What do you know about the first Thanksgiving?

Many years ago, we took a trip to Boston and Maine. It was block leave before a deployment in Alaska so I took two weeks off of work and we went. When we returned, I showed my class my vacation pictures. We had also spent two days in Plymouth. We took a tour of The Mayflower II, saw Plymouth Rock, all that good stuff I love but Scott just barely tolerated. I ended up teaching them all about the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving because they were so interested. It was fun!

The next year, I put my pictures into a powerpoint with a bunch of links to different sources, maps, little videos, etc and taught the whole lesson over a few days to my class. I made it kind of an inquiry-based unit. Literally, just for fun and because it was a great way to bridge decorating and disguising turkeys in the primary grades into actually learning history in the intermediate grades. We'd also read The Mayflower Treasure Hunt together since it takes place on The Mayflower II and did a virtual tour of the boat and also Plimoth Plantation. 

I've done it every year since. No complaints.

This year, I pulled out the nonfiction article I did last year with my 3rd graders, drew up a KWL chart, and pulled up the Brainpop video on Thanksgiving. 

Kids just didn't seem interested. They also had NO background knowledge. None. "Turkey" was their background knowledge. 

That was day one. I kept plowing through, 30 minutes a day for 4 days. 

But anyway, I went and asked another teacher if they had learned anything about Thanksgiving last year. No. They hadn't. Apparently a parent had complained once so this particular teacher stopped doing Thanksgiving. (I totally do understand that.)

Then, someone else piped up with: Thanksgiving is dumb. It's just a day we eat food.

Followed by: I don't understand why they called it Thanksgiving in England but they don't even celebrate it over there and we celebrate it here. 

(I told this story to Scott while he was eating dinner and he almost choked.)

I truly thought I was being gaslit. Like the gas was turned all the way up. 

I said: It's an American holiday. The people who left England named it a day of thanksgiving. In America. It was to celebrate the harvest and survival of the first year in the new world. 

This was met with actual protest about how it's stupid and why would we need to teach it to kids in the first place.

I didn't even know where to go from there.

There was also an air of "maybe the kids don't like it because it's dumb and whyareyouteachingit?"

Maybe I should present my slideshow to the staff. 

This anecdote from real life this week + this tweet are Example #958 and Example #959 of why it's time to tear down the Department of Ed. I hope Elon and Vivek have it first on the list.