The Wellspring: historical writing project.

Abstract

Onekama Middle School teachers and students have embarked upon a three-part service learning project involving sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in four classes: English, Computer Applications, Social Studies, and Michigan History. Students make connections with senior citizens in our community as they teach them about computer skills (Project NetGap), learn more about their lives (Oral History Project), and create a publication based on the lives of the senior citizens that is distributed county-wide (The Wellspring).

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Background

Our quiet village of Onekama, Michigan leisurely rests between grand Lake Michigan and a small inland lake called Portage Lake in Northern Michigan. There are only 500 year-round residents in Onekama village, and many of these are senior citizens who have retired "Up North" because of our peaceful setting. Although the retired community thrives, living as a teenager in Onekama is sometimes challenging. There are no fast food restaurant chains, no teen centers, and no movie theaters; in fact, there is not even a stoplight.

Being myself a transplant from the city, I can recognize all that our town has to offer--clean air, little traffic, kind neighbors, little crime. However, convincing my eighth grade students to look beyond the lack of excitement to recognize the value of our town is not often an easy task. In response to this challenge, the middle school teachers at Onekama School embarked upon a three-part Service Learning activity to help our students see that one of the greatest gifts of our town is the wealth of history, experience, and knowledge within the people surrounding us.

Service Learning as a Curricular Approach

We chose Service Learning as our approach because of the proven positive outcomes this method has demonstrated. Service Learning benefits students and the community at large while meeting academic objectives. Maddy Wegner states: "Reformers agree that the challenges lie in helping students feel their education is not only relevant but also critical, and in changing the relationships among students, teachers, administrators, and the larger community" (1993, 6). Service Learning is an answer to this challenge. Beyond the clear benefits for the community, research conducted by Learn and Serve America affirms the benefits for students and teachers who participate in Service Learning activities. According to one study, students involved in Service Learning maintained a lower-than-average risk of dropping out of school, had more positive changes in attitude concerning helping others and working in groups, and gained in communication skills, dealing with diversity, and being concerned about the well-being of others. Furthermore, teachers involved in Service Learning classroom projects demonstrated more positive attitudes about the competencies of their students. (1998, 1-2).

In 1998, the Onekama Consolidated School Educational Foundation was awarded a three year renewable $7,500 Community Based Organization (CBO) Learn & Serve Grant from the Michigan Community Service Commission. The grant was used to provide seed monies to develop and implement Project Netgap, a multi-level, intergenerational service-learning project aimed at reducing the student-citizen generation gap in the Onekama/Arcadia Consolidated School District. The focus of Project NETGAP is to assist students in improvement of their technology applications and local history knowledge while developing their personal and civic responsibility. Project Netgap has a unique multi-level design with seventh grade students mentoring local citizens in the use of computerized technology & the internet. These community citizens then each adopt a classroom, thereby volunteering to assist elementary and sixth grade students while sharing their expertise with local oral history information. Finally, eighth grade students collect the oral history data and publish this information using computerized publishing techniques. Partnerships in this project include the Michigan State Cooperative Extension, Manistee County Historical Society and various community groups.

Phase One: Project NetGap

The first phase of our community-building project began with computer teacher Edith Bishop inviting senior citizens into our school to learn more about technology. Called "Project NetGap," seventh grade Computer Applications students were paired with local senior citizens to act as mentors, sharing their knowledge of word processing, the Internet, and computer programs.

Project NetGap involved extensive pre-training for our seventh graders, as they discussed the challenges faced by senior citizens as well as the inaccurate stereotypes associated with senior citizens. They simulated working on the computers with goggles (to impair their vision), plastic gloves (to make it more difficult to type) and cotton earplugs (to impair their hearing). Next, they looked at greeting cards that improperly send the message that growing old is a terrible experience. After pairing students with senior citizens, the groups began team-building activities to help them grow acquainted. The students and senior citizens first met at a "Coffee Hour" held in the school cafeteria. The time was spent getting to know each other with various activities. Participants played "Mingle Bingo," and then shared coffee and cookies. Students and community members informally interviewed each other and then introduced one another to the whole group. To conclude the Coffee Hour, everyone gathered for the "Circle of Hope" to reflect on the afternoon's activities.

Finally, the pairs began their work in our school's media center with an introductory course by our seventh graders on how to use the computers. Our school media center became a hub of activity as the pairs dove into the world of computers. The pairs met for five sessions of computer training. Students taught the senior citizens skills ranging from logging on to the computer, to creating a Microsoft Word document, to exploring the Internet. The first of the five sessions focused on establishing the degree of prior knowledge of the senior citizens and helping them become familiar with the basics: logging on to the computer, using the mouse, and using program shortcuts. The pairs also made pictures together using the Paint program. During sessions two and three, students and senior citizens explored Microsoft Word through document creation, editing, and printing. Sessions four and five introduced senior citizens to the Internet. Students taught the seniors how to conduct a search and navigate sites. They also helped the senior citizens set up and email account and showed them how to send and receive email messages. Many senior citizens found this to be the most exciting part of the training, as it allowed them to communicate with relatives and friends who do not live near to them.

As a conclusion to the training, the seventh grade students presented their senior citizen "students" with certificates of completion for the NetGap program. Through celebration and reflection activities, the pairs shared with the group what they were each taking away from the experience. The seventh grade Computer Applications students also made "How-To Books" (with step-by-step instruction in word processing and Internet use) for their partners to take with them once the classes were completed. The connections made between the students and senior citizens were comfortable and inspiring. Students who were at first intimidated by the idea of becoming teachers were now laughing and enjoying time spent with a new friend. Danielle, a seventh grader, commented, "Mrs. Cornyea is my partner for Net Gap. I think this is a really good thing to have because it makes it easier for older people to know how to do stuff on the computers. Mrs. Cornyea says to me that she has grandkids down south and they send her e-mail all the time but she does not know bow to write them back. Mrs. Cornyea is a really nice lady. She knows a lot of stuff about the computer already but she told me that she would need a lot of help on the typing part and the e-mail part. This process helps me learn more on how it is for senior citizens to do stuff on the computers. And I hope I learn more about my partner and giver her more ideas."

The senior citizens were not the only ones learning something new. Academic objectives were achieved, as students demonstrated their mastery of the skills they had learned in Computer Applications. As they were transformed from "student" to "teacher", the seventh grade students gained a new perspective and confidence through their ability to teach computer skills to others. In Project NetGap, students of all ages learn together.

Phase Two: Oral History Project

Phase Two of our project involved the same senior citizens from Project NetGap. This time, however, it was the senior citizens sharing their wisdom and experiences to broaden our students' lives. Under the supervision of Karen Peabody, the senior citizens came to our school one-by-one to visit our sixth grade social studies students and elementary classes and share their oral histories. Again, students were involved in pre-training activities to prepare for the classroom visits. Classroom discussions focused on providing a historical backdrop for the senior citizens' lives, imagining how our school and community may have changed over the years, and reinforcing appropriate etiquette and communication skills for classroom visitors. Students further prepared for the interviews by drafting questions to ask on the day of the interview. The students used pencils, video cameras, and digital cameras to record the community histories. Following the visits, written reflection took the form of thank-you letters. Students wrote letters to the seniors sharing what they learned from their life stories and thanking them for coming to their class.

As the senior citizens described growing up in Onekama, our students were amazed by the changes that have taken place in our town, our country, and our world in the last century. Through the eyes of the senior citizens, students learned about The Depression, World War II, and a world that was not dependent on technology. And we also (students and teachers) learned that our community can be our textbook, that there is much knowledge in the people around us.

Phase Three: The Wellspring

With the recorded interviews from the Oral History Project, eighth grade English and Michigan History students were ready to begin the final phase of our community project: "The Wellspring." "The Wellspring" is a published account of the life stories of the senior citizens who participated in Project NetGap and the Oral History Project. Our title and the seed idea for our project was borrowed from a project conducted by our high school journalism class in the 1980's with teacher Gail Verplank, in which Journalism students interviewed community members to learn their stories.

In groups of two to three, Michigan History students under the direction of teacher Teresa Smith viewed the videotapes from the Oral History Project and began to discuss how they could use the responses to write a story based upon each person's life. Students arranged and conducted follow-up interviews to gather further information for their stories. Inspired by the amount of history contained in these interviews, students began the second part of "The Wellspring" project as they researched historical aspects of our community revealed in the interviews. Each group was assigned either a life story or an historical article to research and contribute to our publication. To assist with the historical articles, local historian Thomas Gerhardt met with groups of students at the Manistee County Historical Society Museum and at Onekama Township Hall to share with students photographs, newspaper articles, maps, and information about the history of our community.

Our work for "The Wellspring" in English class began with a critical look at the genre of memoirs. Students read professional memoirs, including Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Cynthia Rylant's But I'll Be Back Again, Jean Fritz's Homesick, and many others. Students then wrote their own memoirs, as they looked back on their lives and reflected upon the people and events that have shaped them into the individuals they are today. With this knowledge of the power of writing to communicate the story of a life, we were ready to tackle "The Wellspring." The first result of our efforts is a publication called "The Wellspring," containing life stories, historical articles, and photographs of our community from a century ago until now. For three school years, "The Wellspring" has been published and distributed to students, families, and the community at large. It is our way of giving back to the community by capturing the faces, places, and stories that make Onekama unique. The second result of our efforts is a group of middle school students and teachers who are immensely proud of the modest, beautiful community in which we live. Through pre-and post-surveys and student reflections, it is evident that this project has been both academically and personally meaningful for our students.

Conclusion

Onekama Middle School teachers feel that we have successfully accomplished our objectives for this three-part community project: to make intergenerational connections with members of our community, to discover the wealth of history around us, and to develop pride in and a sense of connection to our community. Through our work for this project, the lives and perspectives of the students, teachers, and senior citizens who participated have forever been changed.

For more information and photographs of the project, please visit our school's NetGap web page at www.onekama.k12.mi.us/netgap/index.htm.

References

Laird, Molly, Ph.D.; Richard Bradley, Ph.D.; and Steven Black, M.P.A. (1998). Executive Summary of Evaluation Findings for High School Students and Teachers Participating in Quest International's Skills for Action Service Learning Program. Quest International. 1-2

Wegner, Maddy. (Fall 1993). The Role of Service Learning in Education Reform. Generator, 6.

Megan McCarthy received her B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame and a Masters of Curriculum and Teaching from Michigan State University. She is a middle school English teacher. Onekama Middle School has been recognized as a National Service Learning Leader School.