Williamsburg Weekend

I spent a weekend (February 15-18) in Williamsburg at the invitation of friend Al Zambone who is the scholar on a curriculum project being undertaken by Educational Enterprises, a charter school organization.  The object of it is to create a character curriculum which can be integrated into social studies and literature courses through literature based units that will teach virtues while focusing on the lives of early American heroes and historical fiction from the early American time.  If they succeed, they hope the curriculum will be used both in secular and religious schools.  The project is being funded by a foundation with the stipulation that they focus on this period of America's history to accomplish the teaching of the targeted virtues:  Respect, Justice, Self-Sacrifice, Responsibility, Courage, Diligence, Integrity.  Rather than focus on behavior only, the intent is to get more at the "root" from which virtue comes as being a person's identity--purpose--performance.  If one can relate the virtue to their identity as a human being, this then gives them a purpose in performing it.  That's the basic idea at play here.

It's certainly an ambitious project.  I was going to be on a writing team for a particular grade band, but I am now in more of an advising role as a resource person, being the only librarian working on the project.  We shall see.  The conference was packed from morning until night, so most of my seeing of Williamsburg was after it was over and before I drove home.

I thought so much about the Williamsburg Charter week way back in summer of 1988 when we spent a week there.  Each day, Eden, Elliott, David, and I spent hot and interesting days going in and out of all the little shops and houses, gardens, mansions, and colonial capital building.  We saw all the animals and heard as many presentations by reenactors as we could.  And now, that was so long ago.  Also I had happy memories of taking Jessica and Jonathan on a homeschooling field trip there where we spent one night in a cheap hotel between the two days of seeing the town.

My hotel room at the Williamsburg Lodge

The Colonial Capital

Bruton Parish Church--I went to noon prayer there one day during lunch

The milliner's

The cobler's

My box lunch one day

The Armory

The minstrel at dinner one evening at one of the colonial taverns

Patrick Henry came to visit us.

As did George Washington in his younger days (bad picture!)

A lovely winter afternoon in Williamsburg

Bruton Parish Steeple

Wyth House from the perspective of the chicken coup out back