William Parker Sports College

Year 8 and 9 pupils at William Parker Sports College explored what life was like at the school in the past as an extra-curricular project.

Students were able to agree their own research interests, developing historical thinking skills to enable them to find the information to support these investigations.  They called for old boys to get in touch with their stories and memorabilia through the Bygones section of the Hastings & St Leonards Observer, and carried out interviews with them, as well as with former old boys among the current teaching staff.

The students worked with HMAG Archivist Alison Hawkins, who explained and enabled their use of archive material and provided technical support in preparing their images for exhibition.

Alison said:

"Their teacher, Debbie Grimmer, and the boys were so enthusiastic, it was a pleasure to work with them.  The boys were amazed at the generosity of the 'old boys' in the amount of information they were prepared to share with them.  They enjoyed being taken seriously as 'researchers' and became quite absorbed in the project as a result.  They learnt that even if you start off not knowing anything about a subject, you can quickly build up quite a bank of information to drive your research in lots of new and exciting directions."