Nurturing productive citizens
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools.
Frank Parker, long-time Principal of Hartselle Junior High School, served in the military, and it was important to him that students recognize those who served and sacrificed to better their country and to protect the freedoms we all enjoy today. Under Parker’s watch, HJHS began honoring veterans in a Veterans Day tribute. Over 25 years later, HJHS continues to salute Hartselle area service members with an annual Veterans Day ceremony.
Students identify veterans in their families and in the community and send them written invitations to the event. In 2024, they sent over 300. In their English classes, students write essays expressing their appreciation. Choral students learn the anthems of each of the military branches. Most of the event’s speeches are from students.
The event is certainly patriotic, but at its core the tribute is not designed to serve as a showcase for star-spangled red, white, and blue. It’s designed to acquaint students with the stories of those who have served in their own families or in the homes that surround their own. It’s designed to tie chapters in history books to faces and stories. It’s designed to encourage conversations between those who served and the young people who have benefited from that service.
We learn from reading, and we learn from teachers. But the kind of learning that grows from interactions with those who’ve had firsthand experiences is more personal and resonates more deeply.
It brings movies to mind. I recently watched the movie The Six Triple Eight which tells the story of World War II’s only Women’s Army Corps unit of color and their challenge to deliver letters of hope and encouragement from soldiers’ families to the soldiers and from those soldiers back home. I had read about the unit before, but the movie placed faces and stories of homes and families and relationships with the names of those characters. It made the World War II story feel all the more real.
In The Six Triple Eight, much was condensed or fictionalized, but in the conversations that grow out of these real students’ interactions with very real members of their own families and community, the “all the more real” feeling is, indeed, real.
As stated in the HCS Strate-gic Plan, our Hartselle schools endeavor to provide students with “experiences that honor the past and blend the best of today with the possibilities of tomorrow” while also serving them in “an environment that nurtures productive citizens, autonomous learners, critical thinkers, and effective communicators prepared for the demands of the future.” The Veterans Day program and all that builds to the day of the program serve as one example of the many ways our schools work to create environments that nurture productive citizens. But as is true with most efforts, the schools and the community are at their best when they are working hand in hand to grow all of those students who will comprise our next generation.
Hartselle City Schools has played a role in growing our future for 50 years. Nurturing productive citizens is part of what we are called to do.
