Lucile Forbes, a now senior graduating a year early, although shortening her time in high school, hopes to leave a mark in the school’s history by creating the National History Club.
“I know some friends who struggle with AP Human Geography and AP World History, so if one person is struggling, that means others must be struggling too,” Forbes said. “I want to see a variety of people in the club that can help each other out.”
Forbes started NHC during the fourth six weeks to create a space for students to learn, study and tutor history in a welcoming environment. She went through the process of creating a club: writing a constitution, meeting with Ms. Stephanie Monajami, Academic Associate Principal, organizing her officers and finally meeting with Ms. Lisa Frampton, the bookkeeper.
“I found my officers through mainly friends, but also reputable people because I can’t go into a club with friends who aren’t reliable,” Forbes said. “I met officers through all kinds of stuff like Spanish class and swim, and some back in eighth grade.”
Forbes wanted to fill a gap that she felt the school had, an after-school club centered around history. She saw fellow students attend math club, book club and Science NHS, but not one for the remaining core class.
“There’s a lot of different clubs at Legacy and a lot of variety, but there’s none relating to history and that’s one of my favorite passions,” Forbes said. “I was like, ‘Well why don’t I create a history club? It can’t be that hard.’”
As an analytical student, Forbes enjoys perusing people and events throughout history, along with the effects they have caused.
“You can look at social, political, governmental and economic trends and see every little aspect and see over time how things have changed,” Forbes said. “I also find people as a whole interesting and the study of history is similar to studying people, so all of it was just really interesting to me.”
Vice President, Aiden Murphy, 12, met Forbes last year on the swim team. Like Forbes, he has a passion for the study of the past and hopes to extend it within this club.
“I’m very interested in history and I’d like to be able to help people,” Murphy said. “I’m drawn to history because we can see that all the things that are happening around us today all have a cause and we can look back further and deeper to see what caused this to happen.”
Ms. Danielle Panzarella, AP U.S. History teacher, is delighted that Forbes has started a history club and hopes that it changes the stereotype history class has.
“So few people say history isn’t boring. They say that all you do is memorize stuff, and I’m like, ‘No, you’re doing it wrong,’” Ms. Panzarella said. “History is cyclical, so what we are going through now, people 100 years ago went through the same thing. I think it’s sad that people think it’s just a collection of stuff that happened and not lessons that make us who we are as a society.”
Sophomore Vivienne Kerley, secretary for National History Club, awaits the community that comes with the afterschool program.
“I have high hopes for this club because when I read the list of who’s joining I saw some really good people and I think they will all take care of this,” Kerley said. “I hope to be president one day and if I do, I will try to take care of this club because my friends made it and I want to keep that legacy going.”
National History Club also hopes to reach outside of just the school, volunteering and donating to the city of Mansfield.
“We want to donate and volunteer for some things just so we’re giving back to the community and give money to places that need it,” Forbes said. “We’ve been looking into museums and seeing what needs to be donated and hopefully giving that to them.”
Forbes and officers are going to start club promotion next year. They will be going to history classes and promoting their club through signs, posters and presentations.
“We are planning to ask the teachers to allow us to advertise it or to advertise for it us,” Forbes said. “The thought behind the tutoring sessions is, ‘How do we take the stress off of teachers?’ because teachers already have a lot of stress and they can’t tutor all of their students, so it makes sense to have a collaborative study group.”
Forbes hopes to continue her passion for history and spark others.
“I want students to become more enriched and feel more comfortable in history,” Forbes said. “A lot of them dread it because they think it’s memorization, but it’s not, there are ways to find yourself interested in it and I hope I can help others find theirs.”
