"A Day's Work in Maine" Traveling Exhibit

 

Spring, 2001

Dear Teachers and Students:

Maine Preservation, Tilbury House, and the Maine Humanities Council hope that the A Day's Work in Maine exhibit and activity guide will enhance your Maine Studies programs by stimulating an interest in local history and helping students become more aware of Maine's vital and interesting economic past. Maine's geography and the ingenuity of Maine's people have long contributed to the economic picture of the state and the nation. Maine's seacoast and woods remain vital assets to our economy, and Maine's people are still hardworking and innovative.
        The photos captioned in the A Day's Work in Maine exhibit help us realize what work was really like a century or more ago — and recognize and appreciate the changes that have occurred since 1860. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine a working day without the use of electricity or gasoline, but in the time frame covered by this exhibit most work was accomplished by hand, sometimes with the use of animal power or steam power, often with an ingenious device that made it all a little easier.
        These photos and their captions also provide a wonderful starting place for discussing and understanding connections and change. For instance, if you look at the pictures of roads and wagons in this exhibit, and talk about the fact that rutted dirt roads were common well into the twentieth century, then students will understand why trains and ships played such an important transportation role in the past — and why people worked at jobs that were close to home.
        There is enough variety in this exhibit so that students will find clues and answers to understanding their own local history, from looking at the granite sills in an old building and wondering where they were quarried, to finding out where an abandoned railroad bed once led, to exploring their own family work history.
        We hope you find the exhibit guide helpful. It's a work in progress, and we'd like to add to it after each school visit — your feedback telling us what your students have done and what's been interesting, will help it be more successful at the next school and each school after that. Thank you!

Rae Pelletier
Boothbay Middle School
raepel@gwi.net

Jennifer Elliott
Tilbury House, Publishers
tilbury@tilburyhouse.com

Two weeks in advance/as soon as you receive the exhibit guide

The student captions for each photograph in the exhibit appear in double-spaced type before their activities. Peruse the exhibit guide as soon as possible in order to plan the activities that best suit your classrooms, school, and community. Then set up some student/teacher committees to handle the following:

1. Involve Your Historical Society: Contact your city/town's historical society. They may be able to provide speakers or suggest individuals willing to get involved with students on specific projects. They are also a wonderful resource for additional information and local historic photographs for any research projects. If your students are interested in doing some oral history projects, your local historical society can refer you to people with some wonderful stories to tell.

2. Connect with Your Community: This is a wonderful opportunity for involving your community with school projects. Invite someone from the oldest business in town to come to school to talk about his or her business and how it's changed. Have a group of students work on a map of a downtown street, researching which businesses were there in 1860, which were there at the turn of the century, and who is there now. Plan a field trip to an interesting business or farm. Ask a woman in her eighties or nineties to come to school and talk about what it was like running a household without electricity or Shop 'n Save.

3. Publicity: If you have a local newspaper, send them a notice about the exhibit and schedule a time when the community can visit to view the exhibit and your students' projects. Keep the newspaper informed about your students' projects. The paper may be willing to publish a feature article about your Maine Studies Program. The newspaper may also provide another way to find interesting guest speakers for your classroom. (We would appreciate geting copies of any local newspaper articles or publicity about the exhibit for our files. Please send them to Tilbury House, and we will forward copies to Maine Preservation and the Maine Humanities Council.) If you have an open house at your school, students could design posters or flyers to let people know about the event.

4. Support: Get your PTA involved, along with interested parents and your local historical society. Perhaps your PTA or a local business will help host an open house at your school so the community can see the exhibit and your students' projects.

Feel free to contact Tilbury House, Publishers if you have any questions.

Tilbury House, Publishers
1-800-582-1899
Fax 207-582-8227
tilbury@tilburyhouse.com

 

When the exhibit arrives (and before it leaves)

1. Exhibit Responsibility The exhibit will arrive in two large, black shipping cases. One contains the table-top folding panels, and the other contains the photo panels and the two books. One adult at your school needs to be designated as responsible for the exhibit, ensuring that it is set up carefully in a place that allows easy viewing but not where it is likely to be damaged,. This person needs to be sure it gets packed up properly at the end of its visit, so that it will arrive at the next school in good shape. We've designed the exhibit to be easy to set up and fairly durable, but gentle handling will contribute greatly to its longevity! If the Velcro on the back of the panels seems to be losing its grab, it probably needs to have its teeth brushed, gently, to get rid of accumulated "flidge." The white panels are easily damaged, so please handle them carefully and follow the packing instructions in their shipping container.

2. Setup The exhibit is designed to sit on top of two eight- or nine-foot tables where it can be viewed from both sides. The white photo panels are numbered consecutively. They attach to the display panels with Velcro. Voila! Your media center might be an ideal location for the exhibit, or some other place where it won't get jostled and knocked over, or drawn on.

3. The Books The two volumes of A Day's Work travel with the exhibit, and you'll find they provide some wonderful resources for further research, as well as images and information that will intrigue curious students. Please be sure they get packed up with the exhibit at the end of its visit, so that the next school is able to use them, too.

4. Feedback Questionnaire Your comments and suggestions will help us improve this project! We'll keep updating our exhibit guide throughout the year, and we'd love to know what your school did with the exhibit and what you'd recommend to other teachers using the exhibit.