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Why School Archive Projects Work
The most valuable possession any person has is their story, their history, the reasons they will be remembered.
Children of poverty make up most of our urban school systems. They rarely raise above the struggle meeting basic human needs long enough to even think about their history. To often it is not passed on to them. They do not know it. They have never thought about it. They have not written it. Nobody has recorded it for them. They worry about their parent's jobs and the next pay check, the next weekend. This lack of a past often leads to a lack of goals for the future. Time for a personal history, time to think of goals 10 years in the future, is unheard of. You plan forward for a week, not a decade. Thus mistakes are made.
Dropouts happen in a world without goals and too often isolated from the world outside their neighborhood.
Students do not realize they are creating a history for themselves, and their future children, every day. They simply need to record it. They need to connect with a bigger picture of life.
With an Archive Project a school provides a place for the possibility of a personal history to be recorded. Students are given a place, time, and encouragement to think of that history. They can record their past and their plans for the future. What will it be? They can make it be something more, possibly even what they want! Then they can come back, re-examine what they have done, and share their experience with students following them a decade later. They can help change lives by returning to talk with the decade younger students.
Everyone makes mistakes. This is a community. You help those who follow you to do better. That is how we all will be remembered.
The central and most memorable part of the School Archive Project process may become the 10-year 8th grade reunion. The mentoring provided by returning students to current students, and the feedback to former teachers, will be a priceless gold mine of information for all involved. We just need to pay attention to what is said.
"I am making a history" is the message of the Archive Project. Time is passing. Use it!
Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?