Wishing

This project was fun and education for me. I learned a great deal about conservation--knowledge that is practical and will be particularly applicable in a just two or three short months when I move out of my apartment and onto my next home. I have been worrying about what do do with this stuff and the possibility of a storage unit--this research on methods of storage and conservation has helped frame my strategies and planning.

There were several challenges to this project. Foremost, there was a wealth of opinions to sift through. Much of the collector interaction I had was young collectors (such as myself) asking specific questions about treating their artifacts--I had thought at the start of the project of going this direction, but the sheer volume of varying treatments, coupled with extremely variable personal philosophies (which led me to formulate a section addressing this) made the task both daunting and impractical. I was able to find several resources by curators in the field, which I count among the successes of this project. The final challenge was time--while I feel very engaged with the topic, other class and work projects kept taking up the time I wanted to put into this project. I realized later that I actually felt guilty about using time for an inquiry project so interesting to me.

One tactic I would take in the future is interviewing a curator in person. I feel like I had reliable information, but an interview or two could have broadened my perspective on the topic. With this in mind, I began looking at some interesting Master's programs for curators! I would have also liked to get to the library and look for more books on the topic instead of conducting a strictly online approach.

I enjoyed the process of personal inquiry. The latitude for topic selection distinguishes this project from many that I have done before, as I have personal investment in the subject and find it continually engaging. I recognize that students that I teach in my next job will have similar inquiry experiences, both personally and academically. High school is a time of discovery and transition that sees students seeking new experiences and balancing their values with big decisions: what career to pursue, if they should go to college, if they should smoke/drink, and how they wish to define themselves. Their process of inquiry will unlikely be as structured as this, but there will be inquiry all the same. In a classroom, students at a high school level usually know if they like or dislike a subject prior to taking a required course. History classes can be notoriously dry or antiquated in methods and subject matter, and students without interest may struggle to pass. My approach to teaching history is through personal connection--I challenge students to connect themes/problems/scenarios of the past with those of present day, thus engaging critical thinking, learning history, and staying aware of current events. I strive to engage students through a variety of teaching methods of meet the wide range of learning styles, and to use technology as a tool. I have taught less with lecture methods than with Socratic approaches to asking questions of the students and challenging them to discovery. To me, this is where the inquiry process may be most applicable--assisting students through steps of identifying interesting topics, narrowing their search, researching, and presenting their findings in a meaningful manner. The history field is loaded with myths, mysteries, and exciting facts--if I can assist pupils through the initial barrier of interest, I am confident that sound inquiry methods will assist students both in and outside the classroom.