From the World War I Centennial News Podcast
Education: Teacher Suzan Turner and her Award-Winning Students
In May 3rd's edition of the World War I Centennial News Podcast, Episode 121, host Theo Mayer interviewed Suzan Turner and a few of her students from Nashau, Iowa. Suzan's students produced an award-winning documentary for Who They Were, a National History Day program that encourages students to engage with World War I. The following is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity:
Theo Mayer: Under Education, last year we put together an education consortium consisting of the US World War I Centennial Commission, the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, which is America's leading institution dedicated to the Great War and its enduring impact, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, a nonprofit organization devoted to the improvement of history education and our friends at National History Day, another nonprofit educational organization that offers year long academic programs that engage over a half a million middle and high school students annually. One of the initiatives that came out of the consortium is National History Day's Legacy of World War I. This is a teacher participation course that includes Memorializing the Fallen, where you research a fallen soldier from your community. That idea was brought down to the student population through another initiative called Who They Were. Our next guests include a teacher, Suzan Turner, a talented and gifted student teacher as well as National History Day coach at Nashua Plainfield High School in Nashua, Iowa. With her are a group of her very talented and gifted students, who created an award-winning mini documentary video for Who They Were. Let me greet each of you. Suzan, thank you for being the inspiration here.
Suzan Turner: Thank you very much. We're very happy to be a guest on your program.
Theo Mayer: On the student side, we have Drew, Abby, Tyler, Jayne and Lucas. Hey, guys.
Students: Hello. Hi.
Theo Mayer: Before we get going, I had a chance to watch the video this morning and I just wanted to open by telling you that I've been producing media for a very long time and your mini documentary is genuinely really good. Congratulations to all of you. That's really impressive.
Students: Thank you. Thank you.
Theo Mayer: Well Suzan, let me start with you. Just a few weeks ago, you and your team of intrepid young historian adventurers went to Des Moines, the Iowa State capital and met the Governor. Tell us the story of what happened.
Suzan Turner: Yes. Last week, actually on April 24th, we traveled to Des Moines where the students received the award. It's called the Loren Horton Award for Local History. They were being honored for having the outstanding youth project in local history in the State of Iowa this year. We're pretty excited to receive that invitation and travel to Des Moines and take part in that ceremony. It honored their 7-minute video that you watched this morning, honoring our community's history during World War I.
Theo Mayer: Interesting. Suzan, how did the whole project come about for you and your students?
Suzan Turner: Well, it started actually last spring, when I received communications from the National History Day program in Maryland and they invited me to take part in a program called Memorializing the Fallen, that was sponsored by World War I Centennial Commission. I was part of a group of nine teachers that traveled to Belgium and France. We did research on a fallen hero from our community. My fallen hero was a man by the name of Frank Dann and I had the chance to give a eulogy at his grave site up in Meuse-Argonne Cemetery. Part of the program is also we're doing research on a veteran who served in World War I from our community, who was able to come home and live out the rest of their life. The students really helped take some of my research and then, did additional research on their own on Carl Demro, the veteran and that became the source of the video. That's kind of how it happened.
Theo Mayer: All right, guys. I'm going to ask each of you some questions, one after the other. I want to start with Abby and Jayne, who did most of the research. Before the project, did you know anything about World War I? How about you Jayne?
Jayne: I knew what I had learned in history class, but I hadn't really taken my own initiative to learn anything more until this project.
Theo Mayer: What was the single thing in your research that surprised you the most, Abby?
Abby: What really surprised me was how Nashua really played a role and how there's a lot more people from Nashua than what we expected who served during that time.
Theo Mayer: You know, you bring up a really good point. World War I affected everyone in the nation. Unlike the more recent wars that you hear about on the news, but they don't really touch you. World War I happened to the whole community. Let me move on to the video product team, Drew, Tyler and Lucas. Drew, you were the narrator for the video, right?
Drew: Yes, I was.
Theo Mayer: I can tell from your voice. You did a really great job. Have you ever done anything like this before?
Drew: Yes. For the past three years, I have been involved in National History Day and I have been a part of either a group or an individual project primarily focused on World War I.
Nashau, IATheo Mayer: Tyler, you and Drew did a lot of the video editing. You worked with stills, historic videos, even some aerials. We'll get to that in a minute. You did a lot of good, complicated, what we call motion graphics editing in the video. Moving and combining stills to the soundtrack and so forth, where did you learn all that?
Tyler: Like Drew said before, we have had experience within documentaries and stuff like that. We took the video footage that we got from other documentaries as well as we were able to use our photo archives that Nashua has that dates back to before World War I. We were able to take that and kind of bring light to the situation that Nashua had during World War I.
Theo Mayer: Between the research and how you guys did the editing, it's actually about storytelling and you guys did an amazing job with story. Okay, Lucas, a little birdie told me that you like to fly drones.
Lucas: Yeah.
Theo Mayer: I like shooting aerials myself. What kind of drone is it?
Lucas: It's the DJI Phantom 3 Standard edition.
Theo Mayer: Nice bird. Okay. I have a last question for each of you and I want to start with Jayne and Abby. If somebody wanted to do a project like this, what's the best advice you could give them? Abby?
Abby: I think the best advice that I could give them is don't be afraid to take on a big project like this because you can have a really good outcome if you put in a lot of hard work and effort.
Theo Mayer: Good answer. Jayne?
Jayne: The best advice for somebody would be to go out and join your community and talk to people. A lot of times, there are people in the community want to share their story and especially want to share it with young people, so the best way to learn sometimes is just to go out and talk to people in your community.
Theo Mayer: I love that. Wonderful advice. Tyler?
Tyler: I think, one of the best advice that I could probably give them is if you're going to do, for example, a documentary, don't look at other documentaries as well as videos to help you best portray the story that you want to tell.
Theo Mayer: Drew?
Drew: When taking on a large project like this, what I've come to learn with documentary making is that it's easier than it seems. I feel like almost anyone would be able to pick it up, so don't be afraid to go out there and try to learn a new skill because as you could see with our video, it was able to impact the lives of everyone in the community. I think that's something that's really special.
Theo Mayer: How about you, Lucas?
Lucas: I would say just to take on this big project with little chunks instead of looking at the big picture, look at every little single small picture within it. Also, if you're going to do drone shots, don't lose your drone like we almost did. That's very helpful.
Theo Mayer: Miss Turner, your team did an amazing, remarkable, highly professional, really relevant project. Imagine that you're thinking back about this in 10 years, what are you going to remember most about this teaching experience?
Suzan Turner: I think I might have remembered just how this impacted the students. I've seen kids grow so much in their abilities. We talked about the vision of the project and they just took it and ran with it. These folks are top-notch and that's why I love to be a teacher.
Theo Mayer: Well you are, each and everyone of you, awesome. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your story. I just wanted to say that you and your project are all helping to keep the faith with your heritage, your history, your community and your future. On behalf of the World War I Centennial Commission, I wanted to congratulate you and I wanted to say thank you.
Suzan Turner: Thank you.
Students: Thanks. Thanks for having us.
Theo Mayer: That was Teacher Suzan Turner from the Nashua Plainfield High School in Nashua, Iowa and her wonderful team of students, who created an award-winning video for National History Day's Who They Were World War I program. We have links for you in the podcast notes to the video, and it's only seven minutes, so I recommend you take a look at it, it's really good, and the National History Day Programs.
Links:
https://www.nhd.org//who-they-were?utm_campaign=national-history-day&utm_content=March+2019+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
https://www.nashua-plainfield.k12.ia.us
https://iowaculture.gov/history/get-involved/history-awards/recent-excellence-history-award-winners
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/IACIO/bulletins/23f5527
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU6G2j2iOII&feature=youtu.be