Giving Back

When I first started researching Spanish Hill a few years ago, the first thing that really struck me was that we do not discuss our local prehistory in our region. Not only that - but the information was VERY hard to even find!

Since then SRAC has been formed by a group of us who really feel that there is a need in our area to educate our surrounding communities of all ages.

You may not know this , but SRAC has spoken to elementary schools as well as nursing homes. We in fact send a bunch of our newsletters every month to a local senior care community. We have also spoke in the local high school as well as any other community group that has invited us! Here is a letter from a person who attended our presentation at Lockheed Martin last week:

"Deb and Ted, Thank you so much for the interesting and educational presentation you gave at Lockheed Martin last week. I could have listened to Ted all afternoon. You inspired me to join SRAC. I have a life-long interest in Native American culture. I will plan to visit the new museum in Waverly as soon as it is open. I have a few points that I would love to have Ted look at some time. One is a spear point that was actually found in the Susquehanna in Afton, NY. " - Thanks again, Tom Moberg

We also have a huge display case set up in the local elementary school filled with artifacts that the teachers can actually take out and use for hands on learning. Additionally, we created an online learning module about those artifacts for teachers to use. This is because we have had certain parts of our collection donated with the expressed wish that the artifacts be used with kids, and we believe it is a great thing to do.

We also loan out a a smaller display of artifacts and learning materials to go with them for boy scout troops, teachers, and even teaching students that may want to use them for a shorter period of time upon request.

Here is a letter that we just received from Jason Munn, who is working on his Master's in education and whom we loaned out artifacts and learning materials for a presentation he was doing towards that goal.

"Kudos and Bravo to the SRAC and Deb Twigg! Thank you so much for the educational materials that you provided me with. The presentation my group and I gave on the Andastes was a big success. The audience consisted of about 30 education professionals all in a graduate class on multiculturalism in Education at Mansfield University. I think that we presented them with quite a few eye-openers including the Andaste's themselves, John Smith's account, and the history of Spanish Hill. The hands-on materials and artifacts you provided us with really brought the presentation home as well. There was much discussion and interest generated following the presentation on the indigenous tribes of the area and how advanced they were along with local history in general. It is wonderful to know that there are groups like the SRAC and the people involved with it that care so greatly about preserving our local history, and what a history it is! I think that the audience took away a sense of that history and hopefully will want to educate their classes about it as well. Thanks again and keep up the great work!" - Jason Munn

If you would like to sign out some educational materials and artifacts for a school project and or to have SRAC come to your school (in our region,) give us a call at 607-727-3111 or email us at info@SRACenter.org!

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