Planning a Field Trip to Helena?

 First, an apology about last week, when I accidentally scheduled two emails for Monday! One of those was supposed to be this one. The best laid plans....

Second, I hope you had a marvelous Thanksgiving break. 

Finally, I have both good and bad news for those of you planning to bring your students to Helena during the legislature. The good news first: The Montana Historical Society (MTHS) is resuming guided tours of the capitol to student groups. Tours will be offered Tuesday-Thursday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Contact Anthony Schrillo to schedule: Anthony.Schrillo@mt.gov.  

As many of you know, MTHS is in the process of building a grand new addition, which, when it's completed will contain all new, world-class exhibits. It's going to be amazing, but transitions are never easy. All of this to say that all of our museum exhibits, except for Big Medicine, will be closed beginning January 1. 

Of course, there is still lots do do in Helena. We will continue to offer guided tours of the Original Governor's Mansion (group capacity is 20 people), and provide walking tour booklets for self-guided tours of Helena's historic districts. (Weather permitting, dividing classes into two groups, with one walking the neighborhood and the other touring the OGM, works well.)

Other organizations in Helena who offer tours and school programs include: 

• Montana Wild, whose programs include "Meet the Mammals," "The Science Behind Wildlife Management," "Fish Math," "Science Field Investigations," and more. They also offer travel grants!  
• Montana Jewish Project, whose tour of the historic synagogue focuses on the history of Montana's Jewish settlers. (Although the website says Wednesdays, 3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. I have been told they are willing to accommodate school groups at different times.)
• Montana Military Museum, whose displays follow the military in Montana from the arrival of the Lewis and Clark army expedition in 1805, through the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm and various peacekeeping operations. 
• Helena Cathedral, a truly grand building, is available to tour Tuesday-Thursday (ask for a tour focused on the art and architecture).
• ExplorationWorks is a science museum with exciting interactive exhibits. 

 

 

 

 

Primary Sources and Not In Our Town

 I've learned about new resources from folks responding to recent posts.

Not In Our Town

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Montana Jewish Project (MJP) giving away free book kits featuring The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate. (They still have kits available. Learn more and find a link to apply here.) In response, retired Billings high school teacher Bruce Wendt wrote to let me know about an exhibit his American Studies students created in partnership with the Western Heritage Center (WHC) on the twentieth anniversary of the 1993 outbreak of racial violence and the formation of the Not in Our Town movement in response. His students created the exhibit after conducting oral interviews and archival research. Bruce shared an article he wrote for the Ohio Social Studies Review on the project, which presents an exciting model of a museum-school partnership. (High school teachers: Could you work with YOUR local museum to create an exhibit?)

Bruce also said that his students' production "is now a traveling exhibit. If any school/teacher wanted to pair it with the book/lesson [The Christmas Menorahs], I would be happy to facilitate with the WHC (and cover transportation costs). If a teacher wanted, I have plenty of free time to come along with the exhibit." Interested? Contact Bruce to learn more and make arrangements.  

Forest Service History 

Tom Petersen with the National Museum of Forest Service History wrote to tell me that educators have created primary source based lesson plans using materials they found in the Library of Congress and at the Forest Service Museum. The lessons are posted here. 

IEFA Resources

 Mike Jetty, Indian Education Specialist at the Montana Office of Public Instruction, never disappoints. He shared a wealth of information with us at our November online PD last week. I thought I was up to date on OPI resources, but Mike highlighted several lessons that were new to me. Here were two of my highlights: 

Fifth grade: FUN-ology! Seasons Make the World Go 'Round - Earth and Space Science is a series of lessons looking at indigenous scientific knowledge as it relates to weather.

• Lesson One: What can air temperature data tell us about the seasons in Montana?
• Lesson Two: How do seasonal rounds record weather data?
• Lesson Three: Connecting seasonal rounds to seasonal weather patterns and the organisms we observe

High school: Brothers on Three – A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana is a unit plan for high school teachers interested in teaching the book Brothers on Three which focuses on the Arlee Warriors basketball team as it explores contemporary native issues, including racism, suicide, blood quantum, and connection to place and community.

Although she didn't have time to talk about it at the training, a teacher who registered for the workshop, introduced me to http://xwlxwilt.com/.

 Xʷlxʷilt is a tribally-owned business focused on Indigenous integration in education, whose work is rooted in Se̓liš culture. And apparently, you can book them through Humanities Montana's Speakers in the Schools program. 

Do you have a favorite IEFA resource that I didn't mention above? Let me know! And very best Thanksgiving wishes to everyone--however you choose to spend the day.

 

Finding and Using Primary Sources

 One question I'm often asked is "where can I find good primary sources?" Nationally, my first stops are the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Digital Public Library of America, all of which have exhibits, curated primary source sets, and educator resources to make it easier to find useful material. For Montana, my first recommendation is always the Montana Memory Project, the Montana Historical Society, digitized newspapers, and your local museum, archives, or historical society.  

Montana Memory Project Exhibits

The Montana Memory Project has a huge number of sources--so many that it can be overwhelming. To make it easier for educators to find material, it gathered a group of classroom teachers to create primary source sets. Many of these sets are now posted on their exhibit page. Its own staff has also been creating exhibits, all of which include selected primary sources on a particular topic along with a little bit of contextual narrative. Here are a few titles that caught my eye, but there are many more--and still more being added on the Memory Project's Exhibit Page.

• Bicycles for the Army: The 25th Infantry in Montana
• Construction of the Hungry Horse Dam
• Early Schools in Montana
• Hell or High Water: Floods in Montana
• Logging History in Montana

MTHS Annotated Resource Sets

A few years ago, we created eleven annotated resource sets that include links to photographs, maps, illustrations, and documents relating to Montana history topics from the gold rush and homesteading to World War I and the Great Depression. Many, but not all, of the images linked in these sets were also used to illustrate the textbook Montana: Stories of the Land. We didn't create a set for every chapter, but we did for most of the most popular ones. 

Digitized Newspapers

My colleague, reference librarian Zoe Ann Stolz, likes to say that historic newspapers are the closest thing we have to a time machine. The Montana Historical Society has digitized over a million newspaper pages from over 230 newspapers. These papers are on two different sites: Montana Newspapers and Chronicling America. (There is no overlap between sites so you have so search both.) 

Using Primary Sources

How do you use these sources? An old article published by the Library of Congress (no longer online) suggested four types of activities: Focus, Inquiry, Application, and Assessment.  

Here are a few ideas that could fall into these broader categories:

• Build PowerPoints
• Create DBQs 
• Analyze them using a primary source analysis tool from the National Archives or Library of Congress
• Create Historical Assessments of Thinking
• Create a Question Focus
• Get a feel for what it was like back then (one of my favorite exercises is to have students shop the ads in historic newspapers during a specific time period).

But I'd love to hear more from you! What are YOUR favorite ways to use primary sources? 

P.S. No one has time to build every lesson from scratch. Check out some of our plug-and-play primary-source based lesson plans.

Are you teaching Montana: A History of Our Home?

 

A Favor

I'm reporting back to the funders who helped us publish Montana: A History of Our Home, and am looking for human interest stories to show the impact that the curriculum has had/is having. Has it

• Made your life easier?
• Helped improve your students' learning? 
• Increased the amount of time your spend teaching Montana history?
• Helped you integrate Montana history into your ELA, art, and/or math units?  
• Inspired a student? 

Please let me know by return email. Along with your story, please also include

• your school name
• town
• whether you received books as part of our grants to rural schools
• and let me know whether if it is okay to quote you in my grant reports and/or awards applications.

Don't Forget

There's still time to register for our November 14 PD: Indian Education for All Resources. Join OPI Indian Education Specialist Mike Jetty from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. for a grand tour of OPI’s best and newest resources—and learn what IEFA lessons are working for your fellow teachers.

The Montana Jewish Project is still accepting applications for book kits. Each kit includes a copy of Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate, a menorah, dreidls, and a lesson plan. Learn more here.  

Professional Development Opportunities

IEFA PD

We'll be having OPI's Indian Education Unit's own Mike Jetty at our November 14 online PD (4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.) and I hope you can come (and earn 1 OPI Renewal Unit)! Of course, there's only so much you can do in an hour, so I wanted to highlight some opportunities for more in-depth study.

The Western Montana Professional Learning Collaborative has a number of in-depth, self-paced IEFA courses. They charge for these, but they also reward 30 OPI renewal units or 2 graduate UM graduate credits--and they look really good.

OPI has several online PDs. The newest one is a seven-part look at tribal sovereignty. You can earn credits by participating in the live sessions or watching the recordings on YouTube. Earlier series cover such topics as boarding schools, ethnobotany, contemporary topics in Indian country, and implementing The Framework (A practical guide for implementing IEFA). You can find links to all of these and more on their website. 

The Rural Experience in America: Community Civics Through Historical Inquiry

The National Council for History Education, in conjunction with the Library of Congress, is offering a series of free, professional development opportunities designed to support K-12 teachers focusing on this year's theme, Rural Lives in Context.

Self-paced course - From December 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023, registered teachers will self-pace through two online courses:  the Library of Congress 6-week module course, Teaching with Primary Sources Basics, and the Right Question Institute 4-week module course, Teaching Students to Ask their Own Primary Source Questions.  If you do not have a lot of experience using primary sources in your classroom, want to learn about the Library of Congress’s collection of sources, and/or want to add to your toolbox of strategies using primary sources, this professional learning opportunity is highly recommended!  

Online Colloquia - Registered teachers will participate in three online synchronous Saturday professional development sessions led by historians, educational specialists, and master teachers. These sessions will be held on February 25, 2023, April 15, 2023, and May 6, 2023 from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm (EST) and will focus on a variety of topics related to Rural Lives in Context.  During this time, teachers also applying for the onsite colloquium will identify a community partner to assist them with their public history project (NCHE is happy to assist if needed.) 

Onsite Colloquium -  15 teachers (preference will be given to K-12 teachers in rural schools) will be selected to travel to the University of Oklahoma along with their community partners on July 15 – 16, 2023.  During this two-day learning experience, teachers and community partners will build civic connections and develop a plan for their students to create a public history project in their own community. In addition, there will also be some planned tours for seeing firsthand public history in action. Teachers will receive a $750 stipend to defray travel costs and up to $750 to support their community project. The application deadline is March 17, 2023. 

More information here and links to register for one or all here. 

Just in Time for Hanukkah--A Free Resource from the Montana Jewish Project

Longtime readers will remember that I really like Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate. The picture book was based on a 1993 episode in Billings. After members of a hate group threw a rock through a Jewish family's window during Hanukkah, the community organized in opposition. Over 10,000 Billings residents displayed pictures of menorahs in their windows as an expression of solidarity with their Jewish neighbors.

We included the book and a lesson plan in our hands-on history footlocker Coming to Montana: Immigrants from Around the World. (Information on ordering the footlocker can be found here.) 

Now the Montana Jewish Project is offering to send fifty Montana schools a kit that includes a copy of the book, a menorah, dreidls (special tops that Jewish children play with at Hanukkah), and a lesson plan that was adapted (with permission) from the lesson we created for Coming to Montana. And unlike the MTHS footlocker, these kits are yours to keep.

• Preview the lesson plan. 
• Hear the book read on YouTube.
• Apply to receive one of these book kits here.
• Learn more about the Montana Jewish Project.