The seventh grade Red Hot Chilli Pepper team was recently given a history assignment by  history teacher Jane Gordon to a make documentary on their personal hero.

This is Gordon’s first time doing the Hero Documentary Project. She has done other big projects like National History Day, a project where you have to research a certain topic based on the year’s theme, in the past. For this project the students first have to collect primary sources, one primary source including an interview about that person. Later, when the students make the actual film, they have to define the word hero and use evidence to explain why the person they chose as their hero is a hero, based on the definition they came up with.

“The Hero Documentary Project is supposed to teach the kids several things,” Gordon said, “As historians, being this is History class, they are going to use historian skills. In first deciding what is a hero, and then using the evidence they find to prove why that person is a hero. [The students] will be collecting primary sources..putting it together to tell a story. That includes all the English skills as well as being able to write correctly for persuasion.”

More importantly, however, Gordon hopes her students will gather their personal history from researching their personal hero.

“I think there is a lot about family history that students don’t know, so this is a really good time to become closer [to their “Hero”], really understand where they’re coming from, and then to share that pride in who they are…” she says.

A lot of Red Hot Chilli Pepper students really like this project. One student is Seth Young, whose hero is his dad.

“It is very fun and interactive. I learned a lot about my hero I didn’t  already know.” Seth said.  

Another student, Raya Maraqa, really likes the editing part.

“You can edit after, and make things sound they way you want,” she said.

Mark Meskill’s hero is his grandfather. Meskill said, “It’s a great way to do research on your family heroes.”

They students do say, however, that the project does require a lot of hard work. “… it does take time to get all the [interview] questions and interviewing them,” said Maraqa.