June 29, 2016 -- Fairfax Elementary School’s “Centennial Celebration: A Museum One Hundred Years in the Making” took students and staff about three weeks to put together. But it represented a year’s worth of study and a century’s worth of history.
Fairfax, the oldest still-existing school in the CH-UH district, opened its doors to students in the fall of 1915. The current student body spent the past year immersed in local, national and global history. Each month was dedicated to a different decade, with historical facts read on the morning announcements, music in the lunchroom on Music Mondays, and books from each time period available in the library.
The centennial served as a theme for everything from Halloween, when students marched in a Century Parade wearing clothing from their favorite decade, to Literacy Night, which featured games from the past one hundred years. Other highlights included a Parade of Cars in May, when historical cars such as a 1929 Ford Model and a 1956 Austin Healey Sprite visited the school, to a special photo of the student body in the shape of 100 taken with a drone.
The culminating event, held on June 3, consisted of a “museum” of student work and a live presentation. Each grade level used the waning weeks of school for an in-depth study of one topic. First grade, for example, focused on how transportation had changed over the past century, while fourth graders looked at inventions and technology.
Third graders studied music and created timelines of famous musicians, posters describing different genres, and graphs of student preferences. Grade level displays included artifacts such as records, old music books and phonographs. One third grader excitedly asked a guest, “Can you believe this record player?”
A crowd favorite was the collection of phones and cameras on the fourth graders’ table. Students eagerly practiced dialing and had an opportunity to imagine what life must have been like when phones were still tethered to the wall.
Second grade studied clothing, with two classes collecting and labeling samples, while Ms. Kephart’s students worked in pairs to create online slideshows for each decade which were displayed on iPads for museum-goers to explore.
The fifth graders looked at local history, enhanced by some of the literature they read throughout the year. In January, which was dedicated to the 1960s, their ELA classes read a novel about the struggle for integration in Mississippi, followed by a visit from local civil rights history expert Susie Kaeser who walked them through the unique integration story of CH-UH in the 1960s and 70s.
In the end of May, fifth graders took a walking tour of the Cedar Lee commercial district, guided by photos dating back to 1928. They worked together to find and photograph each location in their packet so they could compare the neighborhood over time. Their museum exhibit included a large Then and Now timeline with pictures of everything from the YMCA in 1950 (now the western half of the library) to the Silsby Firehouse in 1936 (now Lee Silsby Pharmacy).
A century’s worth of Fairfax memorabilia was on display, with items donated by retired teacher Pat Steinfurth, the Cleveland Heights Historic Preservation Society, and local alumni plus other items found in the building itself.
One guest was perusing a table filled with old photos and yearbooks when he glanced down at a bound book of handwritten PTA minutes and immediately recognized his mother’s script. Sure enough, when alumnus Pete Scriven turned the page, he saw his mother’s signature and a date from 1957, when she served as PTA’s recording secretary.
Scriven was joined at the event by other community members, parents and alumni for the afternoon celebration. The student body visited the museum and watched the presentation in the morning. Third graders Willie Allen, Olivia Bruening, Sheron Cole and Austin Gallagher, dressed in costumes from the 1920s through the 1970s, narrated a slide show of photos that walked guests through the history of the school with a focus on the various projects students had enjoyed over the course of the centennial year.
The presentation also included second grader Jayden Chase, who transported the audience back to the 1930s with her beautiful rendition of “Tomorrow.” Fifth grader Marcus Holland and his sixth grade brother Vince delivered their hilarious rendition of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?”, widely considered the best comedy routine of the 20th century.
Another highlight of the event came when fifth graders Salaya Davis and Nia Patterson danced on to the stage in 1920s outfits to show off their Charleston moves. They were followed in quick succession by pairs of costumed fourth and fifth graders who performed the jitterbug, hand jive, and twist, working their way through the decades until all dancers reconvened on stage for The Whip and Nae Nae.
Students, staff and community members topped off the day with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday Dear Fairfax and, of course, a cupcake.