A Lewis-Palmer High School class brought in technology to breathe life into a local museum, and forged what the museum curator hopes will be an ongoing relationship with students.
The 22 students in an 11th-grade honors American history class interviewed local residents and created exhibits on the 20th Century in the Tri-Lakes region that includes a self-guided mp3 tour.
The exhibit will be on display at the Lucretia Vaile Museum in Palmer Lake through the summer.
Students interviewed residents from various time periods, including some who graduated as early as the 1930s when Lewis-Palmer High School was Lewis Consolidated School.
In a corner of the small museum in Palmer Lake, a time line spans each decade of the 1900s.
Beneath it is a colorful collection of artifacts — a tin lunch box, Raggedy Ann dolls, clothing, a desk, old fashioned Barbies — that lend a glimpse of the past.
The artifacts collected by students are more than dusty belongings, though. To students, they represent lifestyles untainted by smart phones and laptops, and a time when life was simple and communication was personal.
“It was neat to see how much things have changed,” said student Mason Woish of Monument, who interviewed a retired activities director from Lewis-Palmer High School. “It was a lot more active, instead of staying inside and using technology.”
History teacher Tana Lucido divided the project into categories such as entertainment, transportation and social issues. Students researched independently and then collaborated on the exhibits.
Lucido said she often tries to make history come to life, but this was the first year she organized a museum exhibit assignment. She approached the Palmer Lake Historical Society and the museum with her vision, and museum curator Roger Davis was on board for working with students for the first time.
The exhibit, which opened in May, has attracted praise from the community, Davis said. About 90 visitors toured the museum on Father’s Day.
“Quite a few (people) actually commented on the display and they were pretty impressed that the school was able to put so much together because young people aren’t typically history-oriented,” Davis said. “They did a great job.”
The class created a brochure and a self-guided mp3 tour with narratives to supplement the 14 exhibit stops. Creating a self-paced audio tour has been on Davis’ list of to-dos for 10 years, but the museum hadn’t had the technology or the time.
“You can always teach old horses new tricks,” Davis said about the collaboration with students, adding that Lucretia Vaile will use the information and oral interviews for its own records and archives.
Along with other local history, the exhibit details the expansion of the area’s school system, which began as one-room houses that persisted until the mid 1920s, when they were consolidated into a school district. Pictures and old yearbooks portray how the community morphed from mostly uninhabited countryside where people went for a railroad stop, a vacation spot or to ice farm, Woish said.
“Now, it has just became really a pretty tight-knit community,” said Woish’s twin brother Logan, who was also in the class. “You can know most people around the area, but it has grown a lot.”
The class will return to the museum in August to finish transcribing audio interviews. In anticipation of possibly working with students again next fall, Davis has projects lined up.
“For us it’s a major exhibit. We’re a small museum, so it’s not on the scale of King Tut, but for us it’s pretty good sized.”
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