BRATTLEBORO-Bill Holiday was born and raised here in Brattleboro. He went to Windham College, and he taught social studies in a very innovative way at Brattleboro Union High School for 48 years.
He's been in the Brattleboro area all these years, and still is doing things that are exciting and going by his curiosity of the world and its people.
He has organized field studies, taking his students and other educators outside the school building to where history unfolded: Alabama (civil rights movement), Dallas (the assassination of President John F. Kennedy), England (Roman to medieval history), Plimouth Plantation, Boston (Freedom Trail), Washington, D.C., Northern Ireland (the Troubles), the Republic of Ireland, Cuba, Italy, Greece, and other destinations.
Bill holds a bachelor's degree in American studies from Windham College, which was in Putney, and a master's degree in education from Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire.
We just got the very tip of the iceberg of so many of these stories. In his retirement from education, Bill has written two fascinating books: Beyond the Classroom and a companion podcast of the same name (2022) and JFK Assassination: What They Told Me (2023), including an audiobook recorded by his wife, retired Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Superintendent Lyle Holiday.
I'm going to let Bill's words to be his introduction here: "I have pursued the art of integrated education. I have not used a textbook since 1973. If I were given a utopian opportunity, class would never be in a classroom. It would be out there on the road, in a bus, a van, something to take us to wherever history happened."
Welcome, Bill.
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Wendy O'Connell: Good intro for you, huh?
Bill Holiday: Well, like you said, I wrote it. It's true. Obviously, you can't pack up kids and take them someplace or another every day, but kids learn by experiencing things.
W.O.: I think you kind of blew kids' minds in many ways. My daughter was one of those students, and she used to talk about Western Civ. I never heard her talk about history classes before.
Another student [has said of you]: "He fosters every student's voice and is always thinking of creative ways to showcase student work and to show them their thoughts and passions are relevant and powerful. This includes sending articles that they've written into local or non-local newspapers, broadcasting work on the radio, and inviting students to present at conferences."
B.H.: Guilty - guilty as charged.
W.O.: Well, you know, this is your legacy. It was your reputation. And it was unusual for that time, and even now.
B.H.: It's easy for an educator to fall into the trap of being handed a canned curriculum. That's what happened to me. In 1972, I arrived at my first job, and the principal said, "Well, this is what you're going to be teaching, and here are the materials you have." And he laid three textbooks in front of me.
I opened up the first one, the social studies textbook for seventh grade, and it had a chapter on England for an industrial revolution. In the first sentence, the first paragraph of that book said, "To know London is to know, England." I said, "What?"
The curriculum didn't go out the window, but the way of exposing students to it did.
W.O.: And I think it's a real testament that you were able to do just what you said you had to. You had to follow a certain course of study to give to the kids, but you found ways to make it creative for them and to help them to be creative about it as well, and thereby igniting their imaginations.
B.H.: I tried to create student investment. If somebody is making a choice of how they're going to learn something, there's much more likelihood of that student having success than [if I were] shoving something down their throat that they don't like.
And not everybody can read real well, but they can do other things. They can express themselves artistically. So I tried to tap into the abilities of students.
W.O.: So you've been retired [approximately] five years. How's that going for you?
B.H.: It's going well. I'm keeping busy, and I'm doing things that I like to do. Thus the two books [I've written], one on the Kennedy assassination, which has been an interest of mine since the day it happened. [I was] 13 years old that day.
W.O.: When you talk about your philosophy of education, you refer to the "British approach." So you must have gone over to England and done a little investigating?
B.H.: Interesting thing - my first year of teaching, I lived with Jim (Pickles) Bedard. Pickles was a year ahead of me in education, and he said, "Bill, if you want to make any money, you need to get a master's degree."
Not that money is tremendous in education, nor is it terrible. I might add, benefits are very good, so I'm not railing on those kinds of things.
I wasn't interested necessarily in a credential, but I wanted to get that degree. Keene State College was where Pickles was going, and he said, "Come with me." He was finishing up, and [said], "Let's see what happens over there."
So I went , registered for some courses. One [was taught by] George Kramer, a visiting professor from York St John University in York, England. He's the guy who imparted the philosophy that you need to center learning around the people who are learning.
When people used to ask me "What are you teaching?" I would say flippantly, "I'm not teaching. I'm putting people in a position to learn."
And it may sound ridiculous, but to me, that's a big difference there.
So I was trying to convert what I learned [about] the British primary system of education in the 1970s to middle school, where I was [teaching], and then ultimately to high school.
When I got to the high school, people would say, "How are the middle school kids? They're terrible." I said, "They're human beings, at a different stage of life. They're not terrible. They have a sense of humor. They are sad. They're happy. People are people."
When I was coaching basketball at the high school, people would ask me, "What's it like to coach girls?"
And I would say, Well, you know what? I don't look at them as girls. They're human beings. They're basketball players." I completely tried to disassociate myself with this sexist attitude.
W.O.: You have a lot of curiosity, and I think that's one thing that you really impart to your students. In terms of education, I would guess that you would get really bored if you had to follow a set curriculum without imbuing it with your curiosity,
B.H.: I tried to buy into that. I tried to invest myself. I did invest myself. I loved the history. [If I were a student experiencing a teacher] trying to teach me how to do something that [the teacher doesn't] really care about or don't know that much about, I'm going to know that.
Teachers used to ask me, "How do you do this?" I'd have to tell them, If you're bored with this job, fix it! Change what you're doing! Make it exciting for you. And [students will] see that, and it'll become exciting for them!
W.O.: It's great advice, right? Your philosophy of education is definitely that teachers are sort of like counselors: You're sharing in the learning process and exposing kids to lots of different information, which they can actually get by osmosis - if you are giving this to them, if you are letting it become available for them.
B.H.: I taught many, many students, your daughter, included, who are more intelligent than I am. And I used to say to them, "That doesn't make any difference to me. I can still put you in a position to learn."
[I'd tell them,] "I don't have to know everything. I don't have to be as bright as you. I don't have to be as good a reader as you, or [have] any other skill. I'm not as good an artist, actor, whatever your skill is."
W.O.: You took kids to Dallas, to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a lot of places like that. How'd you get away with that, first of all, in terms of the school budget?
B.H.: You have an Interesting way of putting this - "get away with"! The school didn't pay. Those kids signed up for that and largely either raised or had the money to pay for [these travels]. Whenever I did courses or took students places, I paid my own way.
I would ask at the beginning of every course: "I can take you to the south to see some of the Civil Rights things we're going to be learning about. I can take you to Dallas and learn about the Kennedy assassination."
When I taught a seminar, I would meet with the students, and they would pick the curriculum from my laundry list. I didn't know everything about everything, but there were certain things I could get into pretty good depth.
One year, 87% of the people who attended that meeting, and some parents, picked the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [I asked them,] "Why on earth?" They said, "We've heard about it, but we don't know anything about it."
So I said, "Would you like to go there?
That was quite a thing, really, to take students there. It was [shortly] after the Good Friday Agreement, so it wasn't as dangerous, but you had to be careful when you were over there, to be there and to see it unfolding.
One day, you'd talk to people who made bombs for a loyalist paramilitary organization like the Ulster Defence Association, and then the next day you'd meet another bomb maker who was making bombs for the Irish Republican Army. These guys were trying to kill each other.
We sat at dinner one time in a neutral part of the city, and there was an IRA man and a UDA man on opposite sides. They had become friends, realizing that their differences were killing them, quite literally. And they sat with the kids at dinner.
One of the students stood with that IRA bomb maker on Beechwood Avenue in Belfast, Northern Ireland, renamed RPG - rocket propelled grenade - Avenue because of the pitched battles that took place there, and she was moved to tears, and so was he.
She described her meeting with this guy, and she said he was "a wonderful guy. He could be my grandfather." It was quite an eye opener.
That's why I use the terminology "field study." We would go to learn something.
W.O.: I'm sure other teachers across our country are doing similar things.
B.H.: I think so even more so today, because of technology. I can get on a Zoom session with people I know in Northern Ireland.
One time, I brought [a guest] into my classroom via [this new] technology, and the first question I asked him was, "Why should I talk to you? Who are you?"
He said, "I'm John Kelly, the brother of Michael Kelly, who was killed on Bloody Sunday by the British." He saw his brother get killed.
W.O.: You've done your own travels aside from taking kids, right? You've explored the world a bit.
B.H.: I've been to a lot of places, some of them preparatory to trips and or courses.
I took a group with permission by the United States State Department and [because we had] the right credentials. [It was] when only two groups of people - medical people and educators - could go legally to Cuba. Thirty-nine educators signed up to go to Cuba with me, and 80% of them were from the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, including the former superintendent, Ron Stahley, and other teachers, several of them.
W.O.: I do know that you would sometimes take your nephew, Reggie Martell, with you on your travels. For those of us here at BCTV, and for many of you in the audience, you know that Reggie has a special place in our hearts. We lost him two months ago, and it still hurts. He did so much for the community and stayed in the community, much like you did in Brattleboro.
B.H.: Reggie, he was one of my students, like your daughter, in high school. But later on, when Reggie was educating himself and getting advanced degrees as well. When I put some of these courses together, I'd say, "Reggie, you want to go?"
We would end up in some dicey situations. Reggie and I went to Vietnam together and saw the damage that was being done, how people were being maimed and killed by unexploded ordinance that exploded while they would be going after it. Mothers were being left husband-less and still with children [to care for].
We went to a meeting of a group called Project RENEW, and when they had pitched about how many people were dying and how they were trying to stop that, I turned to Reggie, and I said, "We can't just come in here and listen to this presentation and leave it, we've got to do something."
We founded an organization called Students for Renew. And we ran a donate $1 campaign. Yeah, we would ask people for a single dollar. We did presentations at colleges, we did presentations at other high schools, we did presentations for the Kiwanis - you name it - and raised enough money to build a home for a woman with two children who'd lost her husband.
You might ask, why would they go after unexploded ordinance? They would do it because they could make four or five years' wages if they could unearth an unexploded bomb and get it back to wherever they collected the metal. Sometimes they blew up.
Reggie was the speaker for his graduation [in 1995]. [He wasn't] the valedictorian, but his class wanted him.
W.O.: You talk about you and Reggie going to Vietnam. Where were you in the Vietnam years?
B.H.: I graduated high school in 1968, and I could have signed up immediately and gone into the military, but I'd been put through by my guidance counselor, Robert Rounds, who was getting me ready so I could go to college. So that's what BUHS had done for me. I said, "I'm going to apply to college."
Some colleges were interested in me as a football player, some as a basketball player, none as a baseball player. But I didn't feel I was the kind of athlete that could have played at Duke University, for example. United States Military Academy wanted me to go there and play football. Williams College - [another] one. I said, "You know what? I'm not fast enough, I'm not big enough." So I went to a college where I knew it could play, and that was Windham College.
W.O.: You were there for four years. Those were heady years.
B.H.: This is very personal sharing I'm doing with you. While I was there, the draft lottery came up. I was a full-time student for four years and had a deferment. That was good as long as I kept my grades up.
I could give up the deferment and take my shot with the lottery, or I could keep the deferment until I graduated.
This seemed to be a never-ending war. I said, "It's still going to be going on in 1972." It went on till April 30, 1975.
I gave up my deferment, and my number in the draft was 251.
W.O.: Not bad.
B.H.: They didn't get to that number in the first year of the draft lottery, and that meant I was on the back burner, and in all probability, I would never be drafted. I never was drafted.
W.O.: Boy, that was a big risk. Very big risk.
B.H.: It was crazy. I mean, you look back on it now, I don't know if I'd advise myself to have done that.
W.O.: Bill, is there anything you'd like to add, any story that you'd like to tell, anything you'd like to give to the folks out there?
B.H.: I can tell you about Reggie, when we were down studying the Emmett Till murder in Money, Mississippi. A pickup truck began to go back and forth with a gun rack on it, and people in it were recognizing us as outsiders, and proceeded to showcase a couple of uplifted middle fingers to us. And we said, it's time to get out of town.
I said, "You know, there's one more thing I want to see. I'd like to see where Emmett Till was living with his uncle, Mose Wright, at the time that the people who killed him came to get him."
Everybody was for it, until we got over there, and it was eerie. There was a cotton patch, and it wasn't being worked. Nobody around, seemingly a wooded area, and we were in individual cars, and we had a few cars.
I saw a black man standing in front of a very modest home, and I said, "You know, I'd like to talk with this guy."
And the other cars bugged out, like We don't want anything to do with this. We'll meet you at such and such. And they took off, but Reggie says, "I'm with you."
I interviewed this fellow. He was a friend of Mose Wright, the uncle of Emmett Till.
The first thing I said to him: "Is it OK for us to talk with you here in next to a cotton field in Money, Mississippi?" He said, "Yeah, no, no, it's OK. It's OK."
I said, "We're going to be leaving here in 25 minutes, and you're still going to be here. People might want to know what you were telling those white people."
He said, "No, it's OK." So I interviewed him as Reggie held the camera.
"Nothing's changed," he said. "It's the same here now as it was 50 years ago." If he looked cross-eyed at a white woman or said something to a white woman - oh, yeah, something bad could happen to him.
Nothing ever did happen to him.
This was my main teaching point through from 2004 onward with the civil rights movement.
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Editor's note: Columns that include interviews in this format are edited for clarity, readability, and space. Words not spoken by interview subjects appear in brackets, as do brief editorial clarifications.
Wendy O'connell hosts the award-winning series Here We Are: Brattleboro's Community Talk Show, which airs weekly on Brattleboro Community Television and features conversations with a very wide variety of local people of all ages.
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