Back when I started teaching sixth grade in 1993, the science curriculum was organized around the PBS TV show The Voyage of the Mimi, a 13-episode series that showed the experiences of the crew of the fictional research ship The Mimi as they conducted a whale census.
Every unit, lesson, and activity was related to an episode of the show, the idea being to put the skills and knowledge into an engaging, real-world narrative context to make them both more accessible and more memorable. Even though science was not the subject I taught, I was a big fan of the approach. From what I could tell, the kids loved it and learned a lot, and I was sorry to see it retired after 15 years, around the turn of the century.
In 2006, we got a new social studies teacher for our interdisciplinary team, a young woman who had grown up in the district. She was in her mid-20s at the time and had experienced the Mimi curriculum as a sixth-grade student, and she was heartbroken when she found out that the show was no longer being used.
To be honest, her passion for the show was more than a little comical, and we spent many a lunch break reminiscing about the plot and the lessons, and the activities. It was she who told me that, in his first television role, Ben Affleck actually played the young boy, C.T. Granville. (Check out a clip here.)
That teacher has since moved on to another school, even though her daughter attends ours. I thought of her yesterday, though, when I tapped on the link to the daily Name Drop quiz from The New Yorker magazine. The premise is that you get six clues, one at a time, and 100 seconds to identify the subject of the day. The fewer clues you need, the better you do. I confess that I often find Name Drop very challenging-- sometimes I can't solve it at all-- but this week, I am on a roll. I've gotten the answer in one clue every day for the last three.
And for yesterday, I owe it all to my former colleague.
So I texted her to let her know, and she replied like this
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