We set aside a major portion of our usual program this week to prepare for our upcoming Gettysburg trip. Students used a no-bake clay made from salt, flour, and cornstarch to create the terrain of the battlefield on a tabletop, and we used it to demonstrate what happened on that terrain at the end of the week.

We watched the entirety of the film Gettysburg, stopping often to answer questions and share observations. We spent some time talking about the differences and similarities between a film and a novel — different ways of communicating with the reader or viewer, for example. We noted that every time a new scene opened, a Union or Confederate flag was visible, although often very briefly. This was the director’s way of telling viewers which side they were seeing. We found that it was helpful to turn on captions because the music was often louder than the actors’ words. We shared a range of opinions about whether the music was done well or not.

By the time the film was done (more than 4 hours plus time to talk!), many students expressed some ambivalence about the Confederacy. They were all very clear that slavery was a monstrous practice, but they had also come to understand that the issues were more complex — that it was not a matter of “good North” versus “evil South” — and that the strong attachment to state rather than nation was a white Southern tradition that led to agonizing choices for many white southerners, including Robert E. Lee.

We ended the week with some preparatory activities for our Gettysburg trip on the following Monday. We will be touring the battlefield with a guide in each car. After lunch, we’ll go to the Slyder Farm to get a better understanding of what it was like to have 2 armies meet up in your town and conduct a three-day battle on the surrounding farmland. Would you leave? What about your farm animals? Can you stay and protect your home and property? If you decide to leave, where will you go? We did some preliminary reading about the farm itself and the people who lived there. As we ran out of time, we sent some additional primary source material home to be read during the weekend — journal entries and letters from people who were living in Gettysburg at the time.  The trip will be a wonderful culmination of our intense look at this significant battle.