What a delightful surprise to receive your message. It sounds as if retirment is treating you well. I will have to check for your books since now I know they were written by THE Mary Johnson. I envy your time free to travel and do so many things. I'm so glad things are working out well for you.

As you might guess, I'm still teaching. My husband had to retire earlier due to health conditions. Between that and the recent losses in our pension fund, I've had to postpone retirement for a while. (I'd hoped to go at the end of this year.) It's mostly ok. I love working with students, but I have two little granchildren now and would like to spend more time with them, too. As I'm sure things changed in your school, we spend lots of time "gathering data" now - a nice way to say testing. As with most things, a little is fine, but there is a trade off when we have to spend so much time on it.

The American Fellow program really sparked my interest in history so I went back and got my graduate certification in public history (about half of a master's - just couldn't manage the whole thing.) I work with both the local museum and the Wisconsin Historical Society on how schools can use their collections. As long as I was still teaching, I also decided to submit a proposal for one of the new LOC lesson plans this spring. They accepted my lesson on Women's Contributions during World War II. It is something I've always wanted to do; my mom was a Navy nurse and I love reading the women's accounts on the LOC's Veteran's History site. This lesson process is like the American Fellows experience except it is all online. We have a Google Group and share ideas and suggestions that way. I've enjoyed it, but miss actually meeting the people in our group. As always, though, the people are fantastic. The leader of our group is Leni Dolan's AMFellow partner - Kathleen Ferenz. I've learned about all sorts of things - like Google Groups and Google Docs, and Flickr. I'd never heard of them before. It certainly keeps me learning.

It's exciting to hear you've written two books. I've always wanted to do at least one. But I guess that's famous last words for a lot of people. I'm hoping to eventually write a nonfiction juvenile biography on a local person. We'll see how things go.

Kim Wardean is also still teaching here. She is an amazing team leader and Nationally Certified teacher - we are so lucky she's stayed. Her boys are all growing up quickly with two in high school and one middle school. (They were babes when we were in Washington.) I will pass along your greetings.

I've also wondered what has become of the rest of our group. I was so sad to hear of Leni's passing. Hopefully all others are well. It is still fun to keep in touch with Judy Graves and Elizabeth Brown. And now you! Keep in touch and give my best to Linda if you get the chance. Take care.

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Sender: American Memory Fellows <[log in to unmask]>
Poster: "Mary J. Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Students writing Wikipedia entries
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Hello, Patricia!

It was fun to see your name come across my email, so I thought I'd just write to say "Hi" to my fellow 2000 American Memory Fellow! I retired from full-time librarianship in 2005, but I still say "Yes" whenever anyone asks me to train others to teach with primary sources. We have a regional program here in Colorado ( http://www.mscd.edu/tps/), and they do great work, so I always enjoy helping with their workshops. A couple of years ago I also did tons of training for teaching with Colorado's Historic Newspaper Collection ( http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org).

I have my second book for Linworth coming out soon--in two to three weeks, I think--and it was both fun and a pain to write. It's called _Primary Source Teaching the Web 2.0 Way_ (not my choice of titles). I learned so much during the writing, especially about Web 2.0 tools, but already I feel totally behind the curve. Without an actual student population to work with daily, I feel that my expertise could be open to question. Oh well, I do hope that educators at a beginner to intermediate level when it comes to using Web tools will find it useful.

Other than that, retirement keeps me incredibly busy. I travel a lot with my husband, who is an oil painter, and I read, work out at the Y, study Italian, write a Primary Source Librarian blog, and spend far too much time online.

I'd love to hear how you are doing! (BTW, I, too, have received more than one totally garbled message.)

With fond memories,
Mary

P.S. Linda Thompson is still teaching, but she has left the social studies classroom to develop and teach middle school courses in digital media. I think she's having fun.

Mary J. Johnson
Education Consultant
875 Golden Hills Rd.
Colorado Springs, CO 80919
Ph: 719-528-1906
Fax: 719-548-8352
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Primary Source Librarian Blog:
http://www.maryjjohnson.com/primarysourcelibrarian

On Wednesday, April 22, 2009, at 07:33PM, "Solfest, Patricia" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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>Sender: American Memory Fellows <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster: "Solfest, Patricia" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Students writing Wikipedia entries
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>
>--_0423-0133-22-PART-BREAK
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>Hi Judy,
>I received this email from you with an interesting header but the message
>itself is garbled. This is the first time it has happened with one of your
>emails. The message is all random letters and numbers. Just thought I'd let
>you know. Thanks.
>
>Patricia Solfest
>Altoona Schools
>839-6030 (317)