In order to help schools and youth groups preserve local history, The History Channel recently awarded $250,000 in grants to 27 historical organizations across the country, including the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation.
The individual grants of up to $10,000 will be used to create educational programs for elementary students that incorporate an area’s history into hands-on learning.
“We’re very pleased and very proud to be the recipients of this grant,” said Tracy Silberman, executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation (GQHF).
The Save Our History grant was created to support local history education and historic preservation efforts in communities across America. The funding goes toward hands-on educational projects that teach students about their local history and actively engage them in its preservation, according to the Save Our History Web site.
The Gaslamp foundation is partnering with Sunset View Elementary to design and plan its project, which should be in effect by the beginning of next year.
Silberman explained that the project is an expansion of their current Gaslamp Kids Program, which gives tours of the historic William Heath Davis House and provides interactive online puzzles.
“We talk about what life was like for children 150 years ago and we relate history as though they were living in the 1800s,” Silberman said. “But we didn’t really take them on a walking tour of the Gaslamp Quarter to focus on the architecture. So what this grant does is it allows us to take the next step. We’ll still talk a little bit about history, but it also lets us bring in the architecture and why it is so important to save these old buildings.”
She explained that the first phase of the project is curriculum development, which is where Rebecca Mashburn, second-grade teacher at Sunset View Elementary, comes in. Mashburn will ensure the program corresponds with district curriculum and is age appropriate, as well as assist in creating a teachers guide.
A representative from the foundation will visit schools and encourage them to participate by setting up a walking tour.
“We’re going to compare the adornments on a building to their clothing adornments,” Silberman explained. “When kids put on their clothes they think about what looks cool and what looks fun and what everybody else is going to like, and a building is no different.”
The students will then create their own historic buildings. Each student will cut out a paper building in a 3-D form. They will put it together and decorate it according to what they want the building to be. The students will put their buildings together to create their own model historic district. The model districts can be put up for display at the William Heath Davis House, if the school chooses.
“We want to make this an interesting and exciting project and in order to do that we felt we needed to add an artistic component to it as well,” Silberman said.
While the project is geared toward second through fifth grades, the project and tours can be adjusted to students of all ages.
While Silberman believes that local history is present in school curriculum, she does believe that the Gaslamp Quarter has been ignored in the past and with good reason.
“Many years ago the Gaslamp Quarter was not safe for children, so there really wasn’t an opportunity,” she explained. “The school district has an excellent program that speaks about early San Diego history in terms of Old Town San Diego, but they don’t come here into the Gaslamp Quarter, which is an important piece of San Diego history that has been missing.”
But the changes that have occurred over the years in the Gaslamp Quarter have made the area much more family friendly.
“That’s why we’re so excited about this grant,” Silberman said. “It opens up a whole new audience to us that we’ve only just barely tapped into before.”
For more information on the foundation or the History Channel grant, visit www.gaslampquarter.org or www.saveourhistory. com/index.html, respectively.