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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Integrating Montana History into US History

We've been hosting monthly meet-ups for teachers to share different ideas and resources around a variety of topics. Next session is Tuesday, February 16, from 4-5, where we'll be talking about Indian Education for All. (Register here). 

The last session focused on how, why, and when U.S. history teachers should incorporate Montana history into their American history classes. Despite technical difficulties (user error on my part), the conversation was interesting and I thought that some of you who weren't able to come would appreciate hearing about the resources and ideas. 

In general, attendees agreed that highlighting the connections between national (and world) events and Montana made them more interesting to their students. Here's some of the ways to bring the story home: 

Big Fork high school teacher Cynthia Wilondek shared resources on Montana and World War I, including a county history project her students did that looked at the Flathead Valley during the war. (If you want to do a similar project for your county, email me.) She also talked about having students build what she called "over under timelines"--a technique that allows students to compare two  places at different times (e.g., Montana and the larger US during the Great Depression) OR two different time periods (she often has students compare the 1920s and 1960s.  

Miles City elementary teacher Kelsey Kerney talked about using Visual Thinking Strategies to analyze cowboy photos she found in the new Coming to Montana unit we just published for fourth grade Montana history.  

I shared one of my favorite lesson plans: "Letters Home from Montanans at War." Designed for 7th-12th, and perfect for a Veterans Day presentation, this three-to-five period unit asks students to work in groups to read and interpret letters written by soldiers at war, from the Civil War to Operation Iraqi Freedom. After engaging in close reading and conducting research to interpret the letters, they perform the letters as reader’s theater. Check out this teaser for the lesson plan, which pairs visuals from the Military Museum at Fort Harrison with excerpts from an email written by Captain Cory Swanson from Iraq in 2005.  

I can't remember who introduced the topic, but we spent quite a bit of time on the digitized newspapers from Montana and ways to use them in the classroom--from having students go shopping in the past to having them investigate a particular era (the Great Depression for example) by having them look for something fun to do AND for something about the Depression or New Deal. One project we did NOT talk about--but should have--is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's project History Unfolded, which asks "teams of citizen historians to uncover what ordinary people around the country could have known about the Holocaust from reading their local newspapers in the years 1933–1945." They have educator resources available to implement this project in the classroom.)

For this session, I created this list of resources I thought could help you tie commonly taught eras/topics to Montana. It's a work in progress--and I'm happy to add additional ideas (and share them through here) if you send me your best thoughts.   

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.

 

 

 

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