Sarah Morin - Youth Experience Manager aka Kid Wrangler

Claire Ellis and Marin Bray are 3rd year youth volunteers at Conner Prairie. I often schedule these close friends to work at the same post – their enthusiasm and creativity multiples exponentially when together. Collectively, they have donated 1000 hours to Conner Prairie.

We invite our more mature and capable youth, like Marin and Claire, to portray characters along the Underground Railroad during our Follow the North Star (FNS)program. They help or hinder guests who take on the role of escaping slaves. The program is intense and brings up an ugly side of American history. This is exactly why we choose to involve our kids. Many of our youth learn to think more deeply about prejudice, racism, and human exploitation. Some became advocates within their own schools for human rights. It also makes a powerful impression on our young guests, who see someone their own age risking his/her life for freedom or to help a stranger.
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Marin and Claire - in their own words:

At Conner Prairie, FNS is a very serious subject; however it happens to be our favorite program. There are two posts that we love to work, Halsey and Merrick. The Merricks are an Indiana family that’s barely scraping along. No thanks to the slaves that have stolen all their jobs. Despite everything, they agree to help the slaves. Later you encounter the Halseys, a Quaker family willing to help “friends”. They feed you and offer you advice; alas they can’t keep you either and send you on your way.

Claire Ellis: I feel I relate most to Halsey. I’ve always been willing to help a person in need, and if a group of runaway slaves showed up at my doorstep, I would help them. I feel I relate to Halsey because when the slaves first enter, we all are in a state of shock. Then we decide to strap on our big kid boots and get the job done. We risk everything by escorting the fugitives across the street. But at the end of the day, I would do it all over again.

Marin Bray: When asked to write about my favorite post, I thought to myself, “Dang, should I be a good girl and write Halsey because it’s the ‘right answer’?” I think the characters at the Merrick post are easier for me to relate to. Don't take it the wrong way, of course I would help! But as someone who had no way of helping them I would rather send them on to someone more helpful.
   
FNS has given each of us a new perspective on slavery. Being part of the program has made us appreciate what we have today. We feel lucky to be apart of the program, especially with our best friend.

Rosie Arnold - Education Programs Manager

Sometimes learning happens quietly. You see or read something and then months or maybe even years later, you have another experience that calls up that bit of information. This is why learning in museums is so hard to measure- you may not know you learned something until much later when you figure out that, in fact, you did.

However, one of the things I love most about Follow the North Star is that you can often see its impact on students from the second they finish the program. Their faces and conversations clearly show that they have just experienced something important. They’ve gotten a tiny taste of the struggles faced by real people who were held as slaves and had the strength and courage to try to escape.

I like to sit in on the students’ debriefing sessions where they have the opportunity to discuss the program with a Conner Prairie staff member. Usually the first question we ask the students is, if they could sum up their experience in FNS in one word, what would it be? Words like “scary,” “exciting,” and “humbling,” are common responses. They often say that the way they were treated as they played the part of escaping slaves made them feel mad, upset, or even worthless. They are shaken out of their comfort zones and cast in a role where they have to step into perhaps the most shameful aspect of our country’s history. The reality of it is often quite a surprise for them.

Follow the North Star is undoubtedly one of my favorite programs that we do here at Conner Prairie, and I am so proud to manage it for school groups. It has the power to create empathy and understanding better than any program I have ever seen, and its impact is immediately apparent.

Ellen Van Zanten - Experience Specialist

Hello again all of you out in internet-land!  We’re well on our way to another great season.  Everything is open again outside at Conner Prairie, babies are hopping around in the Animal Encounters Barn, and our oxen have made a few trips around Prairietown already. This week the Ag Staff has been gearing up for our annual Sheep to Blanket event, where we take our guests through the whole process of shearing, washing, carding, spinning, dyeing, and weaving…you know, sheep…to blanket! 
   
Anyways, there are many folks involved in this event, from the ladies of the Loom House who do the spinning, dyeing, and weaving, some of the people you meet in Prairietown who will be washing wool 1836-style, and us, the Ag Staff. We get to start the process with; you guessed it, the sheep. It’s in the Animal Encounters Barn where all the shearing takes place.  Over the course of three days we’ll be giving twenty or so sheep their annual haircut.
   
Did you know that sheep only get one haircut per year? Well, if you think about it; if we let them have that thick wool coat in the summertime, they wouldn’t be able to take the heat!  And if we sheared them once in the spring and again in the fall they wouldn’t be able to grow their coat back thick enough in time to withstand the cold winter. So the saying goes that you shear your sheep “after last frost and before first fly.” You want it to be warm enough that they won’t freeze once you cut off all their wool, but you want them to be able to grow a little bit back so they don’t get sun burned or bitten up by bugs in the summer. Right around this time in April is usually just about right.
   
Some of the other things you might be able to check out this weekend are sheepdog demonstrations at the Animal Encounters Barn or take a tram-ride out to Conner Prairie’s Textiles Studio (even I have never seen it! It sounds a little bit like a far-away land where all our beautiful blankets and clothes come from.). So come visit us Ag Staffers in the Barn this weekend, hopefully you’ll recognize us, we’ll be the ones with the shears covered in wool.

Pamela Jackson - Guest Services

Welcome to this lovely, early spring! I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed the warm breezes, greening of the grass, and the budding plant life. But then I remember that Conner Prairie is about to start its April presentation of Follow the North Star, our award-winning Underground Railroad simulation, and I wonder how long the pleasant weather will stick around. This is Indiana after all!
   
With the warmer temperatures comes spring fever, an annual affliction of teachers and schoolchildren everywhere. As some of you may know, I “moonlight” as a secondary English teacher, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep my students on task when they would rather stare out the window at the budding trees. I thought I could capture their attention by reading a piece of African American literature written prior to the Civil War, so imagine my surprise when my high school students knew little or nothing about that time in American history! Stunned, I asked the U.S. History teacher next door to me why they were so uninformed, and he told me it had been removed from the eleventh grade curriculum. In an effort to concentrate on Indiana Standards and test scores, a most critical time in our nation’s history has been eliminated!
   
I am very sad for the children who will graduate from high school ignorant of the hardships of slavery. As we say about our Follow the North Star program, “man’s humanity to man” was an attempt to right so many of those wrongs. I am glad that Conner Prairie has such a fine program to offer the community, and I hope that both students and adults who participate in it (either in the daytime or nighttime program) will take advantage of this great opportunity to supplement their state-mandated units of study.
   
Education in this state is under fire. However, education can be found outside a classroom or textbook, and Conner Prairie’s Follow the North Star is a great way to fill the gaps left by the myopic focus on test scores. Spread the word to family and friends that our children’s education can be enhanced by this hands-on approach to learning, and their knowledge of history will only benefit from the experience. 

Emma St. Dennis - Executive Assistant to the President & CEO

April 29th is Logan’s eighth birthday so I’d like to share (brag) about my oldest grandson in this month’s blog. He and I really enjoy each other’s company and we both love to explore Conner Prairie’s many offerings together.

Just this past weekend, I decided to ask Logan about his memories from Conner Prairie. We chatted about his 2nd grade Boy Scout troop’s upcoming trip. They will be coming from Richmond, Indiana to Conner Prairie for a visit on April 14th for the Scout Day on the Prairie program. Scouting is a tradition in our family. I’ve been a Girl Scout since 1960 and all three of my daughters were in Girl Scouts. My girls attended many programs offered for the Girl Scouts here, I even remember “camping” in the Prairie House once or twice with our troops. Now the two oldest granddaughters are in local troops and you guessed it, Mamaw is right there in the midst of things helping with their troops also. Logan is my first Boy Scout, so this is new, exciting territory for me. 

Logan and I also talked about the River Crossing water area and how he remembered building a boat lock last summer for his ship to travel from one height of water to the lower level.  I love having a dialogue with him regarding what he has learned here, he’s like a sponge, as kids seem to retain everything at this age. Logan, of course, will be the tour guide for all his Boy Scout friends, as he knows Conner Prairie so well. He will instruct them in marching like a Union soldier in the Civil War Journey area, show them how to pack the horse saddle in Lenape Camp and of course make sure they stop by the barn to see all the baby animals. He is especially anxious to show off his balloon piloting skills. 

Stay tuned, as the adventures of this lively group of grandkids explores the outdoor grounds at Conner Prairie this spring. We promise to have lots of fun and hope to have you join us – you’ll recognize us – I’m the proud Mamaw taking pictures every three or four steps! Happy Birthday Logan!