Towards the end of the school year last year, four seniors approached Woodland History teacher Chris Tomlin with an idea to form a History Honor Society.
“This group of seniors really felt that a History Honor Society would really benefit the students at Woodland,” said Tomlin.
At the end of last year, the group met 3 times to begin the process of creating the organization. They ultimately decided to form a chapter of Rho Kappa National Social Studies Honor Society.
“It’s a model very similar to the National Honor Society and Foreign Language Honor Society,” said Tomlin, who now co-advises the Honor Society with Patricia Corey.
After getting approval from Dr. Frank and the support of the History Department, Tomlin and the founding members began laying out the makeup of the History Honor Society.
“Our standards to apply for membership are the same as those of the NSSHS,” Tomlin said.
In order to be invited to apply, students need to have complete a total of four semesters of history and have intentions to take at least two more semesters of History classes. This is a graduation requirement for Woodland students anyway, because all students are required to take six and half semesters worth of History classes.
Those wishing to apply for membership also need an unweighted GPA of 3.0 in all their History classes, and an overall GPA of 3.0.
Therefore seniors, juniors and possibly some sophomores would be eligible for membership.
They also planned for the membership to take part in four projects a year.
“We were thinking a service project, a fundraiser and a patriotism event of some kind,” Tomlin explained.
But as of right now though, the History Honor Society has no members.
“We are in the process of finding out who is eligible to apply,” said Tomlin. “”Within the next week or so we are going to get letters out to invite students to apply for membership.”
According to Tomlin, the main goal of the Honor Society will be to encourage kids to be passionate about History.
“Hopefully the kids will want to be more involved in their local community history through the organization.” said Tomlin.