Scotland the Brave and The Flower of Scotland: A Wee Moment with Huge Impact
We tend to remember "firsts" in our lives. Hopefully we recognize the importance and value of experiences as we live through them. My first travel overseas was as an undergraduate on a semester study abroad to Stirling University in Scotland. It was absolute magic! All the experiences associated with travel - language, food, smells, conversation, relationships, sounds - were amplified because it was my first experience like this. I recall the side trips to Orkney, Portree, London, Bath, and Edinburgh equally to the moments on campus as a student studying history and education in another nation. In Scotland I discovered soccer, Caravaggio, William Wallace, scotch, hiking, history, music, other people and, most importantly, my self. Traveling overseas as a student is an experience that is hard to replicate in another part of your life. I tried, by working in another country for six years, but the student experience provides a unique moment in time that can't fully be recreated later. I encourage students in college to make this experience of their college career. Some fear they will be missing something by leaving. You won't.
And I remember that semester as if it happened yesterday and is happening now.
Stirling, Scotland
1994
Craig Perrier, 48, Social Studies Curriculum Specialist and Adjunct
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One Ship Connects Generations
On the morning of March 17, 2008, I called my grandmother as I was getting ready to board the Queen Mary. I remember telling her - "I am next to your ship!" I sent photos to my mom to share with her and she was looking at them while we were still on the phone. My grandmother couldn't believe that she was looking at "her ship" again. That is when my humanities moment happened. In that moment, grandmother and granddaughter were connected in a way that they hadn't been before. Minutes later, I stepped on board for the tour, standing on the ship my grandmother immigrated to the United States on.
My grandmother immigrated to the United States from Port Glasgow, Scotland in the early 1950s. She has shared many of her own memories with me over the course of my lifetime, and some she has kept close to her heart. I remember learning about Ellis Island when I was in elementary school, coming home and asking her about her experience coming to America. Ellis Island was closed as an immigrant processing station, so she had no memories of that, but she always talked about the ship she came here on - RMS Queen Mary. The ship was built in her hometown of Port Glasgow. Both her father and grandfather worked on it, her father as an electrician and her grandfather as a carpenter. It was christened in 1934, a month after she was born and 21 years later, it was the ship she sailed to America on- a one-way ticket in hand.
The Queen Mary is currently used as a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Having had the opportunity to explore the ship, I was able to connect with my ancestors. Not only my grandmother who set sail on it, but also her father and grandfather, people I would never know, but who felt part of me as I encountered their work. While there, I also learned about the role that the RMS Queen Mary played in shuttling troops across the Atlantic during World War II. This is all part of my history and one of the most significant humanities moments that I have experienced.
RMS Queen Mary
2008
Kathleen Stankiewicz, 39, High School History Teacher
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Scottish Highlands
I've always loved to travel, and one of my favorite parts is getting to have a connection to the place that in our classrooms we refer to in the abstract. It makes the history more tangible, real, and often provides perspective that we don't get from secondary sources. While travelling in Scotland last summer, I did one of those seemingly cheesy bus tours that carts you around to different scenic and historic locations.
The legacy of English rule and colonization is still very present and visceral to the Scottish people. Hearing the stories being told about the breaking of the clans, the violence towards rebels, and seeing some of those monuments lent a viewpoint that I hadn't really been privy to. This was a topic that I had learned mostly from an English perspective, minus a movie or TV show here and there. Watching "Braveheart" is one thing, but hearing a descendant of a Scottish rebel speak of the events as though he were there is another. Standing in Glencoe valley and hearing of the skirmishes that occurred adds another layer of understanding. To this day, the experience makes me reconsider the phrase "History is written by the victor." What other perspectives are we missing by staying in one place?
A summer trip to Edinburgh, Scotland
July, 2018
Sarah Murphy, Teacher in Virginia
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