18. The Locals

We're learning about going local in our economics unit.  One of the benefits of spending time and money at local businesses and institutions is that you help promote the uniqueness of your town.

As part of this lesson, the Thirdlanders were searching for images on the Visit Bloomington page in order to plan a weekend for their families, where they would frequent some new local spots.  After planning the schedule, they used their images to make cool collages.

I could tell I didn't do a great job with my lesson on what going local means when they started working on their collages.  I kept hearing questions like:

Is Denny's local?
Is Brown County State Park local?
Is the IU Art Museum Local?
Is Chipotle local?

  I guess there's no reason for them to know that there are millions of Denny's and only one IU Art Museum, but it still seemed strange to me. I had given many examples of local businesses and had displayed photos on my power point and I had also shared some fascinating anecdotes of my personal interactions with local entrepreneurs.  Sometimes I think The Thirdlanders are ignoring the heck out of me.