Thursday, April 2, 2009

Underground Railroad by Meaghan Podlaski

Today we experienced the experience of the Underground Railroad. We started out in our fire drill lines and we closed our eyes and our teachers went into characters. Then, we were treated like slaves, without the abuse. After that we were brought into one of the two gyms in Nature's Classroom. That was the ship we road over “ocean” to be sold as slaves to a plantation in the southern United States.

We were sold into a plantation. We had to be tested on our strength. After a while, our plantation owner gave up on us and bought more “slaves”. Then our “conductors” decided to go to work and tried to make us free. We traveled down a road and met a man who asked us who was our conductor was. None of us answered to him, because if we were to tell who our conductors were they were going to be shot and killed. Fortunately for us, the man turned out to be one of the people that helped slaves. He gave us some “money” and a fake pass to get away from people who wanted to return us back to our plantation.

A little while later, we came across some private landowners. The didn't really believe us that we were going to a railroad in West Virgina to work. They asked us more questions and they wanted us to tell them who the conductor was. We never said a word. After a while, they started to believe us and led us back on trail.

Then, some bounty hunters found us and told us we were runaway slaves. But we said no like we were told. They wanted to turn us in, so they did.

On our way over to the sheriff, a lady came by which was a anti-slavery person and the man's friend. She said she would take us to the sheriff but she lied and handed us over to a safe house.

At the safe house, they had us hide because the sheriff was out looking for the runaway slaves. The people living in the safe house hid us behind a crate and in the fireplace so we wouldn't get caught. Luckily, we didn't.

Then, we left the safe house and ran for safety to Canada. In Canada, we learned a little more background information on the Underground Railroad. I had a lot of fun with the Underground Railroad activity we did here. It was a dramatic, exciting experience that most likely changed some of our minds on slavery and how brutally they were treated.

4 comments:

  1. Dear Meaghan,

    I had a feeling that you guys would be doing the Underground Railroad last night. It sounds like you guys learned a great deal about what life was like for the African-American slaves. What a great experience!!

    We learned a bit about slavery this week as well. The Scotia Glenville Traveling Museum came and taught us a great deal of information about abolition. Some of the students even got to dress up and wear shackles.

    Well, it is almost 10:00 a.m. and I expect that we will be seeing those "Brown Buses" pull into Lisha Kill in just a few short hours. We missed you all and we can't wait to see you.

    Love,
    Ms. Corigliano

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  2. it was a lot of fun ms.corigliano

    --meaghan

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  3. Meaghan,
    It's Friday the day you got back from Nature's Classroom. On Monday tell me ALL about the underground railroad it sounded fun!!!


    Love,
    Miranda

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