An afterschool program in Cridersville nearly triples in size as students become Junior Historians.
The Junior Historian program is a collaboration of Cridersville Elementary School and the Cridersville Historical Society. Starting with six students the program ended with 16 students wanting to take time and learn about the history of the area from the Shawnee Indians, to the pioneers, and how Cridersville became a village. The students enjoyed the hands-on learning that the Junior Historian program provided.
Fourth-grader Tarahji Saleem talks about what she learned, “Well, being in the young historian club gave me an experience of history. We learned a lot of history that I didn’t even know about.”
Jonah Bradford also enjoyed the program, “We learned about Chief Blackhoof, the Indians, we learned a lot of stuff.”
Sean Heights enjoyed co-organizing the experience and says, “I love when kids get interested. Being a historian myself one of the problems that I see with younger kids is they can’t relate to history. So, when you come up with a creative way to let them relate to history, they think it’s fun and they’re like wow this is history, yes, it is. So that is basically in a nutshell what we tried to do with this program.”
This was the first year for the Young Historians and they hope to continue the program next year for the students.
