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History doesn’t have to be boring for teenagers. Here are a couple examples from the Journey Through Hallowed Ground (JTHG) Partnership to show what’s possible when you combine history, cross country expeditions, and cutting-edge technology:
In collaboration with the University of Virginia Summer Enrichment Program, the JTHG Partnership is offering an Extreme Journey High School Camp, a two-week leadership program for rising 9th-11th graders. The hands-on program gives these future leaders lessons in American heritage and leadership as they hike, bike and canoe the wilds of the region with very fit and hip historians, educators, and filmmakers. Students bike the C&O canal, hike Harpers Ferry, canoe Ball’s Bluff and travel back in time to Montpelier, Monticello, Ash Lawn-Highland, and Dodona Manor. Then, participants record the trials and triumphs from the Revolutionary period through the Civil War using state-of-the art video iPods and digital cameras to create their own video documentary, or “vodcast,” on what “leadership” means to them.
The JTHG Partnership has also developed a brand new creative video contest, Ride the Tide 2008, which is open to 9th-12th grade students in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Participants read or use selected excerpts from 1776 and John Adams by Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough to create an original two-minute video. The winners of the contest will receive cash prizes—1st prize: $1,000, 2nd prize: $500 and 3rd prize: $300. The top three contestants will also be invited to meet David McCullough on May 1, 2008, and will have their videos featured on YouTube.
Pretty cool, eh? Makes you want to be a teenager again (boy, those were tough years). For details, visit the JTHG Web site at http://www.hallowedground.org.
“Journey Through Hallowed Ground” is a 175-mile-long corridor from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Monticello, Virginia that has ”soaked up more of the blood, sweat, and tears of American history than any other part of the country.” Once, this land was a hunting ground and trade route for the Susquehannock and Iroquois tribes. Later it welcomed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and countless other statesmen–many of whose homes still stand today. Now referred to as “The Journey Through Hallowed Ground,” the corridor also encompasses three National Trust Historic Sites (Belle Grove, Montpelier, and Oatlands), numerous scenic rivers and byways, and the nation’s greatest concentration of Civil War battlefields. But now this once-tranquil landscape is being radically transformed by suburban sprawl from the fast-growing DC metropolitan area where new subdivisions sprout in the midst of cornfields, meandering country roads are straightened and widened to accommodate traffic, traditional “Main Street” towns find their character threatened by incompatible new development, and venerable landmarks are engulfed by sprawl, prompting the National Trust for Historic Preservation to include it as one of the Eleven Most Endangered Places of 2007.
