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Students and teachers learn from Kansas Day

While most students at Pittsburg USD 250 elementary schools study Kansas history as a unit sometime during the school year, many classes have taken extra time out of their schedule recently to celebrate 145 years of Kansas statehood.

Since the anniversary of statehood actually fell on Sunday this year, the students couldn't do much on the actual anniversary, but that didn't stop them from taking part in activities last week and this week.

Nancy Lipka's third-grade class at George Nettels Elementary School has been one of the more busy classes lately, obtaining different replicas from the Kansas History Museum, as well as building settler and Native American dwellings and making paper covered wagons.

Many students were also decked out in their favorite Kansas attire, from sweatshirts with sunflowers on it to cowboy hats.

And while the children were definitely having fun, they are also learning, which is what Lipka was after.

"It is important for children to know about their state's history," she said.

Third-grader Brianna Warren, one of many students donning a cowboy hat, said she learned a lot about the history and geography of the state.

"We've learned stuff like what they would do, how they would survive and what the kids would do; they would help on the farms," she said. "Kansas is flat, but they also have Mt. Sunflower (the state's highest point of elevation at 4,039 feet). It was really a lot of fun."

While the children are the ones that are learning, that doesn't mean that the teachers don't have to do studying themselves. Both Lipka, a native of New York, and Meadowlark Elementary School Principal Phillis Scorse, who grew up in southwest Missouri, remember having to study for Kansas Day.

"I remember when me and my husband first decided to move out here, people that knew us were thinking, 'Why?," Lipka said. "Kansas gets put down a lot because there are no major attractions."

Scorse's memory of Kansas Day goes farther back as well, to when she was doing her student teaching, but it still sticks out in her memory.

"I remember it was my first week of student teaching and it happened to be during the week of Kansas Day, so the teacher said 'this would be a nice project for you,' and she assigned me to get the lesson together for that day," she said. "I knew nothing about Kansas and there I was teaching the lesson."

The teachers weren't the only ones that aren't natives of Kansas, however. Meadowlark student Christian Do Rosario, who has lived in Kansas recently, but has also lived in Virginia, said he learned a lot from the curriculum.

"I learned that they have a Jayhawk as a symbol and they have a lot of wheat," he said.

Dante Jefferson, whose family moved to Pittsburg from Louisiana shortly before Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, said he learned a lot as well, and though he likes his new home in Kansas, there is one thing he misses.

"Louisiana was nice to live in because I liked climbing trees there," he said.

And the teachers aren't the only ones who think the information about Kansas history is important.

"Their assessment tests ask them questions about Kansas," Lipka said. "It prepares them for their assessments and helps make them proud of what the state has to offer."

At Meadowlark, students are doing research on computers about the state and using that to answer homework questions as well as write papers.

Vicki VanBecelaere, Meadowlark librarian, has been leading the students in much of that portion of the curriculum.

"They've been learning about the cities in Kansas, the crops in Kansas, the laws in Kansas," she said. "They've also learned a lot about the states to the north, south, east and west of Kansas," she added, "and using that for their writing in class."

But VanBecelaere is quick to deflect the credit to other teachers.

"This has been a collaborative effort of a lot of people, not just me," she said."

The Morning Sun, (www.morningsun.net) January 31, 2006