The Best Lesson Ever!
Well, this is it! The last essay to ever grace the history section of this website. It’s sad, I know. History was my favorite subject to write about. But we still have this one, right? So let’s get started! As the title implies, I will be discussing the best lesson ever. I’ll only be covering grade 7, so that should get rid of most questions. Anyway, back to the best lesson ever, or should I say lessons! Plot twist! There were two particular lessons in one week that I liked, and it was the week where we learned about the ways of the thirteen colonies, but the lessons were “Cities and Governments of the Colonies” and “Occupations in the Colonies”. My favorite time periods are the colonial times- the inventive times (you know, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, that era) so to finally get the chance to learn about the colonial times was a dream come true.
The first lesson we are going to talk about is, “Cities and Governments of the Colonies”. In this lesson, I learned about the cities and governments of the colonies, as the name implies, but we first covered the cities. Most cities of the colonial times were either established as harbor towns or seats of government (as we know now, the capital city). Usually, the largest cities were harbor towns because that’s where all of the trade came to or from Europe. These harbor cities were Philadelphia, Charleston, Boston, and New York.
Every colonial city had feat
ures like this. They all had at least one church, more than one government building, open town squares, a grid like street pattern, a market, a tradesman section, and houses. Not apartments or condos. Just houses that were usually two stories tall. There was a governor’s mansion though. Speaking of governors, let’s move on to the government of the colonies. There were usually two branches of colonial authority. One being the Governor’s Council and the other being the House of Burgesses. The Governor’s Council were a group of advisors appointed by the governor to help run the colony, the House of Burgesses was made up of a bunch of representatives elected by the towns folk or city folk to serve for a set period of years, and the governor was appointed by the king to represent him in the colonies. And then, the lesson was over and I couldn’t learn anymore unless I went to Wikipedia, but I decide not to.
My other favorite lesson was occupations of the colonies. Just like society today, we have occupations, or like the hip kids say, jobs. And we have weird perks about our jobs like getting up at five in the morning to fill up the coffee pot before everyone else gets there, but the perks in the colonial times were a lot weirder than ours. I think we should just be thankful that society today doesn’t have to do the first thing listed. Hint: it’s gross!
Most people think men go to the barber just to cut their hair or shave their face, but in colonial times women went there too, but not for the same reason. Everyone went to the barber shop to do a practice called bloodletting. Bloodletting was a medical practice that people used to do thinking that losing a little blood would clean out the toxins. As we know today, the only way to clean out toxins is using natural herbs and spices. The barber’s duty was to perform the bloodletting procedure, and that’s why there are red and white stripes on the barber pole. Red stands for the blood and white stands for the bandages.
In colonial times, there was something odd about the shoes that people wore. There was no difference between the left or right foot (there was no foot curves in the shoe)! That has to be uncomfortable! On the line of shoes, the tanner helps in the shoe making process. You might be thinking, “But tanners are supposed to give people golden brown skin!” Wrong! Back then a tanner was someone who worked with leather and sheet metal provided by the black and silver smiths. This is totally off topic but, did you know that revolutionary war figure Paul Revere was a silver smith? I didn’t know either! Anyways, back on track. Tanners also made saddles, mugs, some clothing items besides shoes, and buckets. Tanners had quite the busy schedule!
There was another point I have to cover otherwise I won’t pass this class! It’s what I like most about this history course. I think it’s the worksheets. To be honest, last year I hated the worksheets, but now that I’m used to them, I know that they help me when it comes to writing. It helped me a lot to have my essay topic notes already done so that I can skip the dirty work and move strait forward to the typing. To be honest though, I think the lessons should be longer and more detailed like your reading a Wiki page. I love history and sense we’re going to be learning about my favorite inventors in the 8th grade, I would love to just learn everything I can stuff my face into.
I’ve loved this year’s history course and I hope I can continue gaining more and more knowledge on our amazing world. Mistakes are made, but those same mistakes founded our country and made America independent. World war two was awful, but if it never happened, the whole world would be ruled by Germany! Be thankful for the little mistakes that we make, because now we have something to learn from, and we can make it history!
