An interview with April McIlwaine, Education Intern
This winter, the Folklife Center launched its Teaching with Primary Sources project, funded through the United States Library of Congress. VFC is participating as part of team of projects, led by Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education, that seeks to demonstrate the value of ethnographic and oral history primary source materials in K-12 classrooms, with emphasis on their value in exploring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) concerns on a national scale through the lens of “Challenging History through Counternarratives.” As part of that effort, VFC surveyed its own archival holdings to identify primary sources related to farm life and local foodways. April McIlwaine, a graduate student in the UVM Food Systems Program, worked with us this spring as a VFC Education intern and was instrumental in the survey’s completion. She generated key insights into the materials that will guide the future of the project.
We undertook the survey to identify resources in our collection that highlight key changes in Vermont's farm economy, labor practices, technology and social values over time. April produced detailed reviews and keyword indexes of nearly 30 interviews with Vermont farmers that cover topics related to multigenerational farms, gendered experiences in agriculture, technological changes in the 20th century, rural foodways, migrant work, and life in Vermont, to name a few.
This thematic focus on the occupational folklife of farming will result in a resource guide that we will piloted during our Summer Institute course, Vermont Farming and Foodways (July 20-21, 2022 in St Albans). Ten educators will be invited to use the guide with their students during the 2022-2023 academic year, and provide feedback on how to improve it for other teachers' use, for which they will receive a $300 honorarium. Teachers interested in this opportunity are encouraged to read more about the course.
April spoke to VFC executive director, Kate Haughey, about what she learned during her involvement during this pivotal phase of the project. The text has been shortened for clarity and brevity.
Kate Haughey So you are a student in the UVM Food Systems Master's of Science program. What brought you to that program?
April McIlwaine I'm originally from Vermont. I grew up right outside of Montpelier, in Worcester, and my parents still live here. I graduated with an undergraduate degree in biology and was working in farm-based education and environmental education up until Covid hit. Through that work I was introduced to the way that food can be something that allows for conversations about so many different things. It's so interdisciplinary. And the program up here [at UVM] doesn't sit within a department. We have faculty from many different departments, which is really cool. We have so many different people with so many different backgrounds. So that really drew me to the program.
Kate Haughey And how did you get involved in the Teaching with Primary Sources project?
April McIlwaine In our first semester we take a Food Systems, Society, and Policy class with Prof. Teresa Mares, and she's fantastic. We were reading some of her work and learning about The Most Costly Journey project, and after class one day I was like, “Oh my gosh, storytelling is such an important piece of learning about these things.” I came from a very science and research background and it clicked that this other aspect of this is really important. So I sent her an email saying, “I think I want to add something like this into my master's project” and at that point she connected me with Andy Kolovos.
I ended up having a meeting, late December with both Sasha [Antohin] and Andy [Kolovos], and when they reached back out in January we just kind of hit the ground running. As they told me more about the project, I realized, “Oh, I forgot to tell you that I've worked in education for a while and I'm actually from Vermont!” It was just funny the way that there were some essential parts of who I am that really kind of aligned with this project.
Kate Haughey That’s great. As someone who went to school in Vermont, from your experience, what do you feel is missing from the way Vermont history is taught in schools?
April McIlwaine I don't remember much about learning about Vermont history. I remember learning about certain battles that happened during the Revolutionary War, things like that, but they felt ungrounded. I couldn't really make any connections to anything about that. I think there was a whole "ag" [agricultural] piece that was completely missing. This is such a rich agricultural state and there was like none of that. Granted this was in early 2000 so it's probably changed since then. I know “Farm to School” programs have had an impact on connecting kids with farming in the state. But when I was in school that was definitely missing.
Kate Haughey So what has your role been with this VFC project this spring semester?
April McIlwaine I have been listening through a lot of recordings and reading through a lot of transcripts. At first I was going through and getting kind of a sample of what is actually in this collection, looking to see what feels relevant. And then from there doing a little bit more fine tuning, using audio transcription software to actually pull out some excerpts and start to figure out which ones were going to be relevant to the story that we wanted to be telling. Then we formulated those into a teacher-friendly playlist.
At first I was just reading through transcripts, which was fascinating. But I have really enjoyed getting to listen to these recordings. That's the bread and butter. I was so excited because I knew, too, that there were going to be some wild Vermont accents, which touched my little heart. So that has been really fun getting to hear those. Also it's great because, you know, we're targeting middle school high school kids, but all of these recordings are touching on things that are super relevant to the stuff that I'm currently learning at UVM. I'm taking a class that looks at food systems and policy right now. And it's like so many things about land access. So much that I’m learning about right now is mirrored in some way in these recordings.
Kate Haughey That’s a wonderful testament to the VFC Archive! Is there one thing that really stood out to you in these interviews?
April McIlwaine I've listened to so many at this point…I could go on and on about that. I think the real “aha” moments are when themes pop up that are still really relevant today. Things around technology change for example, you know, some of these recordings were done in the 1980s, but these people are talking about events that happened back in the early 1900s and you realize, “Oh, whoa, this technology change that shifted and put all these farmers out of business—we're still dealing with the repercussions of that today.
Kate Haughey How do you feel like this project will impact young people or educators moving forward?
April McIlwaine This project is such a great way to ground learning about history. It's so accessible to listen, as opposed to reading through textbooks. For my master's project I'm intentionally trying to create an audio component around the history of Burlington's Community Gardens, (which I'm hoping to work with you guys [VFC staff] on a little bit!) Part of that is because I think that the audio format is much more accessible, and these recordings—some of these excerpts that I'm pulling—are just a minute long and they still really punch through the idea that you're trying to get across. And you're hearing it from this other human being—it's their voice, it's all the peculiarities of their speech and everything that comes through really conveys, “Oh, these issues happened to real people.” I think when you're reading out of a textbook or out of any type of book, that can sometimes get lost. I think that's going to be really impactful to have that paired with any other type of learning materials that kids and teachers will be using.
Kate Haughey OK, so you're doing the history of Burlington Community Gardens for your master's project?
April McIlwaine Yeah, it's in the works. I'm hoping to take an environmental justice lens and look at the ways that soil contamination has affected certain communities' access to community gardens. I’m looking to see if there's any trends about where community gardens have been placed because of soil contamination, something in that vein. I'm hoping to use interviews with people and produce something that's going to be in an audio format. I just really want to make it accessible. I don't want it to just be like a white paper that's going to go die. I really want it to be available to people in the community to listen to and to learn from and to help ground them in their spaces.
Kate Haughey That's great. I'm so excited for your project and what you'll do with all of this in the future. It's so inspiring!
April McIlwaine Thank you so much!
