FFMS 8th Grade D.C. Field Trip Placed on Hold
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, February 19, 2014
During a recent Social Studies Curriculum meeting Fort Fairfield Middle School (FFMS) teacher, Jeff Roberts was told that the District of Columbia field trip he proposed will be looked into further but that no such trip should be planned presently.
It was also determined the 8th grade curriculum cannot be changed this year as it was approved by the school board last year. “However, I have been offered a chance to teach some American History in an enrichment class to some students approximately two to three days a week,” Mr. Roberts told the Fort Fairfield Journal in an e-mail. “In the final quarter, we will flip over to the other students who did not get this instruction. It is not a perfect solution but a compromise I am considering. This would allow me to teach WWII to our students presently in order to connect with “The Diary of Anne Frank” which I cover in my Reading and Language Arts classes. Later I will be teaching in these enrichment courses the Civil War (The War of Northern Aggression) to the students at the latter part of the year.”
Another outcome of the meeting was the reestablishment of a field trip to Augusta, Maine. “The Augusta Trip will be a long day. We will leave at 6:00 sharp. Our first stop will be the Cole's Land Transportation Museum in Bangor. This is a fantastic museum with all types of vehicles such as cars, trucks, trains, etc. Plus there will be 'an interview with a veteran' which is a program set up by Galen Cole, the founder of the museum, in which students will break up into groups of two to three and talk to veterans from WWII to the present. After we leave Bangor we head down Rt. 95 to Augusta where our first tour will be of the State House capitol building and maybe the Blaine House (the governor's mansion). After that we go to the Maine State Museum which is the best museum of its type east of the Mississippi River. This is a fantastic place which covers Maine history.”
Roberts says for the next year, the Maine State Museum will have a Civil War display that rivals the display at Gettysburg. “We will then go to Olde Fort Western which is a pre-Revolutionary War fort constructed along the Kennebec River as an outpost, a general store, a private residence and a boarding house.”
The field trip should conclude with students returning around 10:30pm.
Mr. Roberts, the senior Social Studies teacher at MSAD #20 has taught in this district for going on 29 years. “In that time I have taught American History to the 8th Grade for 28 of those years. My curriculum on American History is ever changing and improving. I would like to think that with this kind of experience I have attained a quality in educational instruction that compliments the expectations of the Fort Fairfield community. I think it would be a concern not to allow me to teach the subjects that I have spent so much time and effort in research and preparation.”
