Colorado Academy freshmen welcomed elders from three local community centers to campus today as part of the Oral History Project headed by Upper School English teacher Betsey Coleman. The students gave the elders a box that contained a short story, a dialogue, a biography, a thank-you note, and pictures, all representing the elders’ lives.

 

The Oral History Project, which began in 2012, seeks to combine language arts with service learning and drama pedagogies to deepen students' connections to their community, as well as to build self-confidence and strengthen creative writing skills.  

 

 

Since first meeting and interviewing the elders in November, the students have been busily writing their stories as part of the project, working in small groups to develop oral history skills, prepare for the interviews, and collaborate on writing.

 

Students presented their elders today with a photograph from their time together, a biography of their life, a dialogue, a haiku based on the first day of their meeting, and a creative writing piece, which they called “flash fiction” based on a “fictionalized” incident in the elder’s life.

 

Says one elder, “I’m a retired teacher and I think this kind of program is wonderful, and I wish it was something I would have done when I was teaching.”

 

On what he learned from the project, one freshman says, “I found that a lot of boundaries were kind of broken when we shared stories, and that the connection between youth and elders is really not that different when you share stories.”

 

 

To read a dialogue, click here.

 

To see a photo gallery of the event, click here.