Intergenerational Project Brings History Alive For Emerson Students
The past, present and future came together recently at Emerson Elementary School as second graders in Mary McCool Berry’s class embarked on an oral history project that will give the students a rich understanding of how childhood has changed – and stayed the same - over the generations.
Ten adults from the Lakewood Division of Aging Senior Center traveled to Emerson on February 9 to sit and chat with the students about how it was for them to grow up in America during the first half of the 20th century. The students were well-armed with questions they prepared together that ranged from early childhood memories, to hobbies and interests, growing up during wartime, to lessons learned from loved ones.
“I really believe kids need to know the stories of their elders,” Berry said about why she created the project for her students. “It is hard to get kids to understand what life was like 50 years ago….Oral histories can give us a much more accurate picture of the past.”
The project combines many aspects of the Common Core Standards: researching, writing, analyzing, using technology, presenting. Students were broken into groups of two or three with one child dedicated to recording the interview sessions and the others asking questions. The students will analyze their recordings and then prepare Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast their childhoods with their guests’ experiences and create a memory quilt of paper that will illustrate some of the experiences the seniors shared with them.
Prior to the seniors coming to the school, the class delved into life in Lakewood in the early 20th century as a guest speaker from the Lakewood Historical Society shared artifacts and stories from that era.
While the usual suspect – technology – was the greatest difference between childhood of youth today and those of yesteryear, the children were maybe surprised to hear that many of the ways the seniors’ spent their free time was the same today: doing chores, homework, playing with friends. They even shared in playing the same outdoor games such as hide-and-go-seek and tag.
Before the seniors left, they each shared a wish for the students as they march toward adulthood. With the benefit of wisdom gleaned over their many years, the answers were simple and heartfelt: world peace, a drug- and disease-free world, higher education for everyone, and simply to be loved.
The students plan on continuing their connections with this group of seniors in the spring when the tables turn and the adults ask the students about their lives growing up in Lakewood today.