Nominate Your Favorite Teacher

On the assumption that everyone is much too busy this time of year to read blogs, this will be my last missive until the New Year.

But perhaps the holiday is a good time to think of the great history teachers you know and to consider nominating one of them for the Gilder Lehrman Institute's National History Teacher of the Year Award. Montana is filled with worthy candidates and the application process (at least for the nominator) is quick and easy.

You can find more here: www.gilderlehrman.org/nhtoy.

Blogs I Like, Episode 1

I recently subscribed to the Extreme History Project Blog—(motto: “History isn’t pretty.”)

They’ve had some good (and short!) posts—including these three:

• “What indigenous people look like”
• “Is your Halloween costume respectful or offensive” (no longer seasonal but still thought-provoking). 

Their blog also led me to “This is Anthropology,” a presentation developed in response to a Florida governor’s  statement criticizing spending education funding on majors like anthropology—but which is actually a really good answer to the “what do you do with an anthropology degree” and could get students thinking about careers they never considered.

What blogs/listservs do you subscribe to that you think I (or other educators) would find worthwhile? Let me know and I’ll compile a list.

NEH Summer Institutes/Workshops

Winter finally hit Helena with below 0 temperatures. I don't ski--so the only thing left to do is ... start thinking about summer.

I recently received an announcement for an NEH Summer 2012 Institute for School Teachers—“American Frontiers in Global Perspective.”    

This is just one of many opportunities for stipended professional development offered through NEH. NEH has two primary programs for school teachers:

• NEH Summer Seminars or Institutes, which run from two to five weeks, and 
• NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops, which run for one week. 

The topics addressed in these programs range from a five-week seminar on four classics of Native American literature (including the Surrounded and Winter in the Blood) to a weeklong seminar, "Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution."

The Montana Historical Society offered a weeklong Landmarks program last year, during which we shared Montana's mining history with amazing teachers from across the United States. Those who participated came away energized--in part by Montana, and the history we presented--but even more so through sharing ideas with dedicated, committed fellow teachers.

Information on the many programs offered and more details about stipends, etc., can be found here:

• Landmarks.  
• Institutes and Seminars.  

Application deadline for both programs is March 1.

Montana History Bibliographies

Want your students to write research papers based on both primary and secondary source research? Want them to focus on topics that they can’t buy papers for?

Do I have a deal for you….

As you may know, the Montana Historical Society is a proud cosponsor of National History Day in Montana.

To encourage students to engage with Montana history for their history day projects, our staff created bibliographies for Montana history topics related to the history day theme (which this year is “Revolution, Reaction, and Reform.”) Topics range from Montana’s World War II conscientious objector camps (reaction to war) to the Chinese experience in Montana (reaction against Chinese immigration and reaction by the Chinese to discrimination), Indian boarding schools (a failed reform), and fire policy (revolutionized in reaction to the 1910 fires). As you can see—almost anything can fit under the “Revolution, Reaction, Reform” mantle, so basically staff created bibliographies for a few of their favorite Montana history topics.

Find the bibliographies here.

We think these bibliographies will be great for National History Day projects—but we also think they would be great for any class in which students are required to conduct research projects (Montana history, Language Arts, American history….)

Each bibliography includes secondary and primary sources. Some of these sources are only available at the historical society; many others have been digitized and are available online.

Of course, we hope you’ll consider participating in National History Day (including the state competition to be held in Helena, April 21). You can find more information about Montana’s National History Day program here, here, or here, or by contacting Montana NHD Coordinator Tom Rust. 

But whether or not your students participate in National History Day, we hope to these bibliographies provide useful starting points for research projects.

If you do have students use our bibliographies, please let us know. If you have a topic you’d like to see us create a bibliography for, let us know that too. (No promises, but we’ll try.)

And if you WILL have students participating in NHD, please drop Tom Rust a note so he can plan.