Firstly, thank you to everyone for their lovely and uplifting comments on last Tuesdays post 'Starting Afresh'. Particular thanks to the readers from IBOT over at Essentially Jess! they were greatly appreciated and along with some successful meetings and a lovely Bank Holiday weekend, I have been motivated and am now seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.
I am taking part in Elizabeth's BEDM challenge and today's topic 'Passion Projects' has given me the perfect opportunity to go into some more detail about my plans. As you may or may not have realised, I have both a professional and personal interest in history. I went back to university aged 27 where I gained a BA (hons) History degree, am now studying post-grad and have worked in heritage for some time. I previously worked self employed and have wanted to work for myself again for a while. The budget cuts at the museum where I work may have some mixed blessings as it is giving me the nudge to go and get what I want.
At the same time, history is becoming more and more diminished on the school curriculam which I believe is a great shame and also detrimental to society. I am great believer that history provides us with a sense of identity and belonging. How can we understand where we fit into our communities if we don't understand where we are from? It provides us with a context from which we can understand ourselves and others. It helps us understand changes in society, learn from previous mistakes and improve our judgement.
To get children interested in history though we need to make it relevant to them and the world that we live in today. We need to get them out of thinking that history is just learning facts and figures. I hate that method of learning and prefer to bring history to life. How did events affect peoples lives? How did it make them feel? By experiencing we can learn, empathise and gain respect. Instead of boring a class by talking at them, let's say get them active and recreate a newly enlisted soldiers training before they were sent to war. Maybe include a local sport star to put them through their paces? So that's what I'm doing! I've currently got two schools on board and am writing a series of workshops covering the First World War, with the emphasis on gaining new skills, discovering how the war would have affected children like themselves and putting on an exhibition to show off what they have learnt.
I have plenty of ideas burning away for other projects and exhibitions and although I'm extremely nervous about how it will all work, I'm taking a huge leap of faith and telling myself that I can do this. Of course I have to make money to live, I have a house, bills and child to take care of but I am finally doing something that I love and truly believe in and if I can make a living from doing so, then I'm very privileged. I also love to write and am extremely grateful that I'm being given the opportunity to do so on a completely different level to my heritage education work. I'm hoping that you'll see this little space expanding now I'm doing something I love, as my enthusiasm has returned and I'm picking up opportunities to attend fashion and beauty events which I can't believe and am very excited about!
So now I can see again (my eyesight had become so bad), it's time to put my research skills to work and challenge myself. I'm embracing it wholeheartedly and soon my 'work' website will be up and running. Until then, here is my new logo which my talented cousin has made up for me and I absolutely love!
If you've made it to the end of this super long post then thank you! Of course, if you know of a school or community group that would be interested in any of my services please feel free to pass on my details, which can be found in my 'about me' section. Thank you!
Amy-Louise
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I completely agree with you about learning through fun methods. When I was at school, our history teacher really endeavoured to make learning about more than facts and figures. Good luck with this venture, it sounds really brave and inspiring that you're making the most of this opportunity! x
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent. Interesting that our passion projects both centre around education! all the best :-)
ReplyDeleteI was a huge history buff, but I felt in school we always repeated the same things, and never really learnt anything new and exciting. I love what you're doing. Understanding the past is so important for moving into the future, and kids need to learn that. Love that you have opportunities now to do what you're passionate about. That makes such a difference in life doesn't it?
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