HERE WE GO...

J. is fidgeting at her desk, eager for this long afternoon to be over. Her day at the Umana Middle School Academy started at 7:20 AM. Now it's close to 3 PM. She slumps over her desk, arches a brow and blurts out a comment that calls into question everything that we've just begun to do.

"Miss, Eastie is like ghetto. Nobody here is going to come to a history thing."

J. is responding to my cheery announcement that the East Boston Historical Society will officially launch with a community event at the Atlantic Works Building in East Boston sometime near the end of January, 2010. I had just reminded J. and her classmates that almost every Boston neighborhood - Southie, Brighton, Dorchester - has a historical society. Not East Boston. I had talked about this as if it were a crime that must be solved, a wrong that they must right. I had ticked off Eastie history highlights that they had begun to discover:

Fastest clipper ships in the world made right here.

The first generation of Kennedys landed right here.

The nation's first underwater tunnel and first branch library - built right here.

The first naval skirmish of the American Revolution, the Battle of Chelsea Creek, fought right here.

And you are making history right now, I had reminded them, because your families are changing the face and feel of East Boston as immigrants to cities always do.

Then, I had addressed them as civic leaders of the highest caliber:

Your work - your projects exploring your own identity and all this stuff that people don't know about your neighborhood - it's going to be showcased for everybody to see. Your parents will be invited to come, and others in the community, and political leaders. Maybe the Mayor will show up. Others too. Everyone will wear name tags and drink apple juice and Coke and look around and thank you for saving the history of East Boston.

But J. is skeptical.

How do you convince kids that history actually matters? And can we expect 6th, 7th & 8th graders to become stewards of history, by creating "a community of memory" to link their own lives and experiences to what happened in their neighborhood long ago?

This is what we have set out to do, and we have no idea where we will end up. I thank J., because she will force us to keep it real every step along the way.