“Building Pride, Building Character” Encourages Pride of Place and Person

Our “Building Pride, Building Character” EITC program shares the Pittsburgh region’s rich architecture and history with students through educational field trip videos like those pictured above.

Despite the challenges educators and students faced this school year, they were still able to connect to inspirational and historic Pittsburgh landmarks through PHLF’s Building Pride, Building Character EITC program. This year, we converted our field trips to a series of educational videos. Three more videos in the “Pittsburgh People and Places” series were released at the end of May featuring a trolley tour through Downtown Pittsburgh, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, and August Wilson House and Freedom Corner. Additionally, two educational videos in our “Building Pride, Building Character” Trolley Tour were released featuring the City-County Building and Allegheny County Courthouse.

Three additional videos in that series will be released in early June featuring the Fort Pitt Museum, Fort Pitt Block House, and Duquesne Incline.

“I hope these virtual tours help fill your remaining days with some of the learning about Pittsburgh––and fun––that we all used to experience on our in-person field trips,” wrote PHLF’s Education Advisor Louise Sturgess in an e-mail to Pittsburgh Public School teachers.

Previously released videos include “Introducing Pittsburgh,” which shares the history of Pittsburgh through nine historic images and helps students appreciate the value of diversity in the built environment. Also released in February and March were “The Bigham House on Mt. Washington: A Pittsburgh Connection to the Underground Railroad,” and the “Dollar Bank Heritage Center” video, the first stop on our virtual “Pittsburgh People & Places” field trip.

Educator feedback has been overwhelmingly positive:

• My students are watching “Introducing Pittsburgh” with me (again). I asked them to watch during our half day. This is great! (I had one boy tell me he watched it three times––and he loves it!)

• [Introducing Pittsburgh] supports our Geography/history curriculum. The students learn about the history of Pittsburgh and how it developed. Many students have not been to many of the areas mentioned and shown in the video, so this virtual trip gave them a peek at our city. Some students are new to Pittsburgh this year, and due to the pandemic have not had the chance to explore. They expressed interest in visiting the places mentioned this summer. We also have a large English Language Learners group. They have not been to many of the places as well. Thank you so much for this production. If you do have others, we look forward to viewing those.

• Thank you so much for this wonderful resource!

• This is FANTASTIC! Thank you!

• This video supplemented our social studies curriculum by adding a clear picture of what it was like to be on the Underground Railroad. The students were amazed that we have an original historic landmark in our own hometown that was part of the actual railroad. I truly appreciated the time and effort you have put into making that video.

“I am so pleased that we have been able to continue offering our Building Pride, Building Character EITC program. Thanks to our corporate sponsors and dedicated Pittsburgh Public School teachers, students have continued learning about Pittsburgh through its historic landmarks,” said Sarah Greenwald, co-director of education.

Click here for a complete list of donors who are underwriting our virtual programming with the Pittsburgh Public Schools through mid-June. We thank all our donors who contributed to PHLF’s “Building Pride, Building Character” educational program, made possible through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program. Contributions from the McSwigan Family Foundation Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation and from the Gailliot Family Foundation also helped underwrite video production.