Creative teacher brings past to the present

When it comes to experiencing living history, we’re fortunate in this state to have many locations that depict the look and feel of how our ancestors lived, from Plimoth Plantation and Old Sturbridge Village to Lowell’s Tsongas Industrial History Center.

But if you’re one of Westford Academy teacher Stephen Scully’s 11th grade American history students, there’s no need to venture beyond school grounds for a firsthand view.

That’s because Scully brings that uniquely American story to life right in the classroom.

Surviving sewing machines from the sweat shops of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a 1930s era radio to play some of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Fireside Chats,” even the desks on which his students sit, are all examples of Scully’s beyond-the-book approach to presenting this country’s past.

You could say that Scully, an unabashed antiquarian, has literally turned back the clock.

“I’ve always kind of been a collector of antiques. My classroom is really all antiques, the kids sit in the antique desks, each row is a different era,” he said, referring to a project he undertook six years ago.

And when his quest to create a classroom full of functional American Industrial Revolution-era Singer sewing machines fell short of funds, he created a GoFundMe page in mid-March that raised the necessary capital to complete his project.

But simply observing the machinery used in the past doesn’t tell the entire story.

Operating one would give students a greater appreciation of how — in this case — many young women lived and worked at the dawn of the 20th century.

Junior Erin Fraser, who previously took up sewing as a hobby, accepted Scully’s offer to figure out how to operate one of these vintage Singer machines.

Within two weeks, not only had Fraser mastered the machine’s mechanics, she started wearing clothing she sewed on it to school, including a patterned blouse and cotton overalls.

Along the way, Fraser felt empathy for the trying circumstances in which these women labored.

She said she thought back to Scully’s history lesson on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the 1911 blaze that killed almost 150 mostly female immigrant factory workers in Manhattan. The garment workers were packed tightly into the factory, where they sewed the same piece of each garment for hours on end.

“I could not fathom working on that machine for that many hours,” Frasier said. Once she started working on the machine herself, “it was like, oh my gosh, cuz my foot got tired after like, two hours … you can really imagine yourself in the event when you’re actually using the thing.”

Not wishing to waste this retooled skill, Fraser has agreed to help Scully teach his next junior class to use the machines as her senior project.

Scully said he’s always tried to incorporate experiential learning into his lessons at Westford Academy, where he also teaches ninth grade world history. “That’s the goal. It’s about experiential learning, you know? And that’s what I wanted when I was in high school.”

It’s Scully’s hope that his hands-on approach will foster a lifelong interest in history, no matter what career path his students take.

“Ninety-nine percent of the kids in front of me aren’t going to be history teachers,” he added. “I really believe that a big part of my job is to foster a love and appreciation for the past, so that when they do come back to history, like most folks do later in life, that they enjoy it.”

We applaud Scully for transforming what could be a dry, academic exercise into an imaginative, informative exploration of the building blocks of this country.

We need more educators that are willing to take whatever subject they teach to that next level of engagement, which should facilitate imparting knowledge that’s actively — not passively — acquired.