Tuesday, December 16, 2003 ::: Return to Middle School
Yesterday another guy and I had to go to a public school and give the same presentation five times to five different classes of eighth graders. They are working on North Carolina Civil War projects and we told them how to use the Archives. I had not been in a middle school, since, well, middle school. It was kind of strange walking down the halls packed with these short people and their lockers. Being the youngest person in my family, children are pretty much a mystery to me. A few observations:
These kids were much, much better behaved than the classes I was in in the eighth grade. I had one math class, it was a dull day if no one got thrown out of class.
I was amazed at the kids' ability to completely and totally ignore us unless we were giving our presentation. The other guy and I sat in little chairs at the front of the class and as the kids filed in they did not (seemingly) even give us a glance.
At least one-quarter of the kids had a Lord of the Rings book or some kind of Lord of the Rings thing on their notebooks.
At one point my co-worker leaned over and whispered to me: "I'm trying to pick out the nerdy kid all by himself that would've been me." I answered: "I'm doing exactly the same thing."
All in all it was a good experience. We got to get out of the office for a day and its something to put in my monthly report. Some of the kids actually seemed interested. In a few weeks we get to go back to see their presentations and completed projects. That will be nice, usually librarians and archivists don't get to see the end results of all this research they helped someone with.
