 'act out' or 
do something embarrassing and worried that they wouldn't 'get it'.  


But HE Ainar, HL Adalia, Lord William, and Lord Karl were phenomenal.  We 
started about 1 PM in my classroom to show off the artisan side and to discuss 
the culture then after 2PM we moved outside so we could be a little louder :)  I 
had invited my AP (Honors) Literature students as well as the other English 
teacher's Seniors students (since they'll do Beowulf later this 
year). Throughout the earlier part of the demo other students would wander by 
and ask what we were doing and beg to watch (my sophomore students were very sad 
that they didn't get to see the whole thing, but there just wasn't room for all 
of them in my classroom.) We had students in the desks, leaning against the 
wall, sitting on the floor, and sitting on top of the desks.  


The students have heard me talk about my 're-enactment' group often and have 
seen pictures. But pictures are never the same as being able to see the items, 
and hear the way things were crafted, to touch a piece of chain mail and realize 
how much work must go in to such a piece, to hear about the way men and women 
worked through their day to provide for their families, to have their ears 
resonate with the songs of times they can only read about in history books, and 
to interact with people and see what a warrior and a real bard really looks 
like.  Teachers often will talk about 'teach-able moments' when students are 
engaged in the lesson. Well I had between 30-50 students who were all ENGAGED in 
the lesson.  They asked questions--they talked with people.  They got to see 
their teacher get into combat with a person.  


I can not thank HE Ainar, HL Adalia, Lord William and Lord Karl enough for what 
they were able to do for my students yesterday.  Thank you all so much!  


My students will never forget this experience!

In service,
Kelandra 
aka Mrs. Herring



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