Friday, May 20, 2011


I had breakfast, accidentally, with Thomas Riddle the other day. No, not Voldemort's dad. This Thomas Riddle is a teaching consultant in Greenvale, South Carolina. I ran into Mr. Riddle as I was wandering the USC campus, lost. It was raining and I had an umbrella, and he knew where he was going, but had no umbrella. We were a perfect match.

We had a nice long talk about our respective projects, and his are pretty inspiring. He explained to me that he created a program for his schools,"Indy in The Classroom," that uses the "Young Indiana Jones" series as a way of inspiring students to get excited about Social Studies. here is his mission statement from the website, indyintheclassroom.com.

At first he was worried about upsetting Lucasfilm, so he called them and gave them a heads up. Not only did they NOT have a problem with it, he got a call from Tom Warner from Lucasfilm marketing, asking him how they could help. Good for them!

"The mission of Adventures in Learning with Indiana Jones is to provide educators with teacher-tested, standards-based lesson plans and resources that will allow them to integrate everyone’s favorite archaeologist into classrooms across the curriculum. Too often, students complain of history as boring or uninspiring. They shouldn’t anymore! With teaching ideas designed to motivate and inspire, Adventures in Learning with Indiana Jones can help you bring to life a variety of topics that will capture the imagination of your students."

Check out the site, and get excited about Social Studies again!

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