"Humans of Holton" site featuring HHS alumni
In the fall of 2010, a young bond trader from Chicago went to New York to pursue his photography hobby after losing his job in the Windy City. That hobby has grown into one of the most popular Web sites of today and has spawned a number of similar projects.
One of the most recent of those projects has been crafted by Holton High School English teacher Karen Ford and freshman students in her journalism class.
But the “Humans of Holton” Web site - also known as the HHS Alumni Project - despite its similarities to Brandon Stanton’s immensely popular “Humans of New York” weblog, didn’t have its origins in attempting to document the lives and thoughts of people from Holton at a certain point in time. Indeed, it began when Ford attempted to contact one of her former teachers, Lew Mills.
“I reached out to Mr. Mills to say thank you for being my math teacher in seventh grade,” Ford said. “He gave me a check to use in a project like this.”
That $500 check, she said, was intended as seed money for a project dedicated to preserving the history of Holton and its school. Mills had given a similar check to another former student who had become a teacher and reached out to him in a similar way, and it was used to create a booklet about Topeka’s founding fathers.
Ford tried to develop a similar project, but couldn't.
“I tried to find the founders of Holton and there weren't any, or they founded Holton and then they left town,” she said. “So I couldn't really copy that particular project.”
Ford later talked with librarian Annie Brock about different ways to “do something with the people of Holton,” and they came up with the idea of “a Web site that could last for years to come.” That site, Ford said, would focus on HHS alumni from different years, and she took the idea to her freshman journalism students.
“They didn’t really think in particular that it needed to be all famous people,” Ford said of her students. “They just wanted to capture a moment in that person's life that was significant and maybe get a little feel for what high school was like back then.”
Through Brock’s suggestion of a National Public Radio-related Web site, Storycorps, which Ford said “provides a list of important questions that you can ask people,” Ford took the idea back to her students, intending to start them on their journalistic paths as early as possible.
“These are beginning students,” she said. “It’s got some feeling, and the kids enjoy putting it together.”
The HHS Alumni Project, for some participating students, has also accomplished the goal of bridging generations, Ford said.
“One of the students, after doing his interview with Robert Brown, came back to me and he said, ‘I think I've found a new friend!’” she said of the student's interview with an HHS alumnus from the Class of 1948. Other alumni interviewed so far include Lesley Harris, Amy Oldehoeft, Michael Robinson, Dena Swisher and Paula Taylor.
The Web site has a twofold purpose, Ford noted, with one being talking to alumni about their years at HHS, and the other being more akin to the “Humans of New York” project, in which she said students “get practice asking questions and taking photos that might capture a person's personality.”
Each year, as the Web site states, journalism students at HHS will choose alumni who have contributed to their world in a meaningful way and interview them, documentary-style, with those interviews available for viewing on the Web site. Ford said the site will also grow as her students ask citizens in the Holton community, fellow students or otherwise, about their thoughts and feelings, as well as taking images that show them at any given point in time.
The Web site is available at www.hhsalumniproject.com
