(upbeat music) (lens clicking) (upbeat music) (logo whooshing) (inspiring music) - Eye on Education.

I'm Fred Martino, Illinois History Day is a statewide program for students in grade six through 12 to build research skills and learn more about the state's rich history.

And today, I am so pleased to welcome an authority on the topic.

Betsy Brown, is a longtime educator who has worked for years, engaging young people in the program.

While she is retired from Carbondale Schools, she continues to work on Illinois History Day programs.

And Betsy, it is so great to have you with us today.

- Thank you.

Great to be here.

- Good to have you here.

And as I said, you have so much experience in this really amazing program and a lot of students grade six through 12.

Give me your thoughts on why this is so successful, why it's such a great way to engage young people in history?

- Well, it's important for kids to feel that they have a choice in what they do.

And one of the wonderful things, there are a variety of projects that they can engage in.

And I always have my students work with kids they want to work with and pursue a topic that of their choosing...

The topic, there's always a theme for every year.

And it's intentionally broad so that it can be maneuvered to reflect the interest of that particular student.

- Yeah, there's so much with this program and I like that the students because of that broad nature of the topic, the students get so much input into exactly the type of project and then the focus of the project as well.

- Right.

And sometimes the real problem is focusing.

For instance, a student might say, "Oh, I love the Civil War.

I want to do my project on the Civil War."

I said, "Whoa, that's a huge topic."

What about it, do you want... You know, and we go through a list of, we're not talking battlefields.

So I generally dissuade them from choosing a particular battle unless it's harder to do.

Plus we want more of the personal aspect of it.

And whether you're talking about one particular individual who stands out in history, women have a lot of girls interested in History Fair.

And they are often very interested in a woman's role because history, as we all know, has been written by older white men.

And women need to have a say as of people of color, and they all were there.

And so they need to have a way to find out about their people who means something to them.

- Yeah, a great way to enrich the educational experience giving students a chance to explore areas where they may not get quite as much information from a textbook.

- Oh, well the textbook really glaze over thing.

When I taught social studies in middle school, we had one chapter on World War II.

- Mm.

- And then, when I went on to teach the gifted, I took a whole semester to teach World War II.

- Yeah.

- So how can a textbook, it just briefly fun who, you know, who started it and who won.

And that's essentially, you know, what it all goes over.

So you really need to have this in-depth information.

And the kids really find that it's fascinating because they learn all these personal stories that speak to them.

- Mm.

- In addition, they're encouraged to do interviews- - Mm.

- Especially if it's a topic that's not so far in the past that there are people living with World War II.

Well, now we're getting to the Korean War, - Mm.

- Vietnam War.

And I encourage kids to talk to people, find out what it was like for them.

We had kids do projects on the riots here in SIU in 1970.

And they were amazed at all the different people, they were able to talk to, people who were in the police force at the time, people who were SIU students, Frank, who owned The Varsity Grill downtown, they talk to all of those people to get information for their project and all the different perspectives.

- That is great.

Well, in addition to your work with Illinois History Day, you received a grant I know to conduct a Junior Docent Camp at the General John A. Logan Museum in Murphysboro.

Tell us about that week 'cause we have some visuals.

- Yes, yes.

Well, I'm on the board of the museum and have been involved with the museum since 2005.

And I would have my students do performances there.

It was apparent that an order for the museum to survive, we needed younger people.

And young people need to be educated in what is a museum?

What does it do?

How do you deal with tour groups and how do you participate if you are a member of the museum staff?

And so they were taught various skills.

I had Shirley Kriner come, she's a weaver, come and explain how to weave, how to create a loom?

Blacksmith came and actually these kids really got to work with the metal and bang it into shape.

They learned how to harvest flowers and dye fabric out of it and learned how to make rope out of various materials.

These are all activities that would've been something you would've done in the 19th century.

- That's amazing.

And of course, such an important point because they're not only learning, but by doing it will be a lifetime memory for them.

- Oh, yes.

And additionally, this was action-packed week.

They were researched a person who was involved with the founding of Memorial Day.

- Mm-hmm.

- And they researched a person and then they performed a skit for their families the last day of camp.

They did this in 24 hours and it's amazing.

I know you might have a little clip of that.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it is amazing what they could do in just 24 hours.

- Yeah, I'm glad we were able to be on location for this so that we have a way to show the importance of that engagement that students get from programs like this and it's just a central part of lifelong learning.

You mentioned every year, there is a theme, a National History Day has selected a theme for 2023.

And it is yes, broad.

- Very broad.

Yeah.

- "Frontiers in History: People, Places, and Ideas."

That's about as broad as you can get.

(laughs) But tell me about the theme and how you're gonna be working with local students?

- Well, I love this year's theme.

- Yeah.

- And didn't like last year's theme at all.

(Fred laughing) But this year's theme is great because it is, well, you know, it's people, places and things that happen.

And that's what history is.

- Yes.

- And so as a result, I have students doing, I have a pair of girls who are doing their project on Elizabeth Keckley who was Mary Todd Lincoln seamstress and confidante.

We have students doing a project about Attucks School.

One of the best things about History Fair, is the focus on local history and that really speaks to the kids because they're doing historical research in their backyard.

And this particular group just had a meeting on Sunday at Eurma C Hayes Center talking to people who attended Attucks School, which closed in...

I think it was integrated about in 1969.

Okay, so it's been a long time since anyone has attended that school, it was an all-black school.

And then when schools were integrated, it was left behind.

- Mm.

- And so you got a lot of input from the people who attended that school and what did it mean and what did integration mean here in Carbondale?

Really kind of surprising when you listened to some of the things that people said.

- Well, that sounds great.

I mean, so again, some very meaningful projects and there is so much diversity allowed in this contest that really surprised me.

I hope that you will help be a conduit for us to bring some of the projects to air on WSIU and even for students that aren't from the area, if there are any documentaries that are done 'cause I saw that- - Yes.

- Some students even do documentaries.

- Right.

- We would love to show those on WSIU.

(claps) - Oh, wonderful.

That's great.

Yeah, I've had students do documentaries about a wide range of topics, it's clearly kind of amazing.

And about the CCC and the creation of Giant City Lodge.

- Wow.

- The local things are particularly meaningful, I think.

- Mm-hmm.

Tell me how students do come up with these ideas for Illinois story or Illinois History Day rather?

- Well, it's kind of difficult for them because their knowledge of history is often very slim.

You know, those textbooks were, you know, as I said World War II is only one chapter.

And so I talked to them, I asked them to go home and talk to their parents, find somebody who's the oldest person you know, and talk to them about what they remember, what's important to them?

Because remember these kids are 12, 13, 14 years old to them, I mean, they weren't born in 2006, you know, - Mm-hmm.

- And so that would be history to them.

And so they don't know, so you have to expose them.

I took them to special collections here at SIU and they went over at all the various resources that are available for students to research.

And I think a lot of people don't realize the wealth of materials right here at SIU.

- That is fabulous.

And so for some students, it's an exposure maybe to university for the first time to start thinking about, "Oh, maybe I can see myself there in..." - Yes.

- "In a number of years."

- Yes.

- That's fabulous.

And I understand, as we mentioned that in addition to the regional contests, there's a statewide contest here and in other states and then there's the national contest.

Tell me how this all works?

- Okay.

Our regional competition will be March 25th at the SIU second floor, all the ballrooms there will be involved.

And they take the... All the students who rank superior yet moved on to state, at state, it's a different story.

At state, they select two projects from every category but the categories are divided into group and individuals.

So you can... And you can only participate in one project.

You can either be an individual or a member of a group.

You cannot do both.

And then, there's junior and senior division.

So they take two projects at state from every category to go on to nationals.

And I have... We've gone to nationals 18 times.

- Wow.

- Since 2000.

- That's amazing.

- So I'm pretty proud of.

- Almost, I mean, the equivalent of just about every year then.

- Yep.

Carbondale Middle School really has really done well with this and we are particular bailiwick is performance and that's we often win in performance.

- Okay.

Well, let me get to that because I thought this was very interesting.

Performance is very important in some cases depending on the project, I guess the artistic quality.

But we should note that content is king, that 80% of the points are based on historical quality of the work.

- Yes.

- Tell me about preparing students for that.

- Well, they have to understand that everything they write has to be true, has to be documented as true.

Can't make things up.

- Yeah.

- And in performance, sometimes they have a tendency, "Oh, in order to make a transition," no it can't do that.

And that gets to be very difficult.

And also they have to corroborate their sources.

Don't just rely on one source saying that this particular fact is true.

You need to corroborate it.

Is there another source that you can cite?

And they have to create bibliographies and they have to be annotated.

- Mm-hmm.

- First time, they have never, most kids have never heard of the word an annotated bibliography.

- Yeah.

- They don't know what it is.

- Such a great preparation for college.

- I have found that my students as they go on and they've told me, "Well, going to high school was nothing," you know, they understood so much more than the average student did.

- Mm-hmm.

So with this immersion in history, tell me about ways that teachers then connect the History Day experience then to the curriculum.

- Well, not only are we talking about the content of history and also history can have a science been to it.

We had a group do theirs about polio.

So you can...

The history of diseases, vaccines, after all we just came through the pandemic.

And there's also the, you know, Spanish flu, you know, of 1919.

So there's a lot of tie in there also with the writing.

Oh, kids are so accustomed to fluff, to filling in.

You know, someone says, "Okay, you have to write a 500-word page."

And so they concentrate on the number of words and they try to fill it.

But when it comes to History Fair, you have a page limit, a word limit and so kids have to cut the fluff, I think.

- Every word is precious, right?

- Yes.

Every single word- - Yeah.

- And every performance, every single second 'cause you are timed with a stopwatch.

- Yeah, that is such great preparation.

I think as you're talking about this.

And it brings me back to thinking about my middle school, my high school experience.

And I think one of the areas where I could have had more experiences is what you're talking about here, getting sources- - Yeah.

- For what you believe about this topic.

And it's so critical when you get to college because you can't do it without the sources.

It's not acceptable academic work.

So, you know, another thing though that I will say growing up that was very good in my middle school and high school particular education was sometimes my history teachers would connect what we were learning in history to current events.

And of course, as someone, as you might have guessed who was interested in current events 'cause I ended up working in broadcasting, this really brought things alive for me.

Tell me about a History Day project that provided context for something happening right now that you can think of.

- Well, I can think of last year, I had a group do women's voting rights.

And right now we're having a battle over reproductive rights.

We thought we've already, and they mentioned that in their project, and this is- - And voting rights- - Yes.

- And beyond just women but for all of us, right?

- For all of us- - Yeah.

- And so it's very current and they can see it.

And also anytime you deal with a World War II topic, we talk about fascism, we talk about people propaganda, if you say it long enough, people will believe it.

And don't we have that now?

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That's so important to mention.

And a topic I wasn't sure we'd have time for but I did want to get to it.

With so many threats to democracy in recent years, some might argue that understanding history and understanding our government has really taken on a new urgency.

And I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

- It is so imperative that we study history as some of our lawmakers have shown us their lack of knowledge, it's embarrassing, not knowing what people have done before.

Because the old adage is, you know, if you fail to learn from history, you were bound to repeat it.

And includes all the negative.

And it's so important that kids be aware of how important it is to know their history.

Napoleon was not successful in invading Russia.

Hitler was not successful in invading Russia.

Hey, don't invade Russia, (chuckles) you know, learn from some of the prior mistakes of others.

And then of course, Russia is now invading other places.

But it is a battle that goes on and on.

It doesn't seem to have an end, but they need to know.

- Yeah, of course.

I didn't know that in the answer to that question, you're going to be talking about Russia in particular but with the war in Ukraine, that's another example of the connection of- - Yes.

- The past and the present and that we see these patterns repeated.

- Exactly.

- And understanding the need to take action.

We see that in history and that when it hasn't occurred, we also see that, we see the result of that.

You know, I ask you about specific projects that you could think of that connected History Day to current events.

- Mm-hmm.

- But I want to just like, the theme is broad.

I want to be much more broad with you as someone who's worked with students for decades on History Day, some that just come to mind, things that...

I'm sure there's so many, it's very hard to pick some.

- Like asking which is your favorite child, (Fred laughing) you know.

No, I've thought about this and one there was a group of girls who did theirs about the Koppers Tie Plant.

Now, not being from Carbondale, you may not be aware.

- No, I'm not.

- But in 1903, and it was there for many years, a plant on the northeast side of town that put creosote on railroad ties and made railroad ties that they would use in making the railroad.

The creosote is highly carcinogenic and people...

They would use mules to drag the logs through the creosote.

And the mules only lasted a month before they died.

And so there was, it became a Superfund site, et cetera, et cetera.

These girls held a meeting at Thomas School and got everybody who was involved with Koppers Tie Plant to show up and they got their personal stories and I could go on and on.

And then that group went on to win the state and they went to national competition and then interestingly enough, just a couple years ago when Carbondale was thinking of putting in a solar array field in the northeast side of town, same place where Koppers was, the people who lived there didn't want it.

And I totally agree because all that contaminated soil is still there, it's mounted over, but it's still there.

And they felt that if they went down deep and started, you know, disturbing the soil, then that solar in the same thing would might happen again, and it was just awful.

These kids really took it, really ran with this topic and did tremendous things with it.

- That is such a great example because again it's a connection to local history as well but also what you were saying earlier about learning to prepare for History Day, you also may learn about science and in this case- - Yes.

- Wow.

- Really.

- A lot of learning about science with the environmental dangers which occur in our society here and in other countries.

So broadly, there are so many examples of abuse and the fact that we suffer for that, the one that I thought of immediately when I think of environmental, because again it's current events and it's in recent times, and was in fact even mentioned recently in the State of the Union Address in terms of an example of the need for federal government action.

And that is getting rid of lead pipes which we have seen, you know, all over the country, most notably in Michigan.

- Yes.

- Where this was a problem and we had contamination and it deeply affects the health of children in particular, but everyone to have contaminated water.

Other projects, we have a little bit of time left that really stand out to you ones that you think about and you know, you remember for one reason or another, maybe the particular project quality or the topic.

- Okay, well one, there's just so many, but one that stands out is I had a group of five kids and they were all members of the band.

They played the tuba, they were percussion, French horn, clarinet and a flute.

And they all wanted to do something and the topic was communicating history.

And they chose communicating history through music and researched all the songs written about had to be about Illinois at that time, all about Illinois throughout time.

And they developed a project where they followed the history of Illinois in chronological order and included a Beatles song because, you know, the Beatles, well, George Harrison came to Benton, Illinois because his sister lived there.

These girls, I took them up, they interviewed George Harrison's sister about when George came to visit her and her husband, it was after they had come to the United States and they had gone back to England.

And she opened a bed and breakfast called the Day's Night In and the first time a Beatles song was ever played, was played by a high school student in West Frankfort and she was...

They had a student radio station, and she was the first person to play a Beatles song because it was George Harrison, was part of the group and Louise is his sister.

And that's how these kids found out and it was fantastic.

You can imagine judges get this, judges are sitting there, everyone's going, "Oh, here's another project."

(Fred chuckles) And they come in with, they opened with the SIU fight song.

(Fred laughs) And they came in and you're in this little room, and here all these kids coming in and we have the drum, we have the tuba and it with everybody was stood, you know, sat up and took notice.

They went on to win the state and they went to compete nationally as well.

That was a fun, that was a fun one because- - Great story.

- Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

- Final question for you that occurs to me.

You've been doing this a a very long time and I'm sure this is very meaningful to you, living in Illinois and history is all around us.

Land of Lincoln is on our- - Mm-hmm.

- License plate.

I was just in Springfield at the Lincoln Museum for an event.

And how much of an impact do you think that that has on how important this has become and how meaningful this is for so many educators and so many students?

- Well, we have quite a resource in Springfield.

That museum is beautiful.

The library is amazing that they have there, you go to Lincoln's Home and I think it does give us some feeling of gravitas here.

- Mm-hmm.

- We have this history and perhaps the most beloved president, well, he wasn't at the time, but sure is now.

(laughs) And I think that's important for kids to see that.

And since the state is held there, we always go and take a look and so it's important.

However, as a History Fair Project, we stay away from Lincoln because everybody knows so much about Lincoln.

- Mm-hmm.

- We always have to choose something that's a little lesser known, like Elizabeth Keckley, you know, and her connection with Mary Todd.

- And before long, we'll be visiting President Obama's- - Yes, isn't that wonderful?

Yeah.

- In Chicago.

- Right.

- What a delight having you on the show.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much for being here today.

It's been great having you.

- Thank you.

I loved it.

- My guest was Betsy Brown.

She is a longtime educator, retired from Carbondale Schools but continuing to work on Illinois History Day.

That is Eye on Education for all of us at WSIU.

I'm Fred Martino.

Thanks so much for being here and have a great week.

(inspirational music)