Middle School Students to Capture Civil War History on Film
Friday, November 30, 2012
By: Shuan Butcher

Award-Winning Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student® Program Begins Filming in Gettysburg as part of 150th Anniversary.

MEDIA INQUIRIES:

Shuan Butcher
Director of Communications
JTHG Partnership
703-999-7579
shuan@jthg.org

Over 260 seventh-grade students at Gettysburg Area Middle School are taking a different approach to learn about history that took place right in their own community. They are currently participating in the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership's nationally award-winning Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student® service-learning project. This groundbreaking initiative engages middle-school students in interpreting the history within their own backyards. The students use primary source documents, humanities scholarship, music, dance, dramatic readings, role-playing and digital technology to create vodcasts or mini-movies for Gettysburg National Military Park. From beginning to end, the students serve as scriptwriters, actors, directors, choreographers, set designers, costume creators, videographers, and film editors to gain a deeper connection with our national history.

On Patriot Day, September 11, 2012, the entire seventh grade class travelled to Gettysburg National Military Park for the program's Immersion Day, an opportunity to learn from the park's rangers, historians, and Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership educators regarding numerous aspects of the war, including life as a soldier, leadership, transportation, the African American experience, and technology, which provided the basis for potential topics for their project. Since then, the students have conducted in-class research and started to write and develop their scripts, story boards, and framework for their movies. In mid-December, students will return to Gettysburg National Military Park where they will film their project, engaging students as actors, directors, and key behind-the-scenes roles.

Beginning in January, the students will then work to edit their creations and put the finishing touches on their product, before the films are premiered at The Majestic Theater in Gettysburg on May 22, 2013, as part of the JTHG Partnership's annual conference. The films will debut in time for the 150th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg and become official interpretative material for the National Park Service.

The Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student® program has engaged students at E. Russell Hicks and Springfield Middle Schools in Maryland; Stonewall Middle School, Smart's Mill Middle School, and Sutherland Middle School in Virginia; as well as Harpers Ferry Middle School in West Virginia. The resulting mini-movies have become part of the official interpretative material for the National Park Service, including Manassas National Battlefield Park, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Antietam National Battlefield and C & O Canal National Historical Park. In addition the JTHG Partnership has brought the program to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, VA and Ball's Bluff Battlefield Regional Park in Leesburg, VA.

Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student has been recognized by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, won the 2010 WOW Award from the American Association for State and Local History, and received the 2009 Freeman Tilden Award, in recognition of "outstanding contributions to interpretation or education at a National Park". The award is designed to recognize interpreters that develop, revitalize or deliver an innovative, pioneering or otherwise worthy interpretive or educational program.

This project has been made possible with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, History, the National Park Service, Learn and Serve America, the Richard S. Reynolds Foundation, the Rust Family Foundation and the National Parks Foundation. For more information about the Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student® project, or the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, visit www.HallowedGround.org.

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The JTHG Partnership is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness of the unparalleled cultural, natural, and historic heritage within the swath of land from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to Gettysburg, Pa. With 400 years of European, American and African-American heritage, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground is a National Heritage Area with a National Scenic Byway running through it. Known as the region Where America Happened®, it contains more history than any other region in the nation and includes: World Heritage sites, over 10,000 sites on the National Register of Historic Places, 49 National Heritage districts, nine Presidential homes, 13 National Park units, hundreds of African American and Native American heritage sites, 30 Historic Main Street communities, sites from the Revolutionary War, French-Indian War, War of 1812 and the largest single collection of Civil War sites in the nation.

NOTE: The students will be filming on Monday, December 17th from approximately 8:30-2:00 p.m. We invite you to come out and cover this experience during that time. Additional filming days are also planned, so let me know if the 17th doesn't work for your schedule. Please contact me at 703-999-7579 to discuss the filming locations and schedule.

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