SCHS Teacher Talks About Trip To Normandy
Two Stephens County High School teachers continue to use things they learned over the summer overseas.
Earlier this year, teachers Derek Demmler and Amanda Rogowski received a Rural Teacher Global Fellowship sponsored by the Rural School and Community Trust.
They used the grant funding to take a trip in June to England and Normandy, France to study D-Day and the connection between Normandy and Toccoa.
Demmler said the trip was an awesome experience.
“People use that word and throw it around, but in this case, it was the true meaning of the word,” said Demmler.
According to Demmler, the goal was to study the Toccoa connection to Normandy and the D-Day invasion from the perspective of the French.
Demmler said that traveling to Normandy as an American is an amazing experience.
As for being from Toccoa, he says that hit home when they went to one small town.
“10 years ago, this town requested to name its city center after Toccoa and it is called Toccoa Place,” said Demmler. “There is a marker there.”
Demmler and Rogowski also spent time in London and Demmler spent a day in the English countryside looking at where the paratroopers of Camp Toccoa stayed while there.
The goal of the fellowship was to create unique personal and professional development experiences for rural teachers.
Demmler said once they got back, they went to a conference to learn about place based learning.
He said they have used that to create a unit about the trip and D-Day, focusing on the Toccoa connection.
According to Demmler, they look at both the history of D-Day along with the memoirs and the personal stories from the men that they wrote home in letters and in other sources.
“It gives it a personal face, it is not just facts and figures,” said Demmler, who said he hopes the lesson helps students be proud of Toccoa and the role it played in history.
Demmler said they are also working with the city of Toccoa and others on other ideas and projects that would tie into their trip and what they learned.