Sharing Knowledge One Student At A Time

Retired teacher Barbara Martinelli doesn’t see giving school tours at the Santa Clarita History Center at Hart Park as “teaching,” as much as it is “sharing” her love of history. For the last 16 years, she has been involved as a volunteer with the SCV Historical Society, first giving monthly tours at the Center (formerly known at Heritage Junction), then eventually becoming the school tour coordinator.
On May 10, she led the first post-Covid school tour, a group of 100 fourth graders from Emerson Elementary School in Burbank who rode the Metrolink to Newhall and walked (with a police escort) to the History Center. Since all the buildings at the History Center are in various stages of restoration, the tour had to be completely outside.
“There have been a lot of times when I wanted to go into more of a background when we were inside the houses, but today I got to ask the kids what was missing,” she said. “I explained outhouses and that kitchens used to be separate from the house and it was fun to show how our buildings fit into the whole of California history. They got to see two examples of school houses, and they learned that people built chapels because they wouldn’t have a church nearby.”
Martinelli was a high school math teacher for 38 years before retiring in 2007. She became a docent to learn about local history around 1993.
“I was here when the station was moved (in 1980), but I wasn’t really in tune to it,’ she explained. “After seeing the other buildings moved here, right after the Newhall Ranch House moved, I stopped by to see people working and got put to work sanding windowsills. Jerry Reynolds (the Society’s first historian) took me through the museum and gave me a tour that I modeled my tour after. I admired his enthusiasm, and he talked me into becoming a once-a-month docent.”
School tours are aimed at 3rd and 4th grades, when California history is on the curriculum.
“After teaching high school math, third-graders are quite different, but I was fortunate, history was my minor. Third graders are so enthusiastic,” she added. “When you get to high school, that’s against the rules.”
Although the recent tour was challenging, she knows the stories and pedigree of the structures in the History Center and is eager to welcome visitors back inside.
“I get great joy getting other people to smile,” Martinelli said. “It just goes back and forth. I like working with people and sharing knowledge is part of that.”
The most important thing that kids should know about history? All the things that we take for granted and how they did not exist 100 years ago. Martinelli makes that point not only on her Center tours, but with a Time Travel Trunk filled with antique items like a washboard, iron, rug beater, kitchen utensils and various toys from long ago. She travels to schools and groups to talk about the trunk’s contents and let children get some hands-on history.
She hopes that parents pick up where she leaves off after school tours, asking their children about their experience.
“Ask for specifics,” she said. “What surprised you? What did you hear that you did not know before? What did you find interesting?”
Smiling as the departing train carrying the tour group back to Burbank blew a long, loud whistle, she waved toward the tracks.
“That’s for us,” she said, beaming.
For information on the Santa Clarita History Center, including how to become a docent, visit www.scvhs.org. 

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