Investigating family history captures the imagination of Harrisburg High class

Ask a student to research or read about a subject that doesn't interest them, and you may find it an uphill battle. Students in Krystal Wilson's class have found a subject that they enjoy learning about all year long, themselves.

Senior Gillian Jones and junior Nolan Davidson were recently invited to a technological showcase in Springfield to show how their class is using technology in the classroom. Their project shows how to use free and low-cost online databases to make a family tree.

The project came about almost by accident in an elective English class that Wilson teaches called Southern Illinois Literature, Legend and Lore.

"We were reading about the Civil War a few years ago and talking about the battles that were near our area," Wilson recalls, "and some of the students wondered if they had relatives in those battles. So we just decided we would find out."

The project was hit at the technology showcase, where the students demonstrated how they created their family trees. State Sen. Dale Fowler was in attendance, and learned about the project ... and now he's curious about his own family genealogy.

As Wilson explains, the project has hit upon a solution to the problem of getting kids to read.

"As an English teacher, I am constantly trying to find new ways to encourage students to read," she said. "They love reading more about who their ancestors are and the time periods and areas that they came from."

To trace family ancestry beyond the shores of America frequently means having to decipher documents written in foreign languages, some even in Latin. Many church documents are also handwritten, putting the investigator at the mercy of bad handwriting.

In these cases, the students have to translate the records before they can even start to read them.

Wilson discovered the project has raised a personal awareness in students' lives that sometimes wasn't there before, and a level of healthy curiosity.

Students will yell out random questions like, "When was the battle of Antietam?" or "When were the first coal mines in the area opened?"

Wilson says her students started by trying to go back seven generations in their own families.

"Many students have gone way beyond that," she said. "Several have even found royal blood way back in their lines.

One day, two students were comparing trees and realized that six generations ago their relatives were sisters, so they are actually distant cousins."

This project is something that will stay with them always.

It is something they can take home and show their parents and grandparents and make connections across generations.