Seeing the past from many different viewpoints is a large part of Historiography. Primary verses secondary sources, insiders verses outsiders, or Canadian verses American - these different perspectives give more depth and complexity to the past. So in light of seeing with a different set of History glasses, I am in Washington D.C. attending the NCSS (National Council of Social Studies) Conference. For 3 and a half days, I get to be a foreigner, and wander and wonder about the American angle.

My first order of business yesterday when I arrived was a walk to the White House. That was surreal. Washington images are so much a part of media and culture in Canada that it was hard to believe that I wasn't watching another movie about an American President. (There are so many!) To see the Washington monument, one only has to turn around; it towers in the near distance and in the cloudy winter sky, looked quite foreboding. All around, very cool.

Today I went to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art for a session on using art in the teaching of History. The session was very worthwhile. Using the VTS or Visual Thinking Strategies, we learned about the Stages of Aesthetic Development and what questions to ask to get kids thinking about art. There is a wealth of information about it on http://www.vtshome.org/pages/aesthetic-development The best part of the session is that we got to tour the museum and discuss how to use the techniques with the amazing collection at the gallery.

After the session was over, I spent 3 hours wandering the halls looking at art and sculpture. I almost fainted when I turned a corner and saw the original portrait of Pocahontas from 1716. She was in England at the time, had an audience with the Royals and was a kind of celebrity. Unfortunately, she died a year later of a European disease. Close to this portrait was one of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558, another woman who influenced the exploration of North America, this time in order to circumvent the wealth that was flowing into Spain from the Americas. Two incredible women starring back at me.

So after a whole day in only one of the seventeen buildings of the Smithsonian, I'm nowhere near to seeing all I want to see. I guess I'll have to come back because tomorrow I'm off to Fort McHenry, where the famous "Star Spangled Banner" was inspired.