What are you teaching?

I have a great opportunity to teach about life in the past at the historic home where I volunteer. This home is over 150 years old, and it is located in a drastically recovering neighborhood. I try to invite the students who come for tours to imagine the courage it took for the early pioneers to strike out into the unknown, and encourage them to think of themselves as pioneers in the uncertain world of the 21st Century. Then, I take them into the formal dining room of the early 20th Century and introduce them to the luxuries of that time: a quaint old phone attached to the wall, and the liberated dress of the day that showed a bit of ankle and had lost the billowing petticoats. For, one hundred years ago, the run down neighborhood they now live in was a thriving hot spot that boat loads of tourist from Chicago thronged to every summer. Again, I can paint a vision of what their beautiful town can be , and invite them to believe in the dream.