Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I’m going to be reflecting on our most recent PLP project. The goal for this project was to create a website where each of us contributed by creating a lesson on a subject mentioned in the song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Billy Joel. Through this project we needed to answer the driving question: How do we make choices about what is worth remembering? As I do with most blog post I will go into explaining our journey through this project and then answer the driving question. So without further ado, lets get started on this reflection.
Now to answer this driving question I want to reflect on two key things in this project. The first is the lesson plans we created and taught to our class and the second is what makes an event significant and why I thought the subject/event I chose was significant.
The event I chose to create a lesson plan for was the opening of Disneyland. When choosing an event I wanted to choose one that I had some sort of personal connection with. My personal connection with Disneyland is that I got the opportunity to dance with my dance studio in the Disneyland parade in both 2014 and 2019. When creating the lesson plan I wanted to focus my presentation on what went wrong with the opening day. A few of the things that went wrong were rids breaking down, no water fountains, selling out of food, and a gas leak in the park.
After creating our lesson plans we each had to use our lesson plan to teach our class about the event we chose. I have never taught a class other than a dance class and so teaching my fellow classmates was a new experience. I wanted to be able to keep them engaged so in my PowerPoint I had two video sources and an activity with prizes.
Now as you may be wondering just like many others, why is Disneyland opening historically significant? Disneyland has been quoted as “the happiest place on earth”. This statement is very true as Disneyland was designed for not just kids but for adults too to enjoy their time there and forget about the world they left behind. Walt’s dream was to build a land for people to enjoy and dream again and he achieved this. Disneyland at the time of opening was nationally significant as a little under half of the US population tuned in to the live broadcast of opening day. Disneyland has now grown to globally significant over the years as there is now a Disneyland in Japan and France. In 2021 there was an estimate of 757 million visitors that year. Disneyland has largely impacted the world of entertainment with not only the creation of Disney studios but of Disneyland as well. Disney studios is continuing to grow and impact our world today.
Now that I have talked about the process of making our lesson plans and the significance it’s time to answer the driving question. How do we make choices about what is worth remembering? I believe that it is up to each individual as to what they want to remember and what they personally believe is worth remembering. Every individual has a different perspective on if certain events are classified as important or not. It is a historians’ job to dictate what is important to remember however not everyone will agree if said events hold or lack importance. Therefor it is difficult to make a choice about if an event hold historical significance and if it is worth remembering however the best way to decide if needed if an event is significant is to look at it’s impact on a scale from personal to global. Even if an event is globally significant there will always be at least one person who will say otherwise.
Overall I really enjoyed this project as I got to learn how to teach a class and that could be a possible career path for me. I can’t wait for the next project. Stay tuned for my next post.