Published: November 09, 2009 11:10 pm      

Gifted students guide classmates

Brush on their knowledge of Lincoln for museum visit

Ashland — Everybody knows kids don’t like history.

Right?

Wrong.

The students in Boyd County Middle School’s talented and gifted program like it so much they shared it with the rest of their sixth-grade classmates Thursday at the Highlands Museum and Discovery Center.

The museum is hosting an Abraham Lincoln exhibit and the gifted group spent the morning as docents, shepherding groups of students through displays about Honest Abe’s early life, presidency and assassination.

They weren’t graded, but their morning at the museum served as sort of an oral examination that tested the month of research they put into the project.

“You have to make sure you get it exactly right,” said Avery Webb.

“It’s a big responsibility,” said Mallory Copley.

One big responsibility is don’t be boring, said Josh Whitt. To keep the visitors’ attention, “we really want them to get into the characters,” he said. Josh meant Abraham, Mary Lincoln and Lincoln’s White House staff, and the American people — white and black, free and slave — who fought the Civil War.

After a month of heavy research, they put together scripts for each display area and divided up the presentation duties.

Along the way they got sucked into the drama of history. It was obvious in the way Mallory and Alisa Graham tag-teamed their talk about the great man’s early life, bouncing from display to display in their zest to share Lincoln lore.

“I hope you all know Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky,” Alisa said.

The students pretty much had to become experts to act as museum guides, said talented and gifted teacher Latishia Sparks. Naturally motivated anyway, there was the added motivation of wanting to show their best side to their classmates.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.