Walking the Walk

Students Get Hands-on Look at Nation's History

Last updated Sunday, January 27, 2008 2:33 PM CST in Etcetera

By Laurinda Joenks
The Morning News

Shining Examples

Students make application for the trip via teacher recommendations and a research project at the beginning of the school year. And some begin preparing for that as early as the sixth grade, Archer said.

Students commit to 11 weeks of classes about American history led by their teachers -- Pittman, Dean Alexander at Southwest Junior High in Springdale, David Smith at Elmwood Junior High in Rogers and Perry Escalante at Oakdale Junior High in Rogers -- who volunteer their time.

"The work takes off the shine," Alexander said. "That's who we take. That's who really wants it."

"Of 75 to 80 kids in the class, one-eighth get to go," Archer said, speaking of the schools in Kansas, which also participate. "Everybody knows who gets to wear the jackets. It's a badge of honor."

Students spend a day in the fall at the Five-Mile Camp getting to know students from other schools and a few more history lessons from their teachers. And during the 26-hour bus trip to Virginia, teachers play movies based on the history the students will see. The students spend 10 to 15 minutes each night in their hotel rooms reflecting on what they saw in their journals.

"The tour guides explain the basic info," Pittman said, "but we want our kids to be much more advanced than the basic facts. You should see the tour guide's eyes when they find out the kids actually can have a discussion rather than just spew with facts."

"Our guides aren't used to that level of interest in the subject matter," Merrick added. "It's very obvious they study all year. I keep getting that feedback from the guides -- that this is a knowledgeable group. The guides say it's fun to talk to kids who know what they're talking about."

"The purpose of the trip is to enhance history, not just 'Here it is,'" Smith said. "You already know what it is, but what do you think about it? They do this through their journals -- what impressed you the most, what did you learn in class that you saw in practice, or maybe it was something you didn't see in class."

Smith said he shows pictures from his trips to other students in his classes. "There's a chamber pot with a rope there," he used as an example. "It makes more impact that life was different if you relate it to something they do every day -- they didn't have a bathroom.

"(The students) know what to expect -- kind of," Smith continued. "They walk up to the ship (a replica of the Susan Constance at the Jamestown Settlement), and you think, 'They came across the Atlantic Ocean on that?' That was the latest technology for (the British colonists). That made the biggest impression on me and does every year."

"We learned stuff in pieces, but now it's together in one long chain of events," said CJH student Jacob Lee. "The little pieces tie in to make the country what it is today."

(One example is tobacco, which was introduced in Jamestown, grew to importance in Williamsburg and is represented in carvings on the Capitol.)

"Ten or 12 years ago I was lucky enough to accompany them as a chaperone," said Jim Rollins, superintendent of Springdale Public Schools. "It was the greatest learning experience I ever had."

"Kids get to know so much out of knowing what happened before they ever got there," Alexander said. "Then they can feel it, touch it, smell it."

"They experience more hands-on," Pittman said. "They get to scrape a deer hide and a new canoe. The put on armor in first person."

"They know how they lived, how they survived, that their odds of winning the Revolutionary War were slim to none," Alexander continued. "Of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, only two or three were not in trouble during the war; they were all traitors."

Velma Archer, John's wife, who travels with the students each year, said she grew up in the Midwest and didn't like history. "But when I put my feet on the same ground as our forefathers, I saw it in a whole new light," she said.

"My dad always said, 'You can read it in a book, but it's not history until you've had the chance to experience it,'" said the Archers' daughter Susan Gantt of Lavaca.

Student Growth

Some of the lessons learned reached further than the history.

"Some kids get more out of this trip," Smith said. "They just get out in the world in a safe way. They make decisions by themselves. They make friendships with people who might be different. They come out of their shell in that environment."

During their travels, students room with their counterparts from different schools.

"We separate the kids so they don't clique up with their own group at school," Archer said. "There's less playing around and more attention paid to the guides and teachers.

Beth Breshears, a student at Springdale's Har-Ber High School who took the trip her eighth-grade year, reported that she keeps in touch via e-mail with her roommates from Baxter Springs, Kan., and New York City. She said the roommates felt awkward at first, so some slept on the floor. But by the end of the trip, they had too much fun to sleep and cried when it came time to leave.

"With girls, there's always drama, but by the time you leave, you're family," Breshears said. "Victoria Tabor of Baxter Springs is one of my best friends. I tell her everything."

For many of these eighth-graders, the trip marked the first time spent away from their families. The young teens dealt with long days and cold walks, budgeting their souvenir money, taking their medications and some even got sick. They saw homelessness in a Washington, D.C., mall and conquered the city's Metro rail system. Springdale tradition requires the students to try at least one new food at every meal -- George Washington's favorite peanut soup in Williamsburg was not a hit.

Appreciation

"The kids come back so much more patriotic," Alexander said. "As ninth-graders, they help at Veterans' Day assemblies. They have a whole new outlook about what America is.

"The kids understand what it took to make America, the sacrifices -- especially at the war memorials," he continued.

Stops on the trip included Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery and the memorial for the Third Arkansas Infantry of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg (Pa.) National Military Park. In Gettysburg, the students, teachers and even their bus driver from Arkansas called the Hogs in honor of the soldiers who fought and died there. At Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore, a video presentation ends with the drawing back of curtains to show a panorama view of the star-shaped fort (covered in snow this day) and the American flag waving above in the sunshine.

"I remember standing up thinking what it means to our country," said SWJH student Alex McGowen. Frances Scott Key received the inspiration to write the "Star-Spangled Banner," the National Anthem, while he watched the bombardment of the fort from a ship in the harbor during the War of 1812.

In the most moving tribute, the Springdale schools honored a soldier at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They searched on the wall for the name of Eric Johnson of Webb, Iowa, a close friend of Alexander's who was killed in Vietnam.

As others at the memorial laughed and talked, the Springdale students stood silent with tears in their eyes. They placed school yearbooks with messages of appreciation from students near Johnson's name.

Central student Kyle Witzigman later told about his coming to America as an orphan from Vietnam.

"My mom saw the Vietnam posters in school," he said. "She saw one with a child whose parents were killed, and she decided to adopt and got me. It really hit home when I saw what my mom related to."

Hannah Harp also shared a personal connection. Her brother currently serves in Iraq.

"I know how we feel when we get up every morning and he is gone," the SWJH student said. "I think of those families of those in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or those buried in Arlington. I don't think I could handle that. I realized we just have to keep praying for him."

'Use It'

"You don't know how much an eighth-grader's going to get out of it, but those two advisers did a wonderful job," said Bill McDaniel, a trust agent, who along with his wife Barb, tagged along with their eighth-grade grandchildren Jeremy Mansur and Sydnee Steele of Kansas City, who joined the Springdale students.

The McDaniels most enjoyed being around the kids, Bill said. "To see how their eyes light up, the event leading up to understanding. They learn what happened in the foundation of the country. History repeats itself, and they need to know these things because they will be the leaders who help in the community."

Dominique Bonilla, a student at Southwest Junior High, wants to be one of those.

"I want to be president -- not to say that anybody else is not a good president," she said. "But I've always dreamed of it in my mind -- not a model, an actress or a singer. In the capitol, where there's a statue of the three ladies with a blob, that's where I'm going to be."

(According to legend, the bust of the first female president will be added to the monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, heroines of women's suffrage, on display in the Capitol rotunda.)

"I enjoyed meeting Congressman Boozman (who arranged tours of the Capitol for the group)," Bonilla continued. "He said I should start out not going for president, but for senator or a lawyer."

"I don't want the things they sacrificed for, the things they fought for, their beliefs to get lost," Lee said. "I want everything they fought for to be the same in the future. I want to be someone influential who can keep their dreams alive.

"Hopefully Mr. Archer will spark something, and the kids will make this nation better," Pittman said.

"Much is given, and much is expected," Archer charged the kids. "We all know what you did to get here. Take it, and use it for the rest of your lives."

Upcoming Stories

More about the trip and the students' experiences will be featured in upcoming Et Cetera sections, including:

* Jamestown, Feb. 4

* Colonial Williamsburg, Feb. 11

* Philadelphia, Feb. 25

* Yorktown, March 3

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