Tuesday, January 8, 7:30pm – Several years back, Wayland Korean War era veteran John Dyer acquired a cache of some 85 WWI letters sent home to a mom that somehow stayed neatly bundled together for nearly a century. After turning them over to Kevin Delaney and his US History students, teams of young historians spent weeks exploring the author and his era. The resulting Wayland High School History Project website, The Great War Story of Herman Allen, tells the story of an everyman from Natick and Wayland as a member of the 55th Coastal Artillery Corps. On this 100th anniversary of the original Armistice Day, Delaney will discuss the project-based approach to learning history and share the narrative his students revealed about life during wartime for the quintessential “kid next door”.
Kevin Delaney has been teaching history at Wayland High School for 26 years, including 17 as the social studies department head. In 2001, he founded the Wayland High School History Project, a ten-volume digital archive Wayland’s 20th century history his students created (whshistoryproject.org). Delaney is the recipient of the 2017 New England History Teachers Association Kidger Award for excellence in teaching, the 2016 Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution U.S. History Teacher of the Year, and the 2014 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year.