Last week on Tuesday and Thursday nights, Nov. 11 and 13, Kara Coxe, a junior at James Madison High School, presented her Girl Scout Gold Award Project, “The Backyard History of Vienna” to the adult students in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Program at the Vienna Presbyterian Church.
The goal of her project was to educate the students about the history-rich area of Vienna and from this foundation of understanding to develop a sense of excitement and interest in the students about becoming an active member of the community.
From her research at Vienna’s Patrick Henry Library, the Historic Freeman House, and current periodicals, Kara’s project told the story of four distinct periods of Vienna’s history. Events from the Civil War, Reconstruction, The Great Depression, World War II, Expansion/Population Growth, and Modern Day were verbally presented as well as captured on presentation boards with photographs that described how the town was shaped into the Vienna of today.
One of the challenges of the presentation was to make it understandable to all the many levels of student’s language comprehension. To accomplish this, Kara crafted different levels of scripts for the presentation that matched the different comprehension levels of the audience. Kara will be donating her project to the ESOL program at Vienna Presbyterian Church so that the “Backyard History of Vienna” will be made available to ESOL students in the future.