After years of discussion and abandoned proposals, senior Alexis Gountanis stepped up and took action to create the History Club here at Prospect. Her idea for the club dates back to her sophomore year when she talked to her history teacher about forming one — two years later she felt it was the right time to approach history teacher Brad Rathe to make it happen.

“I thought this is something I should probably take initiative [of] because no one else has really done that before,” Gountanis said. “So, I thought [I] might as well be the person [to make it] because I really like history.”

Rathe acknowledged the effort Gountanis put in to start the club.

“I’ve been approached about it by a lot of kids in my career but few have really followed through and she did it,” Rathe said.” She got it approved, [and] she made commercials. She’s all about it, [so] I give her all the credit.”

Currently, the club meets in room 156 after school on every other Thursday, usually lasting an hour from 3:00-4:00 p.m. According to Rathe, the club fluctuates from eight to 10 members, but is still evolving.

“It’s still a work in progress,” Rathe said. “It is kind of developing each time we meet, but it’s just a chance for kids who enjoy history to get together and talk about it outside of a classroom setting.”

While it’s still in the beginning stages in terms of content and planning, Gountanis has already set a general routine for each meeting. She explained that club members compete in group projects based on a selection of categories related to history. 

Some of the categories include food, places, landmarks, battles or cities. In order to make sure they don’t always pick the same categories, the winning group from the last project spins a wheel and whatever category it lands on is the one that they present on. 

According to Gountanis, the variety and broadness of categories allows for students to dive into what they want to learn about.

“You get to research what you would like to research,” Gountanis said. “Let’s just say you’re not really interested in history … but if you like art, you can focus on researching more on art and sharing that with others as well.”

For example, two club meetings ago, Gountanis said their mission was to persuade other club members to travel to their country. In that presentation, both Rathe and Gountanis said they learned more in-depth about those cities, and Gountanis said she learned a bit about cities she’s never heard of. 

After the members give their presentations, Rathe adds some more competition to the club by holding a trivia contest. To make things more interesting, Gountanis said they’ll be rewarding gift cards to the person who wins; Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A were a couple ideas for gift cards that Gountanis had in mind.

Ultimately, Gountanis hopes for 15 members to join the club, but said she’d be beyond satisfied with even more members than that. 

“You don’t even have to be a history buff [to join the club],” Gountanis said. “Again, like I said, you can research music, [and] you can research art. We accept all [grades] … It’s all open to everyone.”

In Gountanis’s eyes, a successful History Club is one that helps students realize that “there’s more out there” in the world than just their own lives and culture.

“[Some] people think they live in a pond,” Gountanis said.” In reality, they live in an ocean. We are kind of stuck in a bubble [and] we only know about America. We don’t know about other places around the world.”

Simply put, Rathe said the club can offer an outlet for those who enjoy history.

“If they have a passion about [history], it’s a place to explore that passion,” Rathe said. “We’re always looking for something that we care about individually, and if that’s something that is intriguing or interesting to you, [then] you should come check it out.”