$$ for Spring Field Trips to MHS

The Montana Historical Society is undergoing historic changes to our facility by building a 66,000-square-foot addition, and renovating 66,900 square feet in our existing home on Montana’s Capitol Campus in Helena. 

You need to know that these exciting changes will temporarily force us to close our doors to the public, possibly for two years.  

The museum staff have already packed up part of the Homeland gallery (although the popular Ice-Age and "Indians World" sections remain open to visitors.) However, all of "Homeland" as well as the “Neither Empty Nor Unknown” gallery is scheduled to close in September 2022.  It is likely that the Russell gallery will also be closing in the next year. So--if you want your students to tour the MHS museum before 2025, now's the time. 

To facilitate bringing students to Helena, we are offering $500 grants to schools over fifty miles from Helena to help pay for the rising cost of transportation. You can apply to receive a grant by completing this application. Grants will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis to eligible schools.  

Participating classes will be asked to complete a pre- or post-tour lesson related to the fieldtrip (we are happy to suggest appropriate lessons). 

If you have questions about tour options (including guided tours, scavenger hunts, and self-guided tours), please contact Anthony Schrillo at Anthony.Schrillo@mt.gov or (406) 444-4794.

Montana's Constitution Turns 50

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Montana's Constitution. It's a truly remarkable document and a model for the nation. Anniversaries are always a time to look back and assess, and this one is no exception. Here are resources to use in the classroom and opportunities to learn more yourself. 

Resources for Teaching 

Chapter 21 of Montana: Stories of the Land, "A People's Constitution," is an obvious starting point, as is Chapter Eight, "Montana's Quiet Revolution, 1965-1975" (23 minutes) of Montana Mosaic: 20th Century People and Events.  "Montana's Quiet Revolution" excerpts a longer (56-minute) video from PBS: For This and Future Generations.  

I also love these short video interviews with Earl Barlow, who at the time of the constitutional convention served as Director of Indian Education in the office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. In this series, he recounts how Montana became the only state to have a constitutional amendment stating that “[Montana] recognizes the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians” and “is committed in its educational goal to the preservation of their cultural integrity”:

• "Learning of the Constitutional Convention" (2:41) 
• "Putting Indian Voices into the 1972 Constitutional Convention," (5:28),  
• "Addressing the Convention" (5:14), and
• "Putting Words into Action" (6:12).

The Montana Free Press has been running a series of articles on the constitution at fifty, including: 

• Montana’s Indian education mandate at 50 (montanafreepress.org)
• Montana’s progressive state Constitution celebrates 50 years (montanafreepress.org)
• The limits and strengths of Montana’s “Right To Know.” (montanafreepress.org)

My guess is that they will keep posting additional articles on their "State Government" page. 

Save the Dates 

The Montana Historical Society will be host a four-part speaker series in May (Thursdays at 4:30) focusing on the Constitution. Presenters will include longtime journalist Chuck Johnson (Rewriting Montana’s Constitution: How It Happened), State Senator Diane Sands (Women and the 1972 Constitution), panels with former state legislators Norma Bixby and Carol Juneau (The Constitution and Indian Education for All), and former state legislators Dorothy Bradley and Bob Brown (Open Meetings, Right to Know and Other Ways the 1972 Constitution Affected the Legislature). The talks will be live-streamed on our YouTube channel; attendees, whether in-person or online, be eligible to earn OPI Renewal Units. Details will be posted soon on the Montana Historical Society's Public Programs page.   

June 15 and 16 MHS will be cohosting a two-day conference, "Celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the 1972 Constitutional Convention and Adoption of the Constitution by the People of Montana." Sessions will include panels on "How the Constitution Came to Be," “The Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment and Natural Resources,” "Revenue and Taxation," "the Declaration of Rights," and other topics. OPI Renewal Units will be available to attendees. Details will be posted soon on the Montana Historical Society's Conferences and Workshops page.  

While you are waiting for these upcoming events, check out "Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Montana Constitution," cohosted by MSU and the Montana Free Press. Recorded and available on YouTube, the two-hour event featured a star-studded cast: former Senator Max Baucus, former Gov. Marc Racicot, former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau, 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention delegate Mae Nan Ellingson, and longtime state political journalist Charles S. Johnson, along  with moderators Sarah Vowell and John Adams. 

Teaching Montana History is edited (and mostly written) by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Program Manager at the Montana Historical Society.

Amazing Teaching with Primary Sources Summer PD Opportunity

Are you a teacher interested in curating Primary Source sets for classroom use? 

Join the Montana Memory Project (MMP) this summer for an all-expenses-paid workshop/work session in Choteau, Montana, to learn how to search and use our resources, create a project to use with your students, and create an online exhibit. Exhibits will be published on our website to be shared widely. To give attendees our full focus, attendance will be limited to 20 people. Participants will be selected based on application form responses.

An abbreviated agenda is shared below. A more detailed agenda will be provided to final participants. 

Monday, August 1 – Half-day (afternoon) Dino Expedition with the Montana Dinosaur Center in Bynum

This expedition teaches the basics - fossil identification, surface mapping, and field search. Learn about the local and geologic history on our way to our various field sites.

*This is a site tour only and does not involve any digging, although you will see plenty of dinosaur bones! 

Tuesday, August 2 - Day of learning and research. 

Wednesday, August 3 - Finish research and share projects

Dinosaur center tour, hotel, and meals are provided.

Teachers who finish and publish a project will be eligible for a $375.00 stipend. Attendees will also earn 16 OPI Renewal Units.

Apply Here.

 

Links Roundup

I have a file in my computer where I tuck away interesting links, intriguing strategies and other things worth sharing. Here are a few unrelated, but I hope, interesting tidbits.  

Teaching about Slavery

Runaway slave ads: In collaboration with the Hard History Project, Freedom on the Move "created a searchable database of fugitives from North American slavery...There are endless possibilities for using the database in your classroom." To make things easy for you, they "created four lessons you can use to bring the ads to life and introduce students to the brave people who resisted slavery by running away." 

Sherrie Galloway, a former Library of Congress Teacher in Residence, posted an intriguing lesson on the TPS Teaching Network that used a five-minute clip from Henry Gates' TV show, Finding Your Roots of Pharrell Williams reading excerpts from a narrative created from an interview conducted during the 1930s with his great, great aunt, who was born enslaved twelve years before the end of the Civil War. That of course led me down the YouTube Rabbit Hole, and I watched similar two to five minute clips with other African American celebrities--Queen Latifah, Nas--discovering information about their own ancestors, enslaved and free. What's powerful about these short clips (besides the fact that they are so short) is that they make slavery real and personal, not something that happened a long time ago to faceless, nameless people, but something that happened to the families of people who are living now. (To access the lesson, you have to join the TPS Teaching Network--but it's free!) 

RAFT Writing and Charlie Russell

I don't remember the name of the brilliant teacher who proposed this idea. My apologies. They sent it to me in response to one of the lesson plans we created for Montana's Charlie Russell. Our lesson is

• “The Rest of the Story” (grades 3–7) engages students in an analysis of several pieces of Russell art before asking them to choose one to use as inspiration to write a story.

"The Rest of the Story" asks students what's going on in the picture, say Bronc to Breakfast, what they think happened right before, and what they think happened right after. And then asks students to write a story. 

The teacher suggested a clever variation: "Students find Charlie Russell paintings very engaging, and they love to tell stories. Another way you could use this idea is to have the students choose to be one of the characters in the painting, and they write a letter home telling about their experience." 

It's Not Too Late...

We've got free workshops coming up across the state. Learn more and register here.  

If you are an elementary teacher, there's still time to apply to become a Teacher Leader in Montana History. 

There's also still time to nominate a great middle or high school teacher for the Centennial Bell Award (for excellence in teaching Montana history).  

Gilder-Lehrman is still recruiting nominations for National History Teacher of the Year. The award is open to anyone who teaches K-12 American history (including but not limited to state and local history.)   

 

 

 

Your Students Have Been Working on Developing Questions. Now What?

Question Formulation Technique: What's Next?

Longtime readers know that I'm a huge fan of Harvard University's Right Question Institute and their Question Formulation Technique. You'll also know that teaching students to develop questions is one of the social studies skills included in the new standards.  

But what comes next? Developing questions is just the first of our six new social studies skills. (The second is "Plan inquiries.") As importantly, if students just ask questions without any follow-up, there's a risk of them thinking that the activity is make work. 

Not too long ago, the RQI's newsletter focused on answering how teachers can use student-generated questions to drive learning. Here's material, copied shamelessly from their newsletter: 

Video: Using student questions to drive learning

Educators often wonder what to do with questions their students have generated. As Kim Sergent, a social studies instructional specialist, notes, "If you don't use them" (the questions) "you will lose them" (the students). In this video, educators talk about different ways they use student-generated questions — specifically, questions about primary sources. 

Blog: 'Next steps': examples from first-grade
First-grade teachers Ashleigh Burry and Kristy Mandel provide some more examples of what to do with students' questions, including reading and writing exercises, project-based learning, and activities like "wonder wall" and "exploration hour." 

Handout: More 'next steps' ideas and examples (You'll need to complete RQI's free registration to access this material)
We've compiled a list of more examples, based on insights from hundreds of teachers, and put them on continuum: From quick "exit tickets" to multi-day projects, student questions can drive the next steps of learning, no matter what your time frame or objectives. 

More on Developing Questions

Looking for more on getting students to ask questions? Check out this Education Week article, "10 Strategies for Encouraging Students to Ask Questions." 

More on Teaching Social Studies Skills

Teachers from across the state will be gathering to share ideas about teaching social studies skills on Wednesday, March 16, from 4-5 on Zoom. Register here by March 15 to receive an invitation. (Attendees will earn one OPI Renewal Unit.)  

Speaking of workshops--there's still time to register to attend one of our FREE on-the-road educator workshops for six hours of engaging professional development with award-winning classroom teacher Jim Schulz. Jim conducts the best workshops I've ever been to, hands down, and this one includes resources for teaching students to evaluate sources (SS.K12.3). So join him in Great Falls (March 23), Butte (March 25), Missoula (March 28), Bozeman (April 4), Billings (April 6), or Miles City (April 7). Learn more and find a link to register here. 

 

Learning from Historical Document Units

If you teach Montana history, I hope you use the Learning from istorical Document Units we've created to accompany almost every chapter of the textbook, Montana: Stories of the Land.  These units provide excerpts of primary sources, such as

• 1863 letter from Bannack" 
• 1865 letter from Chief Victor 
• letters from drought stricken farmers in the 1930s to 
• Testimony from Hum Fay concerning the Boycott of Chinese and Japanese Businesses in Butte
• a diary of a 1916 car trip from Seattle to Boston, and 
• Constitutional Convention Delegate Virginia Blend's Testimony before the Bill of Rights Committee, 1972.

Each unit includes a link to the typed excerpt (to make it easy for students to read), a link to a Document Analysis Worksheet created by the National Archives, and a link to the actual document. That last link has been broken ever since the Montana Memory Project migration to its new platform. But no longer! Letters, Diaries, and Documents from the Montana Historical Society (which is the collection that most of these documents were a part of) have now been uploaded to the new site. There are still four documents that are part of other collections that haven't been uploaded, but for the most part, the links are now good!

Speaking of the new Montana Memory Project site, I hope you'll check it out if you haven't already. I find it easier to navigate than the old site IF I follow these three tips:

1. Use the drop down menus to narrow your search by format (e.g., image, map, document, etc.).

2. Use the "Search for" drop down menu to select "exact phrase" when searching for a phrase, for example "Evelyn Cameron". 

3. Use the refine search term button to add or restrict keywords after the original search. 

I also highly recommend registering for a free account, so you can save things in your own personal collection.

Happy searching!

Opportunities Galore

I've been bombarding you with opportunities lately, so many that I bet you've missed some. Here's a summary! 

On-the-Road Workshops

Last week of March and first week of April, educator Jim Schulz is coming to Great Falls, Butte, Missoula, Bozeman, Billings, and Miles City with a new social studies workshop. Find a description, dates, a link to the agenda and links to register here.    

Teacher Leaders in Montana History Program

We are looking for eight rock star elementary teachers to become Teacher Leaders in Montana History Fellows. Deadline to apply is March 27. Find more information and a link to apply here. 

March 16 Online PD

Teaching Social Studies Skills is the last topic for our online PD series. The new standards focus on helping students learn how to develop questions, plan inquiries, compare, evaluate and use sources, communicate conclusions, and take informed action. Come with your questions and your best ideas for teaching those skills. Register here before March 15 to receive a link to the Zoom meeting. 

Centennial Bell Award

Speaking of rock star teachers: If you know a great middle or high school Montana history teacher, nominate them for the 33rd Montana Statehood Centennial Bell Award. The nomination will take you less than 2 minutes. Deadline is March 31. Learn more here. 

Be a Presenter in October

Sign up to present at the 2022 MFPE Educator Conference (in-person in Helena or virtually), October 20-21. We need to beef up the social studies schedule, and I bet you have something to offer. Deadline to apply is April 30. Learn more and submit a proposal to present here.

 

 

Teaching Montana History in High School

 In January, I asked veteran high school Montana history teachers to share their suggestions for teaching a semester Montana history course. I got some great responses.  

Cynthia Wilondek (Big Fork) recommended using readings from The Last Best Place by William Kittridge to supplement a textbook. She's also taught the novels Winter in the Blood and Fool's Crow by James Welch, which she says are always a hit and work well for cross-curricular lesson plans. In addition, she's used Ellen Baumler's Beyond Spirit Tailings for a variety of themes, including geography, human settlement, and cultural norms, as well as an introduction to story-telling for another cross-curricular opportunity. 

Bruce Wendt (retired from Billings) said he built his course "around a core idea—Montana as a place for migrants or 'the last best place.' I organized (and it was a semester) the class as a series of arrivals in the state from Native Americans to the beginnings of the 21^st century (mining, ranching and so on)." Among other texts, he used primary sources gathered in Not in Precious Metals Alone: A Manuscript History of Montana. He says he also tried to do as many hands-on projects as possible: "We built stuff—a full-sized dugout canoe, railroad tracks (literally in class), created a Butte bar in the room.  When a student did not believe stories about burning buffalo chips, a kid brought some in and we lit them on fire (outside). We had (real) horses in class. So, lots of projects..." He also used Montana Mosaic: Twentieth-Century People and Events, a twelve episode exploration of Montana in the twentieth century.  

Deb McLaughlin (Belgrade) generously offered to share her Google Drive folder of lesson plans and resources she uses when teaching the class. (I'm sure she'd share with other teachers as well.)  

I also put some thought into resources I might use to teach a high school Montana history class. Here they are in vaguely chronological order:

• Project Archaeology: Investigating the First Peoples, the Clovis Child Burial examines new findings about the Anzick site near Wilsall, the oldest documented archaeological site in North America.
• Excerpts from Plenty Coups: Chief of the Crows and Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, "as-told-to" autobiographies that describe life for the Crows in the 1850s. 
• Montana Fur Trade: Four Square Primary Source Lesson Plan created by Jana Mora of Great Falls (I might use her model of "jigsawing" sections of Montana: Stories of the Land while having students focus on read primary source material for other units as well.) 
• Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan (Part 1, about the gold rush, is digitized); see this handy study guide with lesson plan suggestions, written by Ruth Ferris and Cheryl Hughes. (Or maybe I'd skip the gold rush so I had time for more twentieth century material, especially if students already took Montana history in middle school.)
•  Letter from Chief Victor to Territorial Gov. Sidney Edgerton, 1865, Asking Edgerton to Enforce the 1855 Treaty  (one of my favorite primary sources)* and "Northern Plains Treaties: Is a Treaty Intended to Be Forever?" a lesson created by Julie Cajune and Tammy Elser for the National Museum of the American Indian. While talking about treaties, I'd probably bring it up to date with some articles on Herrara v Wyoming (which ruled that Crow hunting rights remain guaranteed on federal land in their traditional homelands)* or another recent Supreme Court case.
• I'd spend some time on the 1870 Marias Massacre, including debating whether Yellowstone National Park's Mount Doane, named for Lieutenant Augustus Doane, who served under Baker and boasted about his role in the massacre, should be renamed.
• I might use the Stanford History Education Group's lesson plan on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
• I'd absolutely spend time studying allotment, including using letters exchanged between Salish leader Sam Resurrection and Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs R. G. Valentine.*
• Like Bruce, I'd use the Montana Mosaic videos. I'd probably do a take on an assignment introduced to me by Phil Leonardi (Corvallis): have students look for falsehoods in one of the homesteading promotional brochures. (Email me if you want more on this.)
• I'd absolutely teach "Montana's Landless Indians and the Assimilation Era of Federal Indian Policy: A Case of Contradiction,"  created by Laura Ferguson. (Read more about it here.)*
• I would have my students conduct a county history project focused on World War I (or another topic).*
• We'd read Part 1 of Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936-1942, the best thing written about Montana and the Great Depression.*
• We'd spend some time on the 1972 Constitution (including watching the Montana Mosaic video)*
• We'd read Ed Dobb, “Pennies from Hell,” about the history of Butte and the legacy of open pit mining. This is a truly moving essay that I think absolutely every Montanan should read.*
• We'd end with Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes Lesson Plan, which asks students to interview change makers in their own communities."*
• If time allowed, I'd also do another local history project of some kind--with students conducting a then and now rephotography project or a museum-school partnership of some kind--a project for which there is an authentic audience outside the classroom. 

*I know, I know, this list is TOO long. I've starred my favorite resources/lessons, the ones I'd have the hardest time giving up. Another way to triage is to focus on the twentieth century, since most Montana history classes in elementary and middle school focus on the nineteenth.