Wish Book: Students get hands-on lessons about Santa Clara Valley’s past at History Park ...Middle East

Today’s elementary school students in Silicon Valley are much more familiar with harvesting crops in Minecraft than they are with the thousands of acres of farmland and orchards that once dominated the Valley of Heart’s Delight.

There are Uber and Waymo kids who may never have heard the clang of a trolley bell. And phrases like “dial a phone” and “write a check”? Don’t even get started, boomer.

But thanks to History San Jose’s hands-on education programs, more than 12,000 students every year get to experience what it’s like to live as an early California pioneer, to visit a bank branch that existed long before debit cards and tap-to-play and understand the painstaking work that went into taking a bushel of cherries from the tree into a can.

“I’ve been teaching 23 years, and this is a place that holds an important part in my heart because of the hands-on experience that each student gets,” said Sally Vigneri, a fourth-grade teacher at Zanker Elementary School in Milpitas who was at History Park in San Jose in October with her students.

History San Jose is perhaps best-known as the repository and caretakers of the city’s long history. It’s warehouse is filled with items that chart the evolution of San Jose from a small, agricultural hub to a city of nearly 1 million people that is home to some of Silicon Valley’s most well-known tech companies.

The nonprofit, which celebrated its 75th anniversary recently, also operates three historic sites: the Gonzales/Peralta Adobe and the Carmela and Thomas Fallon House, both near San Pedro Square Market, and History Park, a 14-acre park that includes more than 30 historic structures or replicas harking back to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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But the real value in History San Jose’s mission lies in its school programs, which serve as a time machine for students, transporting them back to different historical periods. Adobe Days covers the state’s Spanish and Mexican periods, while Westward Ho! explores the frontier experience and Valley of Heart’s Delight lets students delve into the Santa Clara Valley’s agricultural peak. It costs schools $14 per student for field trips, and History San Jose is asking Wish Book readers for $7,800 to provide field trips for 500 students, as well as to update materials.

Students on the Adobe Days field trips use dirt, hay and sand to make bricks, and those in the Valley of Heart’s Delight experiences process “cherries” made of modeled clay. Sam Ricci, History San Jose’s manager of education, says after a few sessions, the clay cracks and the cherries need to be remade.

That’s important for students like Ishya Ala, a fourth-grader at Zanker, who was at the fruit sheds with her classmates learning about how workers would use a tool to size cherries, can them and then create labels for the different canning companies.

“I like the history. I like the learning, and I like that we have hands-on activities,” said Ishya, whose favorite activity was sorting the clay cherries, making sure there were enough for each can.

Other students learned about finances at the Bank of Italy, a replica of the building that once stood in downtown San Jose. Their parents and grandparents would be amused to see them learning how to write checks, a once-common practice that’s becoming more rare. Of course, all the blank “checks” they practice on have to be regularly reprinted, as do the primers the students browse through as they sit in a one-room schoolhouse and learn about how different education was a century ago.

“I think it’s helpful for kids to know history and to have places like this that show history so they can learn hands-on what they’re seeing in textbooks,” said Gloria Park, a parent who was chaperoning a field trip. “As a parent, knowing they can see it and kind of feel it and experience it themselves makes their learning come more live to them.”

For Vigneri, the Zanker fourth-grade teacher, there’s always a special moment when students make the connection between the activities they’re doing at History Park and the modern region where they live today.

“This particular field trip allows them to see where we came from and how we’ve changed — down to their own communities, where they live to the greater San Jose area and to California,” Vigneri said.

ABOUT WISH BOOK Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.

WISH Donations to History San Jose will provide field trips for 500 local students and help the nonprofit update hands-on materials used in its school programs. Goal: $7,800.

HOW TO GIVE Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com/donate or mail in this form.

ONLINE EXTRA Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.

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