Southeast High School teacher documents school's history
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS/WRSP) — Each and every week we are highlighting interesting stories from the schools playing in our Friday Night Rivals game of the week.
Our AJ Gersh has more on how one staff member at Southeast High School is documenting their school's history.
Over the COVID-19 pandemic, a Southeast High School teacher was asked to look up some basketball stats and records. From there, a system to document missing Southeast history was established.
Will Hopkins, the Technology Facilitator at Southeast took it upon himself to research old records and create a way to access and display them online and in-school.
"What happened is, years ago, we used to have boards for records in the gym. They must have gotten taken down and so there was some research we did during covid," Hopkins said. "We looked around, found some old things that had a lot of the old records in it and so we just try to put it on a database online now so it never goes away."
With the help of local community members and historians, Hopkins has been able to fill in the blanks in his school's history.
"It's fairly recent and we just go as far back with the information with the help of other people and if we can find a picture of them we try to put it up and display it," Hopkins said.
He is also spearheading a wall display at Southeast, where alumni's successes are showcased for students and visitors to see.
"We just wanted to show off hey what you put your mind to and what you use your time in school, this is some of what our former alumni have gone on to do," Hopkins said. "I think it's just to motivate the kids in any way you can. Say a student board member - maybe a student - sees that and decides 'Hey, I want to be up there on the wall, I wanna be a student board member.' Anything to motivate those students is really the goal."
