From school year 2001-2002 through 2004-2005, VOICES project directors and artists worked on Tucson’s Southside with Sierra Middle School (Sunnyside School District).

The VOICES team included project director/editors Regina Kelly and Sherrie Wagoner; award-winning poet and oral historian, Rita Maria Magdaleno; and renowned public artist and photographer, Steve Farley. This team worked weekly with Sierra students to document the World War II oral histories and photographs of 44 Tucson seniors.

The VOICES team also taught the middle schoolers how to respond to other people’s stories from the heart—through poetry, journals, and imaginative journeys back into history.

Click here for more information on VOICES’ publication

This phase of the project culminated on May 8, 2005 (the 60th anniversary of Victory-in-Europe Day) with the publication of VOICES’ seventh community-stories publication, They Opened Their Hearts: Tucson Elders Tell World War II Stories to Tucson Youth.

The response to They Opened Their Hearts was overwhelming. Over 800 people attended the book’s release party and over 300 World War II vets called VOICES in the summer of 2005 asking if they could also share their stories with young people.VOICES had planned to use 2005-2006 as the year in which we transformed our best practices from the previous four years into a curriculum for middle schools and high schools.

Due to the enormous community response—especially from WW2 vets—we decided to both write the curriculum and continue interviewing vets.

VOICES approached City High School (our “roommate”) and pitched the idea of working with City High students to continue documenting WW2 stories. City High—whose core philosophy includes “the community as text”—enthusiastically signed on.
During school year 2005-2006, VOICES worked with four City High classrooms to document the photos and stories of the 19 Pacific Theater of Operations WW2 vets on this website.

The VOICES team included Executive Director/Artistic Director, Regina Kelly, Project Director Rachel Villarreal, and guest artist/photographer Therese Perrault.The City High School team included Principal Carrie Brennan, teachers Brett Goble and Sarah Bromer, and students from City High’s four “Division II Humanities: American Studies” courses.

Youth Development Goals for the World War 2 Stories Project, 2005-2006

Our youth development goals for the City High School youth during 2005-2006 were:

• Improve the students’ artistic skills—specifically, photography and visual literacy.
• The basics of digital photography: how to take aesthetically compelling photographs.
• The basics of photo aesthetics.
• The basics of photo editing: how to choose and crop relevant and aesthetically compelling photographs.
• “Visual Listening” for live and taped interviews: how to establish relevancy and search for relevant historic photographs.
• Improve the students’ research skills through primary and secondary research.
• The Oral History Interview.
• Body language that shows respect and elicits trust.
• Legal and ethical release forms.
• How to use the tape recorders and microphones.
• Brainstorming interview questions.
• The art of the open-ended question.
• Editing interview questions.
• The art of the follow-up question.
• “Visual Listening” for live and taped interviews
• Citing sources using the MLA style of footnoting and bibliography.
• Improve the students’ language arts skills—specifically, expository and creative writing.
• Editing an interview.
• Excerpting the best quotes from an interview.
• Using poetry and journal writing to express your feelings and exercise your imagination in response to the community stories documentary process.
• Writing expository essays and sidebars with footnotes.
• Improve the students’ emotional and citizenship skills.
• Feeling better about themselves.
• Feeling more valued by community adults.
• Feeling more comfortable with people of different age, cultural, racial, and/or ethnic backgrounds.
• Increasing their desire to serve their community.
• Increasing their interest in learning about local history and stories.
• Increasing their desire to do better in school.