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For his history project this year, St. Andrews Episcopal School student Philip Doerr got a crash-course in storytelling. The 17-year-old junior chose to take on recording the history of Potomac's Scotland Community first-hand by interviewing Esther Young, whose mother Geneva Mason helped save the community from being razed to the ground in the 1960s through the "Save our Scotland" campaign.

"I think today, Scotland has a negative reputation," said Doerr, who transcribed Young's story as a part of the school's American Century Project, in which junior history students collect oral history from community members and document it extensively through papers, presentations, biographies and secondary sources. "People think of it as a drug or gang community, but nobody sees it as a community that's over 100 years old and has such a rich history."

Doerr said he was inspired to take on the project because many residents who drive by the community don't have a full understanding of its past.

He wanted to record it, but first, he had to hear it first-hand. "That's the basis of all history," Doerr said. "You have to go back and ask people what happened and write it down. That's where history begins."

Now in its 12th year, the American Century Project at St. Andrews was launched by history teacher Glenn Whitman, who was inspired by his own work collecting oral history as an undergraduate and also the work of legendary broadcaster and oral historian Louis "Studs" Terkel. Through the project, Whitman hopes to encourage students to become recorders of history, rather than just its observers. "The best interviews are those whose voices are uncovered by this project," Whitman said.

St. Andrews has collected the largest pre-collegiate oral history archive in the United States through the work of its students, and according to Whitman, that goes to show that students can make a meaningful contribution to history.

Feb. 24, the school community and 86 history students gathered at the annual American Century Project Oral History Coffeehouse to show off their projects and to honor the life and work of Terkel, who passed away in October 2008.Colorful display boards lined the walls of the school's MacDonald Hall, telling the stories of those who had lived through such momentous historic events as the Holocaust, the Lebanese Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. "As our surroundings attest tonight, there is no shortage of interesting people to interview, in fact, each of us has a story to tell," Whitman said at the event. Keynote speaker Donald Ritchie, associate historian of the U. S. Senate, also spoke—hailing Terkel as "the great popularizer" of oral history.

"He gently led you through the interview until you surprised yourself as to how much you told," Ritchie said.

Terkel, he said, was able to elicit unique responses from his interviewees because he kept the tone of the interview relaxed and conversational. He encouraged the student historians to do the same, and also to ask the "homerun" question that "gets your interviewee thinking beyond what they're prepared to say."

The auditorium was silent as several student historians recounted what their interviews had uncovered. Junior Ben Naughton displayed a video of his conversation with Frank Shorter, who won the gold medal for marathon in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany — the same games where terrorist group Black September took hostage and killed eleven Israeli athletes and coaches.

"I heard the shots," Shorter recalled in the video.

Junior Jonah Orr uncovered first-hand accounts of the history of American broadcast journalism through his interview with journalist Nick Clooney. In his presentation, Orr recited portions of the interview, in which Clooney recalls posing tough questions to important political leaders. "Like he said, you have to believe in yourself and have confidence in yourself to ask the questions," Orr said.