Rikki Davenport, Curator of Education at Drayton Hall, a National Trust Historic Site in Charleston, attended the South Carolina Council for Social Studies (SCCSS) Annual Conference on October 3-4, 2008 in Columbia, South Carolina, thanks to a $781 grant from the NTHP Interpretation and Education Fund. The SCCSS provides educators with professional development opportunities, non-partisan support of legislation that supports social studies education, teacher training, access to lesson plans and support materials, and a yearly opportunity for educators from across the state to convene in a collegial setting to share their best practices and learn from their colleagues. This year’s conference focused on the topic of literacy in social studies and was attended by more thsn 400 teachers and administrators.
To maximize Rikki’s participation, Drayton Hall established goals and objectives for the conference including:
- promoting attendance at Rikki’s presentation;
- identifying at least one teaching technique and/or new content material to enhance Drayton Hall’s education programs; and
- booking at least one teacher and classroom for an education program at Drayton Hall.
In preparation for the conference, Rikki presented her session, Creating Curiosity: Using Primary Sources to Enhance Literacy to Drayton Hall’s staff and members of the site council during a brown-bag lunch meeting. This allowed both the site educators and non-education staff understand how the Site can better help visiting teachers and it provided Rikki with many suggestions to enhance her presentation for the conference.
At the conference two days later, Rikki’s session explored how primary sources, such as artifacts, can be utilized to spark the curiosity of all students, including English language learners, struggling readers, and reluctant readers. Through her presentation and interactive group activity, teachers learned how they could use artifacts in their classroom to study any person, place, or time period. They learned that an artifact is anything made, used, or modified by humans, and not necessarily something ancient or historic. Artifacts can be gathered from your basement, garage, or local thrift store (but not by helping yourself from a local historic site or state park!). Twentyfive teachers attended the session and Rikki received numerous positive comments. Later she overheard teachers discussing how they planned to use artifacts in their classroom.
In addition to educator presentations, the SCCSS conference included an exhibit hall where approximately 50 vendors had tables displaying a variety of text books, teacher support materials, and commercial education products. While visiting the other exhibits, Rikki found a variety of reference materials to complement Drayton Hall’s education programs and made valuable contacts with staff from the South Carolina Department of Education. To its advantage, Drayton Hall was the only vendor offering curriculum-based educational outings to a historic site. Because presenters could not focus their presentation on their site or products, Rikki invited teachers who attended her presentation to visit the Drayton Hall exhibit table for information on education programs. Afterwards, a large group of teachers visited Drayton Hall’s exhibit table to gather information from our Group Tour Coordinator, Debbi Zimmerman. Overall, Drayton Hall’s exhibit was well attended and 99 teachers asked to be added to its contact list. Within three weeks of the conference, four schools had booked programs for 455 students, resulting in $9,940 in new revenue for Drayton Hall. Numerous other teachers expressed an interest in Drayton Hall’s education programs and have emailed or called for additional information.
Afterward during Drayton Hall’s monthly interpreter meeting, Rikki shared her conference experiences, reference materials, and reinforced the importance of addressing the curriculum standards in all of our education programs, a main concern of teachers and administrators when choosing their class trips. Drayton Hall met all of its goals for the conference, and Rikki believes that attending the SCCSS conference was a worthwhile experience for Drayton Hall. She will continue to track future programs booked by conference participants to affirm the value of Drayton Hall’s participation in future SCCSS conferences.
We’re delighted that Drayton Hall found a wonderful way to use the new Training Scholarships available from the I&E Fund. Consider how your Site can benefit; the next deadline is February 17, 2009.
