Thank you for your observations and questions about my dad’s Sorties card. It has inspired me to think and write some more about his experiences.
If you are interested in a story he told an oral historian, here’s a link to his legacy page. I grew up hearing this story. Sometimes he told it like it was, in his words,”a big adventure”. Other times he talked about it as a really scarey experience.
Here’s a picture of my dad on his 90th birthday (about 6 months before his death). One of the reasons I wanted to include a more recent image is that, although this World War II stories are probably the most historically significant stories I have to tell about him, he would remind us that he also had 65-70 years of life after that!
Thank you so much for sharing your artifacts with us especially since they are so personal! It really does help learning to have something physical there that kids can see and look at and maybe even touch if applicable. I know with our social studies lesson it was great to have the artifacts from the slave’s bag. What a great teaching tool!
We have talked about bringing life experiences/personal information about ourselves a couple times in class (the first time on the day you shared the primary document of your Father’s with us, and the second was today in class as we watched the video about the kids with divorced parents and how we could model some writing prompts with personal information) and I think that it is a great way for students and teachers to connect on a deeper level. How can teachers expect their students to share personal information/open up if their teachers don’t open up to them? With that being said, however, you don’t have to tell students your deepest secrets. Just fill them in on some life events, or something interesting about you childhood. It builds into the whole safe environment that we talk about and builds trust. If you instill trust into your students with some privileged information then they will be more likely to follow suit.