Hi again, my name is Cameryn and welcome back to my final blog post! At this stage, my partner, Michelle, and I have completed all of our research for the project. We have found credible and academic sources that are relevant to our teaching tool. Our teaching tool will provide educators with a list of age-appropriate Disney films along with a short description on how each movie relates to one or more of the beliefs of Transcendentalism like nonconformity, self-reliance, intuition, simplicity, or the importance of nature. We have three sources. The first source focuses on what Transcendentalism is. The second one emphasizes the values Disney captures in their movies. The third source describes how to best teach Gardner’s intelligences when it comes to educating the adolescent mind. We focused our plan of study on Gardner’s musical and spatial intelligences. We have finalized the design of our web tool and decided we are going to present the information we attained in a PowerPoint. We are finalizing our thoughts and getting ready to start building it on the project website.

Throughout this research process, our successes can be linked to finding so many Disney movies that helped exemplify the beliefs of Transcendentalism to children. An exciting discovery was that we are able to present the text “Self-Reliance” by Emerson to children in a way that they will be able to actually learn the hard concepts. A challenge we initially faced was how to teach this difficult text to a fifth or sixth grade class because the material can be tricky and confusing. We worked through this challenge by thinking how to best engage students with Transcendentalism through something they are familiar with. This is where we came up with the idea of using Disney movies. Over the course of our research and in the process of designing our web tool we have learned that “Self-Reliance” allows one to think independently, embrace their individuality, and strive towards their own goals. Michelle and I feel as though these are vital ideals that students need in order to be the best they can be in life. I cannot wait to see our final product, as well as, the work of my fellow classmates!