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American story: L-P annual Sophomore Honors Culture Fair shows local families’ journeys

Sophomore students at La Salle-Peru Township High School presented information, artwork, artifacts, food and more about their family history at Friday’s Sophomore Honors Culture Fair.This project collaboration between the social science and English departments represented more than a month’s worth of students’ work in researching their family’s history, origin and culture.“The English and history departments at LPTHS have been collaborating for a long time on many levels,” LPTHS Sophomore English teacher Shelly Phillips said. “This was one of those things where you look at overlap for our students to learn about similar things from different angles.”Students brought in tri-folds, posters, binders, even treasure chests to display their family’s heritage and path to LPTHS.“Immigration is a huge part of the American story,” LPTHS Honors US History teacher Troy Woods said. “We want our students to know where they fit in the history of this country.”Woods said that the origin of this project predates his arrival at LPTHS, crediting Holly Ziegler and Deb Zeman with coming up with the idea over 20 years ago.“We want our students to learn and get experience with research, especially with primary resources, and how to conduct interviews,” Woods said.Students get over a month to research and produce a comprehensive look at their family’s history through artwork, artifacts and an essay before presenting it and being asked questions about their family’s journey.“I ask the students to draw a conclusion at the end of all of their research about the effect of their ethnicity’s immigration on the United States,” Phillips said.Friday, the sophomores set their projects up, accompanied by a dish from their family’s country of origin and other unique artifacts and factoids about their heritage.Along with a comprehensive family tree, students displayed maps, flags, and images of customs, historical figures, famous monuments, current events and even poems about their family’s home country, to help them learn about their ancestry and family’s past.Throughout the process of reaching out to family members, students learned some interesting facts and heard some interesting stories about some of their ancestors.Kale-Jakobii Harden, whose family descends from Poland, learned a lot for this project from his grandmother, including about a story about his great-grandfather.“I wouldn’t have known a lot about my family’s history without my grandma. She helped a lot with the research and some of the artifacts,” Harden said. “She loved telling me a story about my great-grandpa, that when he was in the Vietnam War, he fell asleep on the beach while he was supposed to be doing something. I had never heard that before, so that was cool.”This project helped Kash Tomsha learn more about his family and their longstanding contribution to the community.“Without this project, I wouldn’t have known how long the restaurant has been around,” he said. Tomsha, whose family descends from Italy, owns and operates Verucchi’s in Spring Valley.The Sophomore Honors Culture Fair at LPTHS didn’t only help out the students assigned with the project.As visitors and family members observed the students’ finished product, people from different backgrounds and origins explained their origin and their home country’s customs, recipes, stories and more. This fair has been an annual tradition at LPTHS for more than two decades, and with the experience this year’s sophomores and their families had on Friday, it’s easy to see why.

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