One of the things I most love about teaching fourth and fifth graders is that they are just becoming aware of a world beyond themselves. They are just able to conceive that someone may have a different experience that is equally real and valid to their own. I remember (with a lot of embarrassment) the moment my fifth grade, suburban Ohio self realized (with some embarrassment) that even though I had to translate a spanish word into english in order to understand it, not everyone did. My second grade self had thought that all of these words I was learning in an after school program were like a code, my third grade self realized that it was a language that people spoke but didn't interrogate what that meant. It wasn't until fifth grade that it dawned on me that people who speak spanish fluently don't think in english (unless they also speak english fluently) and that their interior monologue was not like my own. Woah.
It was the hope of sparking those moments of "woah" that led me to our Silk Road theme. I often think about David Foster Wallace's essay/speech "This is Water" which is about many things but whose title refers to a parable of two fish who don't realize that they live in water. Wallace urges us to examine "the value of the totally obvious." But what is the "obvious?" For the fish - it is water. But what is the water of a Heron at Prairie Creek Community School in Northfield, Minnesota? The most "obvious, important realities" according to Wallace are the most difficult to see and talk about. Travel is a powerful way to challenge the obvious - but school budgets being what they are, a global tour did not seem feasible. Thus, the Silk Road.
The conceit is that we are a caravan journeying along the Silk Road for Charlemagne. He has charged us with finding out the secret of silk production -- he is tired of paying such high prices for the luxurious fabric. Before we began, we had to learn about our water as Europeans in 800 CE. Charlemagne is Christian so as members of his court, we are Christian (we did a very brief dip into the fact that the Christian church at the time one a single church whose leader was the pope in Rome). We use roman numerals and Latin is the language of the church and government. Most people can't read or write. We use a lot of technologies like Roman roads and aqueducts that were created hundreds of years ago. We stocked up on goods in a roman market and headed east - asking everyone along the way where they had gotten the silk they were selling in the market (so far, the answer has always been the next trading center to the east.).
Our first two stops - Constantinople and Antioch - were easy to get to. We took boats on the Mediterranean and arrived after a several days trip. Not surprisingly, the cities we encountered were not too different from Rome. There were some new foods and there was more Greek than Latin but the ease of travel around the Mediterranean Sea meant that goods, languages, and ideas had all been easy to transfer.
As we headed east toward Merv, however, we encountered many challenges -- weather, bandits, steep mountains. To simulate travel, we researched the
geography and the speed a caravan could move through certain terrain. We rolled dice to determine the weather, hunting and safety from bandits for each day we were on the trail. By the time we arrived in Merv, we were exhausted and grumpy.
We reflected on how long in real time it would have taken us and the fact that almost no one traveled more than a few miles away from one's home for one's entire life. Travel just took too long. This is why relay trade was the only kind of trade transaction during this time. Goods were passed from middleman to middleman along complex routes. Travelers like Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, and Fa-Hsien were so exceptional they became legends.
In Merv, the language, letters, and religion were different. There were only ten symbols for all the numbers. They had frozen ice in the middle of blazing summers and underground canals that delivered cool water from the mountains. Each caravan had an expert who would explore the city focussing on one area: language, trade goods, food and craft, music and entertainment, religion and medicine, and technologies. Caravans would re-convene and each member would teach the others what they had learned about this new place.
As we've traveled back through time and space, students have begun to examine some of their own conceptions of what is "obvious." What would have been "obvious" to someone living in Antioch or Merv? What is "normal" in one place (like the concept of zero in Kashgar) is treated with deep suspicion in Rome and vice versa. Of course, when their character experiences these "woah" moments in our role play, many students begin to make the connection to their own life. What things are they growing up with that might be completely different from some other kid -- maybe a kid half way around the world, maybe the kid sitting next to them.
My hope is that the sense of discovery and adventure we feel as we travel along the Silk Road will engender a similar sense of wonder as the Herons learn about each other and their world.