CALICO ROCK: Key to the Past
Poster program brings history to life in Calico Rock classes
By Amy Widner
This article was published September 25, 2008 at 4:37 a.m.
LITTLE ROCK — Betty Thornton's Calico Rock High School students will encounter the likes of George Washington, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln this fall - if not in the flesh, then the next best thing.
Calico Rock is one of 26,000 schools and public libraries across the nation, and 329 statewide, selected to receive 40 large, high-quality reproductions of American art as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities' Picturing America initiative. Along with the posters, Thornton received a detailed resource book that will make it easier for her to help her students connect with material.
Making connections, that's what it'sall about, said Thornton, who teaches English, language arts and Spanish. She has had the posters for about three weeks.
Her lesson on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1860 poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" is a good example of how she's put her Picturing America posters to work. After reading the poem and a letter Revere wrote about his ride, her students were able to look at the two paintings of Revere that came with the set. One, a painting that focuses on Revere's legendary ride, and the other, a portrait of Revere painted before he was a famous American hero.
The portrait references his work as a silversmith and connection tothe Freemasons - something Thornton's students were familiar with because of the 2004 movie National Treasure. During the discussion that followed - which got pretty lively, Thornton said - the students were able to bring their own knowledge to the table from a cultural medium they are familiar with, movies, enabling them to better connect with the past and its media.
"What it does, it opens up a world of visual images for my students so they can see what the life and times of the people we're talking about looked like," Thornton said. "It's a great tool to go along with some of the poems, essays, pamphlets, sermons and whatnot that we read in early American literature. This gives them an avenue to identify with the material and tie it into their own lives."
Those connections help students when they complete their writing assignments associated with the topic, Thornton said. Students get to learn the skills they need: reading comprehension, discussion and writing, with the help of visual elements that make the process more engaging.
Thornton and her co-worker Mark Green, the school's librarian, hope that the posters can be used to engage more than just Thornton's students. The library will be the posters' eventual home base. They will be used to decorate the library and the rest of the building, but Green is also thinking of ways to make them accessible to the whole community - perhaps businesses could check them out to display in their offices, for example.
"We are actually going to use them in a variety of ways," Green said. "Mrs. Thornton is going to use them in her literature class right now, but they can also be used in art classes, history classes - then we'll be making them available in the library for anybody to check out, access, hang up, whatever they need them for."
The posters are laminated and have small perforations in the corners for easy hanging. They include portrayals of easily recognizable historical figures likeGeorge Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but also photographs, architecture, sculpture and visual art from pre-Revolutionary America through the 1990s that help students visualize key events like World War I, the Great Depression and the civil rights movement.
Other Three Rivers communities to receive the posters include schools and libraries in Augusta, Batesville, Beebe, Bradford, Cabot, Cave City, Cherokee Village, Floral, Hardy, Judsonia, Kensett, Mammoth Spring, Mount Pleasant, Newport, Pangburn, Plainview, Pleasant Plains, Pocahontas, Quitman, Salem, Searcy, Sulphur Rock, Violet Hill, Walnut Ridge, Ward and Williford.
According to a press release, the National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent grant-making agency of the United State government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.
Applications are being accepted now through Friday, Oct. 31, for the next round of poster distributions. More information is available at www.picturingamerica. neh.gov.
- awidner@ arkansasonline.com
Three Rivers, Pages 53, 54 on 09/25/2008
