The History of Hillwood

Hillwood  Academic Day School has been a school for 61 years.  Mr. Grantzs' grandmother started the school.  Her name was Mary Libra.  The school's colors are forest green and dark blue.  Hillwood is not a typical school, for it is in a victorian house that was built in 1893.  Mary Libra started the school in 1949 and she started the summer program in Muir Woods.  In 1995, Libra passed away and Mr Grantz ran the school, with the help of his wife.  Mr. Grantz now runs the school. 

Even after 61 years, the outside of the the school still looks almost the same.  The desks in the school are still the same, too.  Mr. Grantz attended this school for kindergarten and first grade, and then graduated here.  Mr. Grantz went to Bridgepoint high school in Newark for six months, then he took a test for his high school diploma.  He passed and then went to the University of San Francisco. 

Matin Luther King Jr. Remembered

Hillwood Academic Day School is closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to honor the life and work of this civil rights activist.

Erion and Jay made the following video clip, and the story below is by Hillwood graduate Julian G., who is now at Sacred Heart. The article includes a video clip from "Meet the Press," and shows Dr. King being interviewed. The clip reveals him as an amazing speaker and someone able to handle an aggressive interview style.



Marin Luther King Jr. is known by everyone for giving rights to blacks.

He began his career as a Baptist preacher. He went on to lead the civil rights movement, and he also made history.

Jim Crow laws were terrible. They did not let blacks sit in the front of the bus and they had to give up their seats if a white person was standing. They had to eat in separate restaurants, go to separate public restrooms, and even separate public schools. But in 1954 Jim Crow lost to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declared separate schools for blacks and whites was unequal. The case was called "Brown v. Board of Education."

Black people were tired of the racism, so they boycotted the bus system because a woman named Rosa Park in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white person. Thirteen months later the bus gave in because of the cash flow problems with no one riding the bus.

The Montgomery boycott inspired more people to join him. In 1963 Dr. King and other civil right leaders organized the march in Washington. More than two hundred thousand people came to for demand equality for blacks.

The Civil Rights movement was changing the nation. In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights act which made racial discrimination in public places legal. He also got the Nobel Peace Prize.

On April 4, 1998 Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. But, still Dr. King's words, speeches and his legacy lives on with us. He inspired Hispanics, women, and even the disabled.

Below is an interview with Martin Luther King and several journalists on the television show Meet the Press, which ran on national TV, in the mid-1950s. Meet the Press is a news show that still airs on regular TV today.



Hillwood Herald readers: Don't forget school is closed on Monday in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King day.

Russian Military Ship in SF Bay

The city is hosting a Russian warship until Friday. According to SFGate.com, this is the first Russian surface warship to visit San Francisco in 147 years.

People can tour the Varyag, docked along the Embarcadero, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday. The ship sails back to Russia on Friday.

The ship visit is tied to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to San Francisco and Silicon Valley businesses this week.

You can read about the ship's history — in both wartime and peacetime — on SFGate.

Today Was the Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo occurred on June 18, 1815, and according to Webster's dictionary, it gave its name to the very notion of final defeat. Why? Maybe because the battle ended one of the most spectacular military careers in history (Napoleon's), as well as 23 years of recurrent conflict between France and the rest of Europe. In addition, it was Napoleon's second "final defeat."

Napolean was defeated and exiled in 1814, but he escaped his confinement, returned to France, and was restored to power for three months before meeting defeat at the hands of the forces allied under the Duke of Wellington near the Belgian village of Waterloo. The word "waterloo" first appeared in casual use the following year, 1816.

Nowadays, when we use the word casually (as in, not referencing the official battle), it is lowercased (like "waterloo"). It simply means a big loss or setback.

For more information about Napoleon, read this Wikipedia entry or check out this page about the Battle of Waterloo.

The Terracotta Army

The Terracotta army are guardians to Shi Huangdi. Terracotta means clay soldiers, and Shi Huangdi means first emperor. Local farmers from Xi'an ,Shaanxi were drilling a water well 1.5 miles east of Lishan or mountains. The archeologists found warriors, chariots , officials , acrobats , strongmen , and musicians.

The Terracotta army is a form of funeral art with the first Qin emperor Shi Hungdi in 210-209 BC. The purpose was guard Shi Huangdi in the afterlife. The Terracotta army was moved to a British museum in London. They display the Terracotta army as "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army." It was display September 13,2007 to April 2008.

I find this interesting because I am Chinese and I like history. You can watch a video with the photographer who took the first pictures of the army on Kids National Geographics.

By Brandon

The Importance of the National Archives

The National Archives, hundreds of years old, is an important source of information for national records ranging from historical moments to family records.

America's citizens like Beverly Woods could find military records, immigration records, and family records on her great-grandfather. This helped her to discover part of her family's past.

Notable historical records stored in the National Archives include the internment of Japanese San Franciscans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Survivors of the Japanese internment were able to sue the American government for consolation using information from these records.

The existence of the National Archives could also discourage influential people from lying or getting their information wrong.

The National Archives are open to everyone, like the one in Burlingame. Admission is free, but it would be a good idea to take the time out to plan your visit. National Archives sites also hold some public programs.

There is the Regional Archives in San Francisco where federal records on northern and central California, Nevada (except Clark County), Hawaii, American Samoa and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

The Foundation for the National Archives ally with the National Archives to create the National Archives Experience.

For more information, visit the National Archives website.

Sources: Discovery Channel, National Archives website
Photo source: National Archives

By Julien G. (notes and title)
Brigette W. (summary)

Miep Gies — A life fulfilled (1909-2010)

Miep Gies, a true heroine, recently died at 100 years old on January 11. She and her husband, Jan Gies, helped hide Edith and Otto Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne. After the Franks were arrested, Miep Gies kept Anne Frank's diary, so it could be published in 1947.

During World War II, the Nazis, a fascist society, invaded and occupied large portions of Europe. During these times in Nazi occupied Europe, your life would be threatened if you were Jewish, physically or mentally disabled, a Gypsy, or homosexual. According to many historians, Nazi propaganda spouted that these peoples brought down the human race, referred to as "parasitic races" by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

In 1933, Miep Gies met Otto Frank and his Jewish family when applying for his spice company's open position as a temporary secretary. She and her husband, whom she married in 1943, were both very close to the Franks, which is most likely why they would hide them when their race was being persecuted. Miep was also very much against Nazism, having refused joining the Nazi Women's Association in 1941. Even before sheltering the Franks, she helped the family blend in with Dutch society.

The Gies couple, along with Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleinman, and Bep Voskuijl helped to hide the Franks, the Van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer in the secret room upstairs of the spice company's office, where they remained undiscovered from 1942 to 1944. After the families were arrested and sent to concentration camps, the Gies were sure to take Anne Frank's diary and manuscript papers before the secret Dutch police ransacked the families' possessions.

Anne Frank's diary is still widely popular. The story of a young girl, an aspiring writer, living in the face of danger, The Secret Annex, by Anne Frank.

Source: Wikipedia
By: Brigette W.

History of Berlin Wall

After World War II's end in Europe (1945), Germany was divided into four sectors, each one controlled by one of the Allied Powers, which included the Americans, French, British, and the Soviet Union. Conflict between the Soviets and the other powers split Germany in half, the East and the West, even splitting the country's capital, Berlin into East and West Berlin.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who occupied the eastern side of Germany, prevented foreign help from other nations to fly into West Germany with supplies, the Berlin Blockade. Other nations wanted to help, so the Berlin Airlift was devised.

In the 1950s, West Germany benefited from economic success, so East Germans were looking to live in West Germany.

Construction of the 87 mile long Berlin Wall started in 1961, funded by the GDR and closing crossing points. Many Berliners were cut off from jobs. Money changed, the economies changed, and ideas changed between the two sides. The rift between East and West Germany remained, that rift separating families. Several died trying to cross the wall.

President Kennedy and President Reagan pleaded with the GDR to take down the wall.

Under international pressure, the GDR allowed travel between the two sides in 1989. In 1990, the Wall of Berlin fell.

Sources: Wikipedia, Cold War Flies, New York Times, German Missions in the United States

by Brigette W.

A Visual Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

On November 9, 2009, was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall was knocked down at the end of the cold war. The wall was about 100 miles long, and about 136 people died trying to cross it.

I got these photos from The New York Times and Google images.

The New York Times ran a special interactive package in which people could submit their own photos from the fall of the wall.

Read Brigette's story about the history of the wall.

The Making of the Berlin Wall

Construction of the Berlin Wall started on August 13, 1961, which fell twenty years ago and was anywhere from 20 to 100 feet some places.

The wall had a lot of security. It had a watchtower, and everything from spike mats and vehicle ditches to, to tank traps.

This graphic from The New York Times show that the Berlin Wall was no regular wall.

Below are some close-ups that I found interesting.

Visiting the National Archives Nearby

Did you know that there is a National Archive near Hillwood Academic Day School? Most people think that there are only national archives in Washington, D.C., but that is not true. In fact, if you are in a car, there is an archive only 20 or 30 minutes away in San Bruno.

At the archive, you can do a lot of digging. You can find your roots or learn about San Francisco's history, such as the earthquakes and fires. But you will have to make an appointment and go with an adult or your teacher. You have to ask to see anything and the archivists, who are like librarians, will bring you one thing at a time. These things are usually in boxes or big folders, and they are old. You have to be careful with them, and they are not the type of documents that you might expect. They are usually letters and personal things that people owned. There are also a lot of old newspapers.

Anybody can go to the archive, and there were a lot of people there.

The Fall of the Wall: The Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

Just before midnight on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall — the concrete structure — that divided East and West Berlin started to crumble. The end of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of communism and the Cold War.

Tell readers about the Berlin Wall -- what it was, how it came to be, and what it symbolizes now.

You are writing a news story about the event and why it still matters. Remember to answer the five W's to a newstory.

Also, look at the following sites for background. Consider linking to them from your story.

• The Fall of the Wall, The Cold War Files / Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Freedom Without Walls: Fall of the Berlin Wall, German Missions in the United States
• A before-and-after look, from The New York Times
• Slideshow, from The New York Times
• History of the wall, from Wikipedia
  

Source material: The New York Times

The History of St. Paddy's Day

Student Assignment: Brendon
(Thank Irene for this assignment!)

~St. Patty's Day History, Legends, Traditions,Modern Celebrations

What is the tradition of Saint Patrick's Day? Read this story on History.com, and then write a feature story that is at least 15 sentences in length.

Include links and explanitory text to the following activities found on National Geographic:
• Clover puzzles
• Pot of gold

President Obama Gives His Back-to-School Speech

Student: Rubina

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama gave his back-to school speech to students. You can read his prepared delivery here, and you can search for the video of his talk here.

Write a story explaining what the president would like American school children to know. Also, who introduced the president this year?

Remember to answer the five W's of a good news story. Also, include images, sources, and -- if possible -- embedded video. Consider linking to web pages about the president, written by The New York Times (such as this timeline). Additionally, include a link to The Herald's 2009 story about the president's speech, written by Brigette.

Add the phrase "yearbook 2009-2010" to the "labels" of this story. Your coverage of the president's speech will almost certainly be included in the yearbook this school year.

Also, you have the top news story of the week — the president's address. As you watch the video, mark down the time of your favorite part or the most important part of the President's speech. You will share this portion with the class, along with your study tips from last week.

The Constitution — What Happened on This Day in History?

Students: Jay and Alysen

On September 17 something big happened with the U.S. Constitution. Read this article first, and then watch the video clip below.

For your assignment, write what happened in history today for the U.S. Constitution. Remember to include your sources and to embed the video below. (Ms. Moorhead can show you how to do this.)

Congress Is Back in Session: Go to the Source

Student: Faryn

Watch the video below and then write an article that explains what "primary" documents students can use to research the start of Congress. Look at some of the primary materials, or documents, that the Library of Congress has scanned for the public to use. Here is another U.S. government resource. Ms. Moorhead will help you understand these in class.

Once you have a good sense of the video and one or two primary documents, write a news story highlighting the video, one or two primary sources, and why primary materials are better then, say, Wikipedia.

Archiving and Researching the Civil War

Students: Rubina and Anya

Write about this New York Times video that highlights the process of archiving, researching and restoring historic documents from the Civil War. Include at least five images with captions to help tell your story. Also, highlight the significance of such archival materials. Why are letters so important in the telling of history?