Not surprising that a month has gone by without a single post

Wow! I just looked at the date of my last post (besides the one I just posted about Julie Grob’s collaborative work) and more than a month has gone by with no news from me.  Not a surprise at all.

If you haven’t already heard, I ruptured my right calf muscle on July 1playing in a soccer game.  Nothing dramatic at all, as far as how it happened.  I just started to run and SNAP, my calf sprung like a worn-out, old rubber band.  I spent three hours that night in the ER with the only recommendation being to ice, elevate, and take some pain medication (vicodin was not my friend).  There’s nothing the doctor could do for me.  😦  And he felt my pain, considering he had had the same injury once or twice.

So, a week and a half in bed with the summer camp coming down the pike.  I spent some time at home literally crawling on my knees since I hate, hate, hate walking with crutches.  They are exhausting and uncomfortable.  I have to say that I became quite adept using them though, by the time the ordeal was over.  And they provided the perfect guise as we instructed our middle school students to be careful while at the dig site.  I told them that I had twisted my ankle at the site because I fell into one of the holes.  Not one student left camp injured from the dig site.  🙂  In the end, I finally came clean with a few of the students since the story would have seemed absurd to me, considering I was constantly on crutches for the full two weeks (because of a simple sprained ankle?).  A bruised and swollen ankle, due to fluid draining from the calf muscle, lent credibility to the story of my injury.

Physical therapy is working wonders, and a month after the injury (to the day), I am walking without crutches and can place my heel on the ground.  This was a BIG step.  I will see the Sports Medicine Specialist on Tuesday so he can gauge my progress.

I don’t know how I made it through, but the summer camp was a huge success.  Two news crews came to report on the camp and share the story of our students’ amazing discoveries (arrowheads, flakes, and fire-cracked rock from 5,000 years ago!).  The students were able to name the newly found archaeological site – Roc City – a name that will forever be attached to their work.  Any further excavations done within a certain number of miles from Geneseo, NY will be required by law to cite Roc City.  The dig location will be added permanently to a map of New York State.

Following are the news stories (and video) of our students’ camp experience.  I will write more on the many collaborations that took place during the camp in the next few days.

Students at SUNY Geneseo Camp Really Digging Archaeology

Digging History . . . and Making It! (Look for the yellow icon to view the video)

Many more pictures and video to come . . .

 

New York State Standards

I was expecting to write more of an opening post to my new blog, but considering that I am in the midst of sifting through the NYS standards in order to design lesson plans for the D.I.G. summer program, it seems appropriate that I launch right into librarian-faculty collaboration.  This program has been the epitome of educational collaboration.  Last year, the camp focused on CSI techniques under the premises of a series of fictitious art thefts that happened on SUNY Geneseo’s campus.  Each of the disciplines was dependent on each other, especially in the lessons provided by the Critical Thinking Unit (CTU) – a mixture of sociology, ethnographical and library research, and overall critical thinking.  In the CTU curriculum, students put the pieces of the puzzle together working with interview transcripts, forensic evidence, information found from the web, and tips and additional pieces of evidence left by a secret admirer.  Story boards were used to visually tie the different disciplinary information together in one place.  With this information, a communication professor and a graphic arts specialist worked with the student teams to develop an oral and pictorial presentation to be delivered to a “grand jury.”  Depending on how compelling each team’s case was presented, a panel of three judges ordered an indictment for our four criminals. 

I never would have been involved in such a fantastic program had it not been for the Sociology professor with whom I had been working in her semester courses.  Because she saw that I was able to weave in research skills to cover the content of her designated lessons, she knew we could work well together to deliver a fun and meaningful curriculum to our middle school students.  You never know what good things will come out of your everyday work responsibilities.

Anyway . . . back to those standards . . . This year’s mystery – an archaeological dig where we hope to find Seneca artifacts – goes even further as far as seamlessly merging academic disciplines.  Archaeology, chemistry, history, math, english language arts, technology, art – each subject will rely heavily on the other in the hope of providing another enriching experience for our young scholars bound for college . . . in about 4 or 5 years.