Third-graders get to know Youngstown

The city’s third-graders are learning about the city’s past, present and future.

By HAROLD GWIN

VINDICATOR EDUCATON WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — They examined the works of the old mill in Mill Creek Park, viewed paintings at the Butler Institute of American Art and went on a scavenger hunt at the Arms Family Museum of Local History.

Next spring, they will flood the downtown area to look at the tall buildings and find out what goes on inside.

“They” are some 600 third-graders in the Youngstown city schools taking part in a program called “Getting to Know My Downtown in the Third Grade.”

It’s a $17,000 joint effort involving the city schools, Youngstown CityScape, Youngstown State University’s Center for Urban & Regional Studies, Ronald Cornell Faniro Architect Inc., the American Institute of Architects and the American Architectural Foundation.

The goal is to implement a state academic content standard for the third grade that requires children at that level to be educated about their communities — past and present.

The children got an up-close look at what things were like in Youngstown in the 1800s with recent field trips to Mill Creek Park where they toured the old mill built in 1840 and learned about its purpose and how it worked, the Butler where they saw artwork depicting life in the 1800s and the Arms Museum where they took part in a scavenger hunt looking for 19th-century items.

In the spring, they will work with a 3-D model of downtown Youngstown and then get to visit Central Square, city hall and the Mahoning County Courthouse to examine the Youngstown of today.

The focus of those trips will be history, architecture and local government.

The overall project looks back to Youngstown’s beginnings as a river town and explains how it grew and changed to what it is today, and what it may look like tomorrow under the city’s 2010 revitalization plan.

For the pupils, it is an interdisciplinary adventure, requiring work in the language arts, math, art, science and technology.

The pupils did a workbook on life in the 18th century before taking the field trips, so they had some understanding of why and the way things were done, said JoAnn Roch, a teacher at Kirkmere Elementary School.

They were able to recognize some street names but they really didn’t know much about the formation of the city and why people settled along the river, she said.

“It’s great. In fact, I’m learning a lot myself,” said Marty Reschner, a teacher at West Elementary.

His pupils seem to be really interested in the subject and certainly enjoyed their field trip, he said.

gwin@vindy.com