I want to encourage schools and families to take their students to Museum L-A.

The East Auburn Community School’s sixth-grade class and civil rights team visited the museum in April. We toured the mill and saw lots of interesting artifacts from the days when the mills were in production. We also heard stories from the taped voices of former workers.

Many of the students have relatives who worked in the mills and those students were particularly excited and proud to see where their family members had worked.

Annette Dorey, the museum educator, developed a presentation just for us to augment the immigration studies curriculum in our school. She described the different cultures that immigrated to Maine to work in the mills, the tensions that sometimes occurred, and the traditions that grew. The students were so interested in her presentation that they asked her to hold a “class” during April school vacation on the history of child labor in the L-A mills.

Dorey agreed, and several families went to the museum for that fascinating presentation.

Museum L-A is a local treasure, as I hope the community is discovering.

Susan Weiss, Auburn

School counselor, East Auburn Community School