Guest Post: Students and Teachers Make Meaning and Forge Relationships through Local Stories, from Ireland to Alaska
Guest Post By: Anjuli Grantham
I have the privilege of working with See Stories as an adviser on the AHA project. I am an Alaska historian and curator from Kodiak and Juneau who is about to finish a PhD in the field of critical heritage studies in Northern Ireland. From my shifting vantage point, sometimes in Ireland and sometimes in Alaska, I see the ways See Stories’ award winning approach connects with contemporary and historic projects of a similar ilk.
In 1937, the Irish Folklore Commission distributed an instructional pamphlet to teachers across the country. It begins:
The collection of the oral traditions of the Irish people is a work of national importance. It is but fitting that in our Primary Schools the senior pupils should be invited to participate in the task of rescuing from oblivion the traditions which… have, century in, century out, been preserved with loving care by their ancestors.
This commenced the two-year effort led by Irish children to document the oral histories, customs and place lore of their own communities. More than 50,000 students from 5,000 schools met with community elders, recording in neat penmanship the spectacular and mundane aspects of their communities’ fabric. Over half a million manuscript pages, written in both the English and Irish languages, were submitted to the Irish Folklore Collection by the project’s end. Today the Bailiúchán na Scol, or The Schools’ Collection, is an unsurpassed source documenting the folklife and social history of Ireland. It is accessed by curious folks from all over the world who are seeking old wisdom, tracking the location of lost monuments and holy wells, looking for environmental information stored within, and many other research queries.
While today we appreciate the information contained within this collection, what is less commonly considered is the educational project itself. The Irish Folklore Commission used an abbreviated “train the trainer” methodology to help the teachers instruct their own students to become local researchers. The pamphlet distributed to teachers included instructions on how to record and submit the contributions. Each story needed to be accompanied by the name of the student and the name and address of the people from whom they received the information. The pamphlet included a hefty list of topics for the students to investigate, including detailed research questions for them to tackle. Under the topic of “Old Crafts”, the commission suggested “one pupil may write down an account of the making of candles in the district in former times; another may describe how soap was made locally; a third, basket-making…” Suggested topics ranged from stories of lost treasure, to marriage customs, to butter churning and local folk cures.
I invite you to imagine teachers in rural areas standing in front of a classroom, helping their students to generate a list of questions they might ask, a list of elders they might speak with, and later helping them to edit their essays for final submission. Over the two years of the project, students and teachers honed their abilities to share intergenerational knowledge, observe local practices, and communicate about local conditions.
I hope by now you see the parallels between the work of See Stories in Alaska, and particularly the AHA! Project, and Ireland’s multi-purpose ethnographic effort that transpired half-a world away and nearly a century ago. For the AHA project, I get to meet with the enrolled teachers as they develop the content of their short films. Akin to the staff at the Irish Folklore Collection, I provide tips and support as the teachers consider what local stories and local sources are available for shaping their documentary films. After they have produced their own films, I speak with them again about the sources and topics that their own students might tap into as the students conduct research and produce local stories.
For See Stories, the ethos of development surges throughout this. This development comes in many forms. It is the development of local relationships, the development of the hard and soft skills needed to conduct and record interviews, the development of critical thinking to know what sources to include in the media products under creation. See Stories is also working on the development of different kinds of repositories of local memory. These repositories are both tangible and intangible: they exist as the videos and podcasts teachers and students have produced, and they exist in the intergenerational transmission of stories and knowledge that are now in the minds and hearts of younger generations.
As evidenced by The Schools’ Collection, when we invest in our teachers, our youth, and the sharing of local stories, we are also contributing to the way our nation sees itself and understands itself, both now and in the coming century. Put otherwise, investments like those we make in See Stories are meaningful in the moment: when the grandchild interviews the grandparent, when the student recognizes herself as a capable researcher, when the teacher can connect abstract curricula within a local context. And these investments are meaningful in the future: when the grandchild of that grandchild hears their ancestor’s voice, the scientist sees how locals contended with erosion and environmental change, and someone from another country entirely compares the stories of Irish fairies (sidhe) with the stories of Yupik cingsiit.
I encourage Alaskans and those from elsewhere to continue to show support for the developmental work of See Stories, an organization that helps many people find and make meaning in community with others.
