Who will teach the teacher

Did I ever mention that I work for the Simpson Street Free Press, the nonprofit teaching newspaper for kids? I'm an editor and teacher there, and I have one main gig: I take groups of kids to Wisconsin museums and historical sites, and then I help them write about their experiences in newspaper articles.

It's fun work. On most trips, I'm learning right along with the students. (In that regard it's sort of like being a graduate teaching assistant.)

I can't speak for the kids, but this job has taught me far more about Wisconsin than I ever managed to learn on my own. Events and sites we have covered include Fighting Bob Fest, in Baraboo; Cave of the Mounds, in Blue Mounds; Grant County's Pleasant Ridge, a 19th century settlement of freed slaves; an exhibit of African art at the Elvehjem museum; an exhibit about Hmong refugees at the Madison Children's Museum (the exhibit is interesting, though its name, "Hmong At Heart," is a groaner); the Waukesha County Historical Society, which is soon to collaborate with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on a large exhibit about Waukesha's own Les Paul; the Octagon House in Watertown; the Palmyra Historical Society; Aztalan State Park, site of some really spooky Indian mounds; and, most recently, Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright's home.

As you know, some places are more fascinating than others. Taliesen, especially, is a gem, and I loved the Indian mounds and the Octagon House.

Less successful are the small historical societies. Often these are run by well-meaning history buffs, who have shoestring budgets and not lots of curatorial experience, and the quality of the exhibits varies. The organizing impulse often seems to be: let's display, without explanation, a bunch of old stuff we found. Any history is better than no history, I suppose, but I worry that the kids find these places confusing; I know I do.

I'm thinking especially of the Lancaster Historical Society, which we sought out because it has an exhibit about the freed slave settlement at Pleasant Ridge. (The settlement is long defunct; the last African-Americans in the area moved away decades ago.) When I arrived at the society with seven kids in tow, I guess I didn't say clearly enough that we were interested in Pleasant Ridge, and the staffers began showing us their collections of beer bottles and firearms; my students, bless 'em, dutifully took notes. I asked about the Pleasant Ridge collection, which turned out to be a baffling jumble of photographs and artifacts. (My favorite detail was a tiny wooden crib that held a plastic, African-American baby doll.)

Actually, I think there is ambivalence in Lancaster about the Pleasant Ridge settlement, and that may be why the exhibit is so weird. The historical society's staffers cheerfully told us that race relations in the area were great, but they also hinted at lynchings. If they knew these were contradictory notions, they didn't let on. I found the whole experience unsettling.