Talking Walls

Today marked the beginning of two Talking Walls workshops. Talking Walls is a heritage education program sponsored by The Georgia Trust. With the help of our local partners who design and facilitate these week long workshops, Talking Walls introduces educators to local historic resources and trains them in ways to incorporate these resources in their lesson plans. Since 1991, Talking Walls workshops have been held in over 60 counties throughout Georgia and have been attended by more than 2,000 educators. If each teacher reaches just 25 students a year, 50,000 Georgian students a year are not only learning about their local history, but they are also learning from their local history.

Participants in DeKalb County's 2010 Talking Walls (pictured above) have a full week of activities ahead of them. Their workshop, organized by The DeKalb History Center, includes a presentation about DeKalb's architecture, a cemetery tour that will provide information about funerary architecture and symbolism, and tours of local historic sites and archives. The group will also hear presentations about incorporating historic resources- such as oral histories, photographs, maps and primary source documents- in lesson plans.

Talking Walls workshops offer participants 3 Professional Learning Unit credits. But don't think you have to be a history teacher to benefit from these workshops. Whether its using an architectural detail to teach geometry or historic maps to teach ecology, Talking Walls explores ways to incorporate historic resources in every subject.

Check out our website for more information.

Also, The National Trust for Historic Preservation offers great resources for Teaching Preservation. Don't miss their Teaching Preservation Blog which this year followed students in Boise.