Yes, Students, People Make the PlaceDarlene Beck, Broadwater High School
I was thinking of all those wonderful stories and facts the students were going to get out and find. After all, here we are in Broadwater County. We are approaching the next millennium and we have all sorts of concerns facing our communities. Once eighteen communities thrived in Broadwater County but only four towns have survived: Townsend, Radersburg, Winston and Toston. These communities have a great deal to explore. There were the county's major industries: mining, timber and agriculture, all three of which went through cycles of prosperity and adversity. There are great natural features. After all, we are located on the Missouri River in the heart of the Big Belt and Elkhorn mountain ranges. Coming to school we see the majestic Mount Baldy every day. But, there was something puzzling about the collages and the pictures of place that students were assembling. I assumed I had my ducks in a row for teaching the importance of place to my students. I had everything all planned out-or so I thought! But I experienced the age-old, time and time again reality of a teacher learning from the students! Every pictorial project the students produced included dozens of people. When I talked with them about the purpose, I regularly got the same response. "People are necessary to the place." "You have to have people to make it a place." "It's just nowhere without people." As the students explored places and interviewed mentors they found an abundance of information for their year-long project. They related their findings about the 30s, 40s and 50s. And in all their stories they always came back to this conclusion: "The people make the place." So I acknowledged the centrality of people to what we were doing. It seemed inevitable that as a final project, students wanted to create a pictorial archive of Broadwater County citizens. We decided to make a big event out of photographing the county's citizens. We began with our mentors. Since students didn't want to leave anyone out, they contacted their mentors with hand-delivered invitations, but they also invited others with an invitation published in the newspaper. Two main matters had to be worked out. "We don't want to just snap their picture and go," said junior Rhea Poole. "We want to make everyone feel special." As the students planned the day, they decided that it should be a work day. Besides snapping pictures, students would conduct interviews with elders who came in, gathering stories and quotes.
Students decided the ideal place was the Broadwater Community Library which serves both the school and community. Before the library was built, the planning triggered a fair amount of contention for school and community advocates, but with diligence and patience it has developed into a harmonious place for all community members. As the students started interacting with their invited guests, the place came alive with stories, quotes, hugs and promises of more meetings. The seniors thanked the students for their project. They had enjoyed their time with students and they enjoyed sharing their life experiences. "This is a really good idea," said Helen Bucy, retired teacher from Broadwater High School. "We were glad to help. Thank you for including us," added Forrest Kitto, a Crow Creek farmer. The students were rewarded by meeting more people that they had only read or heard about in class discussions. "Is that Mildred Neild?" said Amber Rauser in awe. "I really want to meet that lady." Mildred spoke about a significant part of the community's past, the building of a large dam that flooded farms and ranches. "I would like people to remember how devastating the building of Canyon Ferry Dam was for those living in the [Canton] Valley," she said. "I want these students to understand the importance of this matter." A few days later the classes viewed the portraits and shared with each other stories individual interviewers had collected from the thirty-eight guests. These people had become important in the lives of the students; the students had learned from these seniors. These are the people who make Broadwater County what it is, and they had made our place come alive. Studying a place and its history is studying its people. Students agreed on this: people do make the place!
|
We started the year vigorously, delving into Ivan Doig's This House of Sky,
and we nearly wore out the pages discussing and recalling what Doig said about place. We
nearly pitched a tent right beside Pete Fromm in Indian Creek Chronicles as we
read about his seven month adventure of place. Most of us could even feel ourselves
casting a fly rod as we scrutinized Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It. We
wrote our own essays of place, we photographed place, we made collages of place, and we
all joked that we "certainly knew our own place." 
The other important matter was place. Finding the most desirable place for
this special event was essential. Our 80 year-old school was ruled out because to get to
our classroom, people needed to climb the thirty-five stairs. "The stairs are a
definite no," said one girl. "It's not a good place." "We can't expect
those little ladies to climb those stairs."