BRATTLEBORO — What does it mean to be human?
Seventh and eighth graders at Hilltop Montessori School study this question from multiple angles as part of a two-year curriculum, Being Human.
Their latest six-week segment, “A Sense of Place,” explores what comprises a community, and students' studies have culminated in films that feature a montage of photos, music, and storytelling called “Life in Brattleboro: The Society Project.”
“The purpose of the project is to get students into the field to discover what constitutes the society of a town and who are the people who make that town what it is,” says Finn Campman, who teaches the two-year curriculum with teachers Paul Dedell and Jessica Turner.
Students interviewed local citizens from a variety of professions such as small business owners, doctors, firefighters, and artists. The students' goal, according to Campman, was to understand their subjects' public roles rather than conduct a study of their personal lives.
“These are students who are emerging citizens exploring what it means to belong,” Dedell says.
Among the many local residents to be profiled are metalworker Lester Dunklee, Sam's Department Store owner Pal Borofsky, Brattleboro Retreat psychologist Dr. Helen Daly, Brattleboro firefighter Rusty Sage, glassblower Randi Solen, and Vermont Youth Theater director Stephen Stearns.
To prepare for their interviews and individual projects, students performed research, learned how to conduct interviews, storyboard a film, and edit footage using Final Cut, digital film editing software.
Jackie Elliott, a seventh grader from Brattleboro, interviewed Robert Johnson, founder and president of Omega Optical.
She wanted to interview Johnson because engineering interests her, she said. She toured Omega twice, once to prepare for her interview and then with Johnson, who gave her a firsthand look at the production process of the precision lens manufacturing company.
“It was cool to see how much he cared about his work,” she says.
Elliott used filter effects in her short film to echo Omega's filters. “It was really awesome to learn a new program,” she says.
“I think when you have a sense of place, you know the place really well and you are connected either through your family or an event,” says Maya Sutton-Smith, an eighth grader from West Brattleboro.
Sutton-Smith interviewed Dr. Lauren Schneski from the Brattleboro Veterinary Clinic. She interviewed a veterinarian because she loves animals and is thinking about becoming one herself. Dr. Schneski performed surgery on a dog the day Sutton-Smith shadowed her.
“I'd never seen that before,” she says.
Sutton-Smith hopes the people watching her short film get a better sense of who Dr. Schneski is as a veterinarian and person.
“I had a lot of fun with this unit,” she says.
“I'm really proud of them [the students]. The films all capture something of their person,” says Campman.
Campman and Dedell say connections made with the adult interviewees will have a lasting impact on the students.
Campman notes students come away from the exercise with a broader understanding of Brattleboro and the continuity of the community through the past into the present and future.
“[Being Human] is purposefully a broad subject and purposefully very interpretive,” says Campman.
He adds, part of the goal for the “Sense of Place” unit is to help students build the skills and become willing to go out and explore these big questions.
“All the students developed a much closer connection to their idea of place,” Dedell says. “Place is not necessarily geographical. They came to recognize that place is so often what they make of it.”