Student Reflections: Kelsey Butler

For me history has always been the most fascinating subject to learn about, but many people find it hard to relate to. Reading about something in a book isn’t the same as learning about it from someone who has been through it and you can ask them questions about why they chose the actions they did. Oral history in my opinion could enhance learning about history because there is a connection between what is being read about in a book and relating it to real life. Talking to people that you know very well, and learning about their lives during a major national event, allows you to find examples that can cause something in your mind to click and have a moment of epiphany and think, “oh now I understand”.

I gained a lot of understanding of how the way my mom grew up impacted how I am today and that it comes from this period in time when my family was not even allowed to buy property in the town of Bel Air because they were black. Now I can’t go to the mall without at least one person asking me if I’m a Bond because my family is so well known. They went from working in cafeterias to working in amazing careers and without anything but a high school education in my grandmother’s case. If more students were taught to learn history by connecting the past to the present and how their lives are the outcome of those events it would make history easier to understand and remember.