A face familiar to Gobles middle and high school students can be seen as part of the special features included on the edition of Schindler's List released in March to mark the 20th Anniversary of the historic, Academy-Award winning film for Best Picture. Gobles English teacher Corey Harbaugh was one of a small number of teachers from across the country included in interviews about the importance of Holocaust education.

Harbaugh was interviewed in Los Angeles last summer about Holocaust education by The Shoah Foundation, the organization created by director Steven Spielberg when Schindler's List came out in 1993. A short clip from that interview was used as part of the special features of the disc in which Harbaugh talks about the importance of showing students testimony of actual Holocaust survivors.

Harbaugh teaches about the Holocaust as part of the English class offered to seniors at Gobles High School. He is also Co-Director of the Holocaust Educator Network of Michigan, and runs a seminar for teachers from across Michigan each summer. This summer the seminar will take place in early July at the Holocaust Memorial Center of Farmington Hills, and teachers Jim Wiseley, Veronica Peterson, and Loriann Harbaugh are participating.

Gobles History Club students traveled to sites Greece and around the Mediterranean Sea during Spring Break, 2013. Here Gobles juniors Brookly Wiseley and Danielle Cooper pose for a photo at the seaside in Mykonos, Greece.

Freshmen at Gobles High School and all over the country are required to study ancient Greece and to read Homer’s Odyssey, a 3,000-year-old text that forms the basis of a classic education.
Over spring break students in the Gobles History Club took classic education to a whole new level, traveling the same lands and waterways around Greece and Turkey that form both the backdrop of The Odyssey, and the birthplace of modern Western civilization.

After flying to Athens, seventeen Gobles students traveled to historic sites by train and tour bus, and also spent four days sailing the Mediterranean Sea to historic sites like Crete, Rhodes, and Kusadasi on the Western coast of Turkey.

For many of the Gobles students, the trip provided some important first-time, first-hand experiences.
"For me it was my first time on a plane," said senior History Club member Wyatt Peterson. "I found it exhilarating. It was my first time on a cruise ship, too. It was a wonder to see the ruins. As soon as I stepped foot on the site of the Parthenon, my mind went crazy imagining what Athens would have been like in its glory days. These were magnificent structures, and I realized I was standing on the birthplace of democracy."
Every other year History Club director Jim Wiseley leads students on a visit to the actual historic places around the world that are studied in his Gobles classroom. He does it because of the powerful learning that happens when students see these places for themselves.

"Their eyes are opened, that's for sure," Wiseley said. "They learn the realities of different parts of the world, they become informed of different cultures. They also realize they have it pretty good here, in the United States, and in our little town of Gobles."

Senior Brian Hayward is preparing to leave the little town of Gobles as he approaches graduation and becomes a first-year student at the University of Michigan. He knows he'll take valuable lessons from this trip with him to college.

"Walking through the marketplace in Turkey, vendors would literally grab you by the arm and force their items in your hands," Hayward said. "It was a completely new experience for me, but for the vendors it's a normal way of life. I understand in college that I can’t expect that I will have the same background as everyone else. When I meet people from different cultures, having the background of traveling overseas will prepare me to interact with people from different places and cultures more successfully.”

These are the experiences Wiseley wants his students to have in the Gobles History Club. "We learned that almost 3,000 years ago the Greeks invented concepts in math, engineering, and architecture we still use to this day. They came up with concepts like The Olympic Games to bring people together. The impact of Greek history and culture on our own culture and history is enormous."

And the impact on seventeen Gobles students is enormous, too, travelers who enjoyed a modern-day look at ancient wonders of history in the places that history actually took place. The odyssey of their educational journeys became real in ways they only imagined when they studied ancient Greece as Gobles freshmen.

GOBLES, Mich.-Keegan Scholte, 18, of Gobles was named one of Michigan's two top youth volunteers of 2013 by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, a nationwide program honoring young people for outstanding acts of volunteerism. Keegan was nominated by Gobles Public Schools. Also recognized was Catherine Sesi, 12, of Ann Arbor.

Keegan is a senior at Gobles High School. From August, 2011 to August, 2012 he wore no shoes in order to raise money to buy 250 pairs of shoes for kids in Uganda. "Throughout my freshman and sophomore year, I realized two things: that I loved to help people, and that I hated wearing shoes." One day, in a conversation with his youth pastor, he hit upon a way to combine those two feelings: he would go shoeless for a year and ask for monetary donations to purchase shoes for poor children in Africa. "Shoelessness can cause a lot of diseases and health issues," explained Keegan, "yet it is a very easily fixed issue which many people in our country take for granted."

Once he had sworn off shoes, Keegan faced a number of challenges. He had to work with school officials to remain safe at school, his junior year included time in the chemistry lab, for instance, and marching competitions with the band, so Keegan agreed to wear medical booties during school hours. When winter arrived, he remained barefoot in the ice and snow-but if he had to be outside for a long time, he donned several pairs of socks covered by plastic grocery bags. He also couldn't go to many restaurants, stores, movie theaters, and other establishments that insist upon shoes.

Through the challenges Keegan persevered. He made speeches to church and youth groups about his project, starred in a promotional video, and wrote a blog on his "A Year Without Shoes" website. After the 365 days were over, Keegan traveled to Uganda with his youth pastor to buy shoes and give out 200 pairs to kids at orphanages, and 50 pairs to kids at a soccer ministry. "I struggled to keep from crying as I saw the excitement and gratitude these children had about new shoes," said Keegan. "Every day I think about all the things I take for granted that are so scarce or non-existent in places in Uganda."

As a State Honoree, Keegan will receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion and an all-expense paid trip in early May to Washington, D.C., where he will join the top two honorees from each of the other states and the District of Columbia for four days of national recognition events. During the trip, ten students will be named America's top youth volunteers of 2013.

Keegan is the son of Ron and Melony Scholte. His older sister Mackenzie is a Gobles graduate enrolled at Anderson University, and his sister Michaela is a sophomore at Gobles High School.