Date: Fri 07-Nov-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

schools-cemetery-middle-school

Full Text:

Finding Life And Death In The Cemetery

(with photos)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Seventh graders in Margitta Savo and Joanne Sheehan's classes visited the

Newtown Village Cemetery on Halloween Day.

Students visited the cemetery to learn about the life and death of someone who

died in the late 1700s or early 1800s. Later this month they will visit the

historic Matthew Curtiss House on Main Street in Newtown, and then write a

historical short story.

Mrs Sheehan wants the students "to start to see inside the lives of people who

lived long ago," and "to make students take on the identity of their

character."

Students made rubbings of the graves, and tried to make sense of the engraved

messages that were so important to these people hundreds of years ago.

Matt Glander scowled as he read his stone. "It says `All evil passions be

subdued.' What are evil passions?" he asked Mrs Sheehan.

She explained that "he made an effort not to do what he wanted, but instead do

what he needed to do." She went on to explain that she has to resist her

passions of reading and knitting when she needs to clean house or plan a

lesson, and kids have to resist watching television when it is time to go to

school.

Then she brought him back to the life of the man in his grave. "We don't know

his passions. But we know that he knew what it was like to live in a British

colony, and he has seen some dissension. He lived in a very combative time.

What could his passions be?"

By identifying with their person, applying their knowledge of the time their

person lived, and letting their imaginations fill in the rest, students are

gaining a deeper understanding of what life must have been like so many years

ago.

Students were also brought face to face with facts of life and death that

contrast sharply with America today. Katie Lahey, age 12, was studying the

grave of a young married woman who died at age 14.

Brian Pious said he "found a father and four kids, only the mother isn't on

the grave. They [the kids] all died at 12, 4, 6 and 10."

Another student, Peter Miesel, will base his story on a woman and two men. The

woman married her husband's brother after her husband died.

Mrs Sheehan augments the on-site study with discussions about life in past

centuries. "These people were British. They came from a civilized country to

find themselves needing to grow their own food and make their own clothing.

If you came here, and you where in the middle of the woods, what would you

do?"