BRATTLEBORO — Poet Wendell Berry once said, “If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are.”
This simple yet provocative idea has been at the center of the Hilltop Montessori Middle School's seven-week Sense of Place study that has taken students far beyond the classroom to explore both the ordinary and the extraordinary people, places, and events of Brattleboro.
According to a news release, they pored over Historical Society archives, discovered primary source materials at the Brooks Memorial Library's History Room, went digging through decades of deeds in the Town Clerk's office, and engaged in surveys, interviews, photo shoots, and conversations in the busy shops and businesses of downtown Brattleboro and in the quiet rooms of Holton Memorial Home and Pine Heights Nursing and Rehabilitation Center,
A central part of the study, “Life in Brattleboro - The Society Project,” is a look at a wide array of individuals from the Brattleboro community.
After an exploration of the fundamentals of human society, students selected an individual, conducted an interview, crafted a thesis that described their subject's role and connection to the community, wrote a storyboard, led a photo shoot, and created a digital photo montage that supports the student's thesis.
In these delightful short films, students share their special insights about some of Brattleboro's local merchants, community leaders, service providers, farmers, artisans, and artists.
The films will premiere at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center on Friday, Jan. 5, at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. Also on display at Amy's Bakery through the month of February are framed photo collages dedicated to the same subjects.
Wallace Stegner wrote in his essay, “The Sense of Place,” “... a place is not a place until people have been born in it, have grown up in it, lived in it, known it, died in it ...” and “No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.”
On display at the Brooks Memorial Library through the month of January are books written by Hilltop Montessori Middle School students that are the result of primary source research on an array of student-selected topics of Brattleboro history.
Subjects as varied as the story of the Chelsea Royal Diner or the early Brattleboro feminist Clarina Howard Nichols are represented by handcrafted books that combine serious academic research with creative flights of student imagination.
Everyone is invited to open, read, and enjoy these original and inventive journeys into the town's collective past.