Lowell Mills

This week, the fourth grade had the opportunity to travel to Lowell Mills for their program on immigration.  It was a wonderful field trip and we learned a lot about different immigrant groups, the reasons they came to the United States, hardships they faced and how they contributed to the culture of our country.

We began with a tour of the mills which still function to this day.

Only about 10 machines were working but it was still fairly noisy.  At their height, the mills had over 200 machines in operation!

After our tour, we began learning about the different immigrant groups that came to Lowell.

Each one of us was given a passport of an immigrant which explained their story.  We were told we would have to remember this information to answer three questions when we went through an "immigration check point."

  After the check point, the class was broken up by their country of origin.  Each group then had either a suitcase, trunk or crate that they unpacked, filled with items that were important to immigrants of their group.

Each group set out their objects for everyone to see and read about their items in an enclosed binder.

After each group visited the other groups, we came together as a class and talked about similarities we saw.  We learned that these are called "cultural universals" and include things like music, religion, food, clothing and toys.

We then went to lunch and after attended a mock town meeting.  The subject of he meeting was whether or not tax money from the City of Lowell should be used to build a school for Irish immigrants' children.

Each student was given a character to play and a costume.

Four of our classmates served as important town officials!

At the end of the town meeting, each "character" voted and the school was approved!  However, we then remembered that this town meeting (which actually occurred in Lowell) happened before women were given the right to vote.  Our guide then showed us that without the women's vote, the school would not be passed and funded.

After our town meeting, we headed over to one of the boarding houses where the mill girls lived.  We were shocked to see how different our lives are compared to theirs.

A big thank you to TESPO for funding this field trip.  It was great fun and we learned a lot!