Legacy Project: The Beginning

The Legacy Project has launched! The idea for this project started as a wondering last year. As in, I kept wondering if Carey had a museum or a collected history and wondered if the students could have a role in developing and maintaining that history.

Last year, Wow Students representatives came and talked to us about their awesomeness (find out more about them here). This fall we got the opportunity to take classes on Project Based Learning, so I was able to have some time to develop the idea further, get feedback, and start gathering resources. From there the idea developed into a 12th grade English, oral history project to be presented to community members and displayed on their graduation night--a sort of gift to the community.

Then everything started to fall in place. Wow Students put me in contact with Mary Tyson at the Community Library in Ketchum. After meeting with her, I had a much better idea of the scope of the project, and she gave me some great resources and advice for collecting oral histories. I started gathering names of potential interviewees and called in Ken Mecham, Carey's unofficial historian and former teacher extraordinaire. He gave me several more names and will be coming in on next week to chat with the class and share his wisdom and experience. I also made contact with Joseph Edwards, who has Carey roots, after I was looking online for anything Carey related. I found this strange and hilarious story and asked for permission to use it in class. In addition to permission, he sent me a ton of other great resources.

This week, I introduced the project, and I will admit I was nervous about the reaction it would get. I had thought about this enough that I had rehearsed all the teacher nightmare scenarios in my head (eye rolling, grumbling, mass rioting, etc.). The reaction, however, was positive and some students expressed legitimate enthusiasm. That was incredibly encouraging. Over the next few days, we will build some of our background knowledge about Carey's history. Mr. Mecham wrote a multi-part feature on Carey's history for The Country Times in the early '80s that we are using as mentor texts. I want students to get in the mindset of thinking, writing, and reading like a historian. Here they are in that zone:

Maria and Adolfo

Jesus and half of Kennedy

Kylie and Paige

Evelin

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