More Facebook Finds: Influential Americans, the Montana Authors Project, and Indigenous Music Videos

Remember a few weeks ago, when I talked about Facebook as a source for inspiration and work-related material?

Here are a few things that have popped up on my feed lately:

National History Day Project Ideas 

The Atlantic sponsored a link to this article on the 100 most influential figures in American history. This would be great for students looking for topics to compete in this year's National History Day, the theme of which is "Leadership and Legacy in History." (For more on National History Day in Montana see this post about it, visit the Montana Historical Society’s NHD page or visit the Montana State NHD page.)

Montana Authors Project Map

Humanities Montana is asking for input on which author it should add next to its fabulous Montana Authors Project Map.  Right now the map features Mary Clearman Blew, A. B. Guthrie, Judy Blunt, James Welch, Debra Magpie Earling, Norman Maclean, Richard Hugo, D'Arcy McNickle, Ivan Doig, and Andrew Garcia. If you teach Montana literature (or just like it) and haven't played around with this map, stop reading and go there now! If you have an author you'd like to see added to the map, send Humanities Montana an email or contact them on their Facebook page.

Indian Education for All

This link to an article about the Real Life Indian photo project came from the National Museum of the American Indian's Facebook page: " 'Real Life Indian' Photo Project Geared to Defeat All Those Stereotypes". It looks as if the project accepts outside submissions including student work!

 

And finally, for a more enjoyable winter break, I give you for your listening pleasure the Best Indigenous Music Videos of 2014. My own personal favorites are (at number 4) A Tribe Called Red: "Sisters" and (at number 3) Supaman: "Prayer Loop Song." (Added bonus: Supaman is from from the Crow Reservation.) I think these music videos are a powerful way to remind students that Indians do NOT live only in museums, that tribal cultures are alive, and that, like all cultures, they adapt and change over time.

Need more of a rationale to bring some of this music back to your classroom (as is age/school appropriate)? How about Essential Understanding #2: "There is great diversity among individual American Indians as identity is developed, defined and redefined by entities, organizations and people. A continuum of Indian identity, unique to each individual, ranges from assimilated to traditional. There is no generic American Indian."

Best wishes for a merry Christmas--and a joyous new year.

Common Core and Images

I have long believed that we should teach students to apply close reading strategies to primary sources, including visual sources like photographs and that, conversely, having students work with visual sources gives them an important (and accessible) opportunity to practice close reading.

TPS-Barat (whose work I mentioned in this recent post) created this useful comparison between Common Core Reading Anchor Standards and Image Analysis Skills that I pull out every time I need to persuade someone that having students analyzing images is real, worthwhile work. 

So it was great to see the video Applying Common Core Habits to Arts Lessons on the Teaching Channel recently. It focused on teaching students to use close reading habits and asking/answering text dependent questions when they look at art. 

Looking for other tools that use images to help students practice close reading (and make evidence-based claims)? I'm completely enamored with Visual Thinking Strategies, a technique discussed in more detail here. 

Chronicling America Rocks. Oh--and Happy Chanukah

Hanukkah starts tonight, so just for giggles, I decided to search "Hanukkah" and "Chanukah" in the Montana newspapers digitized as part of the Library of Congress/National Endowment for the Humanities Chronicling America project.

I found two articles from the Anaconda Standard, both about programs (one in 1897 and one in 1898) put on children by attending the Butte Bnai Israel congregation's religious education program .

Montana is one of the 39 states participating in Chronicling America. Right now, issues from 38 Montana newspapers are online and searchable by key word. Newly available are

• Bozeman Weekly Chronicle, 1887-1888
• Great Falls Daily Tribune, 1919-1922
• Neihart Herald, 1891-1901
• River Press (Fort Benton), 1905-1914 

There will be even more titles available by the end of 2015, including the Dupuyer Acantha (1894–1899), Ekalaka Eagle (1910–1915), (Hamilton) Western News (1900–1910), Whitefish Pilot (1908–1912) and the Wibaux Pioneer (1907–1914).

Want to know more about Chronicling America and ways to use it in the classroom? This post from last March is a good starting point: Searching Chronicling America

EdSITEment, the National Endowment for the Humanities site for educators, also has great resources for using Chronicling America, including tutorials and lesson plans.

For more on Hanukkah, see last year's post, my Favorite Montana Hanukkah Story--and Resources to Teach It.

On Buffalo Jumps and Depression Era Photos: Cool Stuff I've Seen Lately

No theme this time--just info about some cool resources I've seen recently.

Buffalo Hunters

I was fascinated by this article, "The Buffalo Chasers: Vast expanses of grassland near the Rocky Mountains bear evidence of an extraordinary ancient buffalo hunting culture" published in Archaeology, about research being conducted on the Blackfeet Reservation. (For those of you who use the textbook, the article complements Chapter 2: People of the Dog Days).

According to the article, many scholars historically believed that the Blackfeet only constituted themselves into well-organized tribes after the arrival of horses and guns. This new research on buffalo jumps pushes the development of a complex political society back to 900 A.D. and better reflects the tribes' understanding of its own cultural development. “We have 11 separate, elaborate drive-line systems in just a 20-mile stretch of Two Medicine River. That took coordination and a level of planning for the future that haven’t normally been associated with nomadic people in this part of the world,” archaeologist Maria Nieves Zedeño explains. The article continues:

The Old Women’s Phase people did not leave behind elaborate burials or evidence of long-term storage facilities, signs that archaeologists have typically used to measure the social complexity of prehistoric societies. Scholars therefore believed that these buffalo-hunting people were essentially simple foragers, without any of the complex political arrangements that organized farmers to the east or the fishing cultures of the Northwest Coast had. “Bison hunters have been dismissed as being not as sophisticated as other cultures,” says Royal Alberta Museum archaeologist Jack Brink, who excavated at Canada’s Heads-Smashed-In, a noted buffalo jump. “There was this idea that they were opportunistic hunters skulking across the northern plains. But what we’re finding is that their way of life was complex and thought out in ways that reflected powerful social controls. http://www.archaeology.org/issues/155-1411/letter-from/2587-letter-from-montana-buffalo-jumps

Depression Era Photographs

Jumping ahead a millenia, a new resource from Yale and NEH, Photogrammar brings together 170,000 images by photographers employed by the Farm Securities Administration and Office of War Information from 1935 to 1945. The images (all owned by the Library of Congress) are searchable by keyword, and you can filter your search by state, county, city, date, and photographer.

Techniques for Analyzing Primary Sources (aligned to Common Core)

TPS-Barat (Primary Source Nexus Teaching Resource Blog) has great stuff--including a "Thinking Triangle" Graphic Organizer that I often use for photo analysis. 

Here are two articles they published that I thought were particularly interesting and could be widely adapted.

For Middle School and High School Students

In "Determining the Main Idea of a Text," high school teacher Glen Jensen, outlines his technique for having students analyze complex primary sources (in his case, President Franklin Roosevelt’s first inauguration speech).  It's worth reading his description, but here's a summary:

• I gave them time to re-read the text and underline the five most important words. (If students are having a hard time selecting five words, you may suggest that they look for words that will answer the five Ws.)
• Through class discussion, they chose the best five words. 
• Then students write a sentence that tells the main idea of the passage using the five words they chose or the five circled words the class agreed were best.
• As a class, they chose the best sentence. 
• Then students rewrite that sentence using informal or street language. Creating these slang sentences allow students to relate historical texts to contemporary times while requiring them to climb to the top of the cognitive thinking ladder. The students also find this activity to be engaging and fun. 
• 
  

For Elementary Students

In Analyzing Primary Sources: Sensory Exploration, TPS-Barat introduces its Sensory Exploration Graphic Organizer. 

"The sensory exploration graphic organizer is a great way to introduce students, especially younger ones, to primary source analysis. It also helps with vocabulary development. Encourage students to write to fill in each column for each sense. After, you may have students create a poem of their choice using the words they brainstormed; they may choose to write the poem from the point of view of someone outside the image or from a person, animal, or thing inside the image. If students drew images, have them combine their images into a pictograph to which they will add spoken word."

For National History Day

TPS-Barat has also created a number of really useful posts on National History Day, including several that provide primary source sets relating to specific topics that fit this year's theme (Leadership and Legacy in History); one that details the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources; and one that reviews tech tools for creating citations. Find them all here. 

Useful Facebook Pages

Facebook is great for cute baby pictures, recipes and political rants--all of which I enjoy on my feed. But more and more I find Facebook useful for work related material. My Facebook reading isn't systematic--it is recreational--but I'm finding a lot of great recreational content related to teaching, history, and primary sources--some of which I pull out and feature here, but most of which I enjoy privately.

If you are on Facebook, here are a few history oriented pages you might want to check out and like/follow:

Montana Memory Project: https://www.facebook.com/MontanaStateLibrary.MMP

• For almost daily posts featuring really cool Montana primary sources 

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian: https://www.facebook.com/NationalMuseumoftheAmericanIndianinDC  

• For links to articles on contemporary Indian issues and artists, cool artifact photos, and even your Mayan horoscope

U.S. National Archives: https://www.facebook.com/usnationalarchives

• For "Documents of the Day"from the serious (Rosa Parks' fingerprint card from her arrest) to the frivolous (a picture of President Harry Truman pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey). Also for info re online professional development opportunities.

Library of Congress: https://www.facebook.com/libraryofcongress 

• For photos and other featured items from their collections

Montana Historical Society: https://www.facebook.com/MontanaHistoricalSociety

• For tidbits about Montana history, pictures of cool artifacts, documents, and historic buildings, and interesting links.

Montana Women's History Matters: https://www.facebook.com/montanawomenshistory

• For short posts on Montana women's history with links to longer essays

What are your favorite work-related Facebook pages? 

Richest Hills: Mining in the Far West and Other Summer PD from the NEH

It's cold outside (-9 this morning in Helena)--so what better time to start thinking about summer!

Next July, the Montana Historical Society is once again offering an NEH  Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for School Teachers workshop: “The Richest Hills: Mining in the Far West, 1862-1920.”

Teachers (scholars, in NEH parlance) will travel to Montana  from across the country to spend a week visiting Bannack, Virginia City, Butte, Anaconda, and Helena to learn about  the mining West and ways to better teach with historic places and primary sources.  Instruction and materials are free and NEH provides a $1,200 stipend to help pay travel expenses, including hotel rooms, meals during the week, and travel to and from Helena. 

“The Richest Hills” offered an amazing week of learning last time around (you can read what past scholars have said about the experience here and see some of the lesson plans they created here). Each time we offer the workshop we fine tune it, and we expect that 2015 will be the best year yet. 

We encourage applications from Montana teachers—but you should know that the application process is very competitive (we had 250 applicants for 80 slots last time). Additionally, NEH requires that equal access be given to applicants coming from out of state and encourages projects to consider geographic diversity as part of their selection process. The good news is that there are LOTS of really cool, free offerings this summer in addition to “The Richest Hills.”

Through various NEH summer programs for teachers, you can spend a week in Atlanta studying the Civil Rights movement or in New York City studying the Gilded Age. There are longer programs too: imagine spending five weeks in Madrid, Spain, learning about Spanish art and literature (stipends are higher for longer programs to help cover costs.) Programs that include Indian Education for All content include

• From Mesa Verde to Santa Fe: Pueblo Identity in the Southwest (a three-week course in Cortez, CO)
• Following in Ancient Footsteps: The Hopewell in Ohio (Columbus, Ohio)
• Literatures of Indigenous Peoples (a three-week course in Missoula)
• Mesoamerican Cultures and Their Histories: Focus on Oaxaca (a four-week course in Oaxaca, Mexico)
• Native Americans of New England: A Historical Overview (a three-week course in Amherst, MA)

Please help us spread the word about “The Richest Hills” and take a look at all the other NEH workshops available. 

Applications are due March 2, 2015.

A full list of summer 2015 courses is available here.