Breakthroughs
Using Travel to Build My Practice
Josie Perry is a National Board Certified teacher in Social Studies-History. She teaches AP Human Geography and Honors United States History at Rising Sun High School in Cecil County.
Note: ActionLine reached out to Josie Perry, featured in our December issue, to follow up on her recent trip to Europe as a teaching fellow for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Here’s Josie’s report:
As educators, we sometimes let fear and self-doubt stop us from taking risks. As I’ve spent more years in the classroom, I’ve started to say yes to opportunities I research for educator fellowships and grants. These are the moments when I have the greatest growth. Most recently, a project that began with a 2019 fellowship culminated in a once-in-a lifetime trip to study and teach World War IIright, filming at the
In 2019, I was awarded a teaching fellowship with the National World War II Museum, which included a week of study at the museum and a trip to Germany. In 2023, my cohort was invited back to the museum for a weekend conference to create a new Holocaust curriculum for the museum’s education programming.
Create your own global learning professional development. See Josie’s recommended resources here.
Creating resources for teachers across the U.S. was intimidating, but we collaborated to create a set of engaging classroom-ready lessons. My “From the Eyes of American Liberators” lesson was selected for the classroom guide that accompanies the museum’s Holocaust Electronic Field Trip.
Then, in August 2024, an email arrived from the museum with the subject line: ”Production Travel for Museum’s Next Electronic Field Trip.” To my surprise, the museum’s associate vice president of education invited me to help write the script and be an on-camera host for a new electronic field trip that would focus on the end of World War II—filmed on site in Europe! I worked up the courage to say yes.
I filmed my parts in December 2024 on a week-long trip to Germany, Belgium, and France (paid for by the museum, of course!). In Berlin, we filmed at the remnants of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe just a block away from the site of Hitler’s bunker— now a parking lot. In Potsdam, we filmed in the room of the Cecilienhof Palace where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin negotiated the details of the Potsdam Declaration and the next steps to end World War II. We traveled to Bastonge, Belgium to film in the Ardennes Forest, the site of the Battle of the Bulge. At the Surrender Museum in Reims, France, we filmed in the Map Room, the site of the German surrender that led to V-E Day in Europe.
Visiting these sites to tell the lasting legacy of World War II is a highlight of my career. This was an experience that I couldn’t wait to bring back to my students. These examples of how other countries deal with their complicated history will only add to the classroom conversations about our own difficult history— and how we can move forward in telling the complete story of our complicated past.