Essex National Heritage Area
Tom Leonard, President, ENHC

Tom Leonard,
President Emeritus, ENHC

Tom Leonard writes a monthly column for the community newspapers in the Essex National Heritage Area. This is a reprint of this month's column.
tleonard
at essexheritage.org.

Columns
Using Essex History Summer Institute Highlights Activities at ENHC

I certainly hope that you are all enjoying the summer and the traditional vacation period as much as I am. When I began helping the ENHC to accomplish its lofty goals, ten years ago, I had just ended a nearly four-decade career in the banking business. At that time we all agreed that I would not be in the office on a regular basis during the summer. I come in from time to time to keep abreast of the many programs and undertakings of the ENHC, and to be brought up to date on what is happening, and then return to my pursuit of other summer activities. During my summer visits to the ENHC office, I continue to be impressed with the variety of activities that the Commission has on its agenda, and thought I would share a couple of those programs with you today.

Using ESSEX History Summer Institute

For the last two years the Essex National Heritage Commission in conjunction with the City of Beverly, the National Archives and Records Administration and Salem State College has offered a program called Using ESSEX History. The three-year program has been made possible through a grant program from the Education Department of the Federal Government called Teaching American History. The program is designed to increase middle and high school teacher’s knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of key events and issues in American History through an intensive ongoing professional development program. The program is offered to the twenty-four school districts in the region that ENHC serves. After the second year of the operation, twenty-two of the districts have sent participants to a session. There are nearly 100,000 students in the districts served, so the program impacts a wonderful cross-section of students from across the region. During this most recent school year eight individual seminars have been held with wonderful participation from the teaching professionals in the region. Teachers in the area who attend sessions receive professional development points for participating and for producing primary-source based lesson plans for use in their classrooms.

The summer institute this year was once again fully subscribed. Applications were received from over 60 teachers and the thirty available seats were quickly filled. The session ran this summer from July 16 th through July 20 th and was held at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, Andover Historical Society, Marblehead Museum and Historical Society, National Archives and Records Administration in Waltham, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The 30 teachers who attended the 2007 session each received a stipend for attending and also received three graduate educational credits.

Using ESSEX History has one more year to run, and the Essex National Heritage Commission has recently learned that funding for another three-year program, ESSEX LINCs, focusing on elementary teachers has recently been approved. This is wonderful news, and the beneficiaries of this program will continue to be both teaching professionals and the school children of this region.

Using Rail Trails First Hand

Earlier this month, the ENHC Co-Director of Heritage Development, Bill Steelman decided that the best way to learn about rail trails and their use was to get out “on the road”. Bill spent a week riding the recently completed Great Allegheny Passage in southwestern Pennsylvania and western Maryland, and the C & O Canal Towpath in the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park. The 375 mile ride Bill undertook, was named The Greenway Sojourn and it was the official grand opening of these three newly linked trails which is now thought of as the “longest multi-purpose trail in the country”.

Bill rode a portion of the trail each day with other enthusiasts and it is clear that there are other parts of this country that are further along in rail trail development than we are here in the Northeast. The experiences gained in Bill’s week long trip will be put to good use as he continues to be the primary liaison from ENHC to the ongoing efforts in Essex County to develop the Border to Boston Trail. Bill was one of the organizers of the Coastal Trail Coalition in Newburyport, Amesbury, Salisbury and Newbury, and continues to be a wonderful advocate for rail trail development in this region.