Who's In and Who's Out

When we wrote the middle-school textbook Montana: Stories of the Land, we worked hard to make sure we were telling an inclusive story. I think we succeeded in incorporating Montana's Indian history into the main narrative--at least better than many American history textbooks do. (We were less successful in incorporating women's history, a deficit we've tried to address with our Women's History resources and lesson plans.)

I started thinking about this after reading Facing History and Ourselves one-hour lesson plan on LGBT history. That lesson has students work together to create a timeline of significant events in LGBTQ history (basically by playing the game "Timeline" as a class)* and then reflecting on the difference it would make if LGBTQ history, and the histories of groups that received relatively little attention, were woven into the curriculum and given proportional weight in textbooks and literature classes.

It occurred to me that Facing History's lesson plan could easily be adapted to become an IEFA lesson in a high school American history classes using entries from Montana Office of Public Instruction's tribal history timelines as a starting point.

If you try this, I hope you will let me know how it goes.

*Timeline Rules of Play (from "Rules of Play," RulesofPlay.co.uk):

"To begin, one card is randomly drawn from those not given to players. This is placed in the middle of the table, date-side up and is the starting point of a chronological line which will slowly be built by players. The first player then chooses one of their cards and place it before or after the initial card. The player's card is then turned date-side up. If the player was right, it remains on the table. Otherwise, the card is discarded and a new one must be drawn to replace it. Play proceeds clockwise. The more cards which are correctly played, the harder it is to correctly place new ones! The first player to get rid of their cards wins."

P.S. I was inspired by this to work with Nick Zarnowski to create a timeline-based lesson plan focused on women and the law. As often happens, the lesson morphed beyond recognition and bears little resemblance to the inspiration. However, especially if you teach government, I hope you'll try it and then, of course, report back.