Teaching with Cemeteries

Last week we hosted our final Social Studies Third Tuesday for the year. Three MTHS Teacher Leaders in History--Jodi Delaney (Helena, grades 4-5), April Wills (Culbertson, middle school), and Cynthia Wilondek (Bigfork, high school)--talked about cemetery projects they conduct with their students. It was fascinating and inspiring!

You can watch the recording here. (Please forgive the fact that I kept opening up different files during their presentation. I was trying to gather links to resources to share with participants in a follow up email and thought I could do it without disrupting the proceedings. I was wrong!)  

You can also view their slides, which starts with an overview of cemetery history, includes the importance of teaching students how to be in cemeteries respectfully, and ends with links to resources and sample assignments, including some that can be used for any topic, like this handy PERSIA activity that asks students to look at a topic from multiple contexts (Political, Economic, Religious, Social, Cultural, and Intellectual/Arts.) Cynthia also made a handy Google Slide deck for students to use to break down their PERSIA analysis.

Here are some resources their presentation made me think of, most of which aren't in their slide deck. (And this list is the reason the recording is messed up!)

• Find a Grave. This actually is in Cynthia’s links, but I think it is important share it here anyway! For older students, adding information to this site (which could be as simple as pictures of headstones and inscriptions, but could also include obituaries and other information), would make a great project—and would be a genuine service to genealogists the world over.
• Digitized Newspapers. Both Jodi and Cynthia talked about using Chronicling America to research individuals, which is a fabulous source. Another great source are the many Montana newspapers digitized outside of Chronicling America project that you can access through this link.
• Jodi mentioned Chinese Tomb Sweeping ceremonies.
• There is information about the Tomb Sweeping festival in Lesson 7: Chinese Temples in Montana of the hands-on history footlocker “The Chinese Experience in Montana”.
• Mark Johnson also has middle and high school lessons on “Burial Customs and Cultural Practices of Chinese in America”.
• Mark also has a map of Chinese cemeteries in Montana and links to information about specific cemeteries in Bozeman, Butte, Helena, Kalispell, Missoula on his website, Big Sky Chinese.
• Cynthia talked about Sanborn Maps. You can find many of them on the Library of Congress website.
• If your library (or classroom) doesn’t have a copy of Montana Chillers, by Ellen Baumler, you should order one!
• Wibaux middle school teacher Laura Dukart also has a cemetery project, "In Memoriam. A Study of Our Local Cemetery." Here's a presentation she created for teachers interested in creating a similar project in their own communities.

One of the teachers attending this PD wrote afterwards, "I've never thought of a fieldtrip to a cemetery and now I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of it!" I hope more of you will consider a field trip to your local cemetery this spring. 

Come spend a week at the MTHS Library and Archives

 The MTHS Library and Archives reopens for business in March and is once again offering $1,250 stipends for Montanans interested in spending a week this summer at MTHS conducting research on a local history project (including a class project!) 

The Fine Print

The Dave Walter Research Fellowship will be awarded to up to two Montana residents involved in public history projects focused on exploring local history. The award is intended to help Montanans conduct research on their towns, counties, and regions using resources at the Montana Historical Society. Research can be for any project related to local history, including exhibit development, walking tours, oral history projects, building history or preservation, county or town histories, archaeological research, and class projects. Each fellowship includes a stipend of $1,250. 

Recipients will be expected to:

• travel to MTHS to conduct research
• spend a minimum of one week in residence conducting research
• provide a copy of their final product or a report on their completed project to the MTHS Library & Archives

Applications are evaluated on:

• suitability of the research to the Society's collections
• potential of the project to make a contribution to local history
• experience in conducting local history research

The application must include the following:

• project proposal, not to exceed 3 pages, describing the research including the specific MTHS Library & Archives collections you intend to use
• cover letter
• 1-2 page resume
• letter of recommendation

Applications must be sent electronically as one PDF document to mthslibrary@mt.gov. Deadline for applications is April 1, 2026.

Announcement of the awards will be made in spring. Questions about the fellowship should be directed to mthslibrary@mt.gov.  

Adventure Labs

Looking for ways to engage students in place-based learning? Adventure Labs are interactive, location-based experiences similar to scavenger hunts, accessed through the Geocaching Adventure Lab mobile app. Unlike traditional geocaches, they don't involve finding physical containers but instead guide users through a series of virtual waypoints where they answer questions or solve puzzles to learn about a location's history, nature, or culture. The app uses geofencing to confirm you are at the location, and completing the series of stages earns a "find" for the Adventure.  

If you do not live in one of the communities where there is already an Adventure Lab established or if you are working with a group of people who are not physically able to take a walk, then use the exhibit format to take a virtual walk. Open the Adventure lab exhibit on a large screen or TV. Read each caption and then open the historic image full-size. Then enlarge the Google map and see how the same spot looks today. Ask participants about the changes or similarities they see. Which version of the image do they like best? Do they have memories to share about the places shown in the tour?

The Montana History Portal has created walking tour Adventure Labs for Lewistown, Butte, Great Falls, Kalispell, Virginia City, the University of Montana Campus, and the Montana State Capitol. There  is also an Adventure Lab for Native American Art at Montana State University. You’ll have to download the Adventure Lab app to see if there are others in your area. 

You might also consider having your class create an Adventure Lab in your local area. Two 14-year-old Girl Scouts recently partnered with the Montana Historical Society to create an Adventure Lab on the history of the Lewis and Clark County Hospital/Poor Farm in Helena. They loved the experience and recommended it as a way to connect young people with history in their community. To discuss creating Adventure Labs with your class, contact MTHS Interpretive Historian Melissa Hibbard. 

Democracy in Dialogue Virtual Exchange Program

 Want to involve your students in studying their local history? Want to connect your students with students who live someplace dramatically different than they do?

Apply to join the Smithsonian's Democracy in Dialogue Virtual Exchange Program. Designed to support educators working with middle and high school youth, ages 13 - 18, participants will learn how to collaboratively design and lead place-based investigations with students to better understand the stories emanating from your hometown. In cooperation with another community, students can celebrate commonalities and differences.

Educators of all kinds, formal and informal, are the target audience to be a facilitator and are responsible to recruit a minimum of 15 students to participate in the exchange program. Each facilitator receives an honorarium upon the successful completion of the virtual exchange. Continued Education Unit (CEU) professional credit is awarded at the exchange's end too. All costs associated with the training are fully covered.

Democracy in Dialogue is built around semester-long engagements with each exchange lasting between 6 - 8 weeks. It will run from January to May 2025 (20 exchanges led by 40 facilitators). Applications are due by October 4, 2024, 5PM, EST.

Teaching with Cemeteries/Upcoming Professional Development

 I love cemeteries! And they make great classrooms. That's why I was excited to learn about the Butte Cemetery Symbolism Masterclass hosted by the Foundation for Montana History on Saturday, May 18. The Foundation is offering 5 OPI credits for this training, which will focus on the history of ethnic and fraternal groups in Montana’s mining towns as evidenced in local cemeteries. Attendees will learn about cemetery symbols, the history of fraternal societies in mining communities, and Chinese burial practices before touring Butte's Mount Moriah Cemetery, observing the Chinese tomb sweeping ceremony conducted by the Mai Wah Museum, and engaging in a hands-on training exercise identifying cemetery symbols.  Lunch is included and the cost is $65 for the full day of training (9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.). Register here.

Do you live too far from Butte to make it to this class?

• Longtime readers may remember me sharing information about Wibaux middle school teacher Laura Dukart's cemetery project, "In Memoriam. A Study of Our Local Cemetery." (Here's a presentation she created for teachers interested in creating a similar project in their own communities.)
• Mark Johnson has been researching Chinese cemeteries across Montana, working to translate headstones and locate the villages in China from whence those commemorated on the stones came. 

P.S. Don't forget! MTHS is sponsoring three workshops in June: "Reading to Learn and Learning to Read in the Social Studies Classroom," (Missoula, June 14, and Helena June 21) and "Crossing Disciplines with Montana: A History of Our Home" (Great Falls, June 26). Participating teachers will earn 6 OPI Renewal Units. Some travel scholarships are available. Learn more and find links to register. 

A Potential Community History Project

 Last spring, Billings Public Library launched a program to collect photos of Billings from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The library displayed those images and then partnered with the Montana History Portal to make some of the scanned photos available online. 

People were asked to complete a Creative Commons agreement (giving permission to share the photos), This step is critical! They were also asked to answer questions about each photo. (The questions below were taken directly from BPL’s description of the project):

Title: A short title describing what's shown or going on in the image.

Creator: Who took this photo? If it was not you, please name who did and your relation to this individual. Due to copyright concerns, ambiguous descriptions in this field may force us to disqualify the image for event display and upload to MHP.

Location: Please provide a physical street address if possible. If not, please describe where the image was taken with as much detail as possible.

Date: Month/day/year, or as close to the actual date as possible. Please refrain from using "circa" and provide at least the correct year the image was taken. 

Description: Here's your chance to describe what the image portrays in detail. Where is this taken? What landmark is shown? What event was this taken at? What is the significance of this image? If possible, include the names of people shown in image.

BPL did this with members of the general public, but I’m wondering if this could be a class project, in cooperation with your public library and the Montana History Portal. (Note: You'd need to include your local library, because you'll need their help editing the metadata into a form that will work for the Portal.)

I reached out to BPL archivist Joe Lanning, and he said he’d be happy to visit with folks who want to take something like this on. Just email him at lanningj@billingsmt.gov.

PS: Joe has also offered to help classes or individual students conducting research for National History Day projects. Learn more about NHD, a program for grades 6-12, here. 

Montana's Labor History

 This is a less practical post than most, but since it's Labor Day, I thought I'd share some resources relating to Montana's labor history. 

First up is this tour in Historic Montana, which features (in brief) a few of Montana labor temples, union halls, and other union-related sites, from Missoula's Free Speech Corner in Missoula to Forsyth's Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Hall. Note: There are MANY sites that are not included in this list. Not every town in Montana had (or has) a significant union presence, but every railroad division and subdivision point, logging, or mining town did. Where did working people (primarily workingmen) gather in your community?

My colleague, Rich Aarstad, created an intriguing timeline of Montana labor history. Reading it over, several things surprised me, including the first workers to organize a union in Montana in 1866. It's not who you think.

Butte was known as the Gibraltar of Labor, so it's not surprising that there is a lot of material connected to the city.

• The second half of "When Copper Was King," one of the twelve short films that make up Montana Mosaic, focuses on the growth of unions in early twentieth century Butte. (See the user guide for a brief synopsis; find the video.)
• "When Toil Meant Trouble" is a good, brief roundup of Butte's labor history, written by George Everrett. 
• "Death in the West" is an award-winning podcast focused on the murder of Frank Little. The creators also created a tour of Butte sites relating to Frank Little.  
• Anna East created a series of lesson plans to teach material from the book Mining Childhood: Growing Up in Butte, Montana, 1900-1960 (including two of them about unions), and we digitized excerpts from the book to go along with them. 
• For a particularly unsavory moment in Montana's labor history, see this National Archives Lesson Plan on the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Assembly and Butte Miners' Union boycott of Chinese and Japanese businesses. Learn about Hum Fay's lawsuit to end the boycott and read excerpts from his testimony.
• The Clark Chateau worked with a number of contemporary musicians to write new tunes for union songs published in Songs for the Butte Mining Camp, a booklet published by the IWW circa 1918 during the general strike that started after the Speculator-Granite Mountain Mine disaster and now preserved in the Butte-Silver Bow Archives.
• Speaking Speculator-Granite Mountain Mine disaster, here are some of the letters written by J.D. Moore, who died in the mine, some telegrams sent by families to the Anaconda Company, asking if their relatives survived, and here's an article about the disaster.

Most of Montana's unions were exclusively male, but not all of them. Here's a short article about Butte's Women’s Protective Union. Before Montana passed legislation guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work in 1919* (forty-four years before the 1963 federal Equal Pay Act!), women hired to work for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Livingston during World War I received the same wages as their male counterparts because of the union. 

The Montana Historical Society has digitized over 600 oral histories with Montana workers Voices of Labor. I'm honestly not sure how--or whether--teachers can use these. I'd love your ideas. I do know that before looking at any of these oral histories, you, or your students, will want to look at the index, which lists topics covered in the interviews. (Links to the indexes are at the top of the page.) University of Montana has also digitized its Unions and Labor Oral History Collection. 

Happy Labor Day.

*I learned this from Rich's Montana Labor History Timeline, too!

 

P.S. Don't miss the first of our monthly Monday Meetups, September 11, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. where I'll be sharing an Introduction to Montana Historical Society Resources. Register to earn one Renewal Unit. 

Place-Based Projects

 In my post about the Buffalo Unity Project a few weeks ago, I asked folks to send me information about the place-based projects they were doing with their students. Bainville fifth-grade teacher April Wills responded: 

This year we will be doing a 4 week unit on the effects of the Yellowstone River on Eastern MT. We will make ties to YNP, learn about the diverse ecosystems, homesteading efforts and conservation through time. We will partner up with our HS CTE teacher and 5th grade students will work alongside HS students to learn about surveying, planting crops, irrigating land and using native species to enhance the production of crops in the area. We will wrap up with creating model homestead sites that will be made to scale, create a historical narrative about what the family faced and overcame, and finally get the Montana Historical Society trunk on homesteading to lead us to our last week of school, when we will go to the confluence, do some rock hounding for agates, and learn about fish species in the river. So all in all it isn't just a social studies project, but it will encompass many content areas. I am working out the lesson plan for this and would be happy to share that once it's complete. 

If you want access to April's lesson plan, contact me and I'll put you in touch.

If you have a great lesson to share, I hope you'll complete our end-of-year survey. Among other questions, I always ask folks to share a resource, lesson, or strategy that they plan to do next year no matter what. I collate them into a series of grade-level posts that I send out every fall at the start of school. These posts are everyone's favorites, including mine; by sharing tested ideas and materials, they make social studies better across the state. Need more incentive? I always give prizes: this year to the eleventh, eighteenth, twenty-eighth, thirty-eighth, and forty-eighth person to complete the survey.

 

Place-Based Learning and Upcoming PDs

Upcoming Online PD/Sharing Session

February 13, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: Instructional Strategies You'll Love, led by Teacher Leader in Montana History Jennifer Graham

Join other inspired social studies teachers to discover new ways to increase student engagement and curiosity, including Collaborative Instructional Strategies (CIS). Implementing CIS in the classroom can support your classroom community, SEL skills and bring a level of engagement into classrooms that will keep students coming back for more! Bring your best strategies to share and leave with ready-to-apply techniques that you can immediately put into practice to enliven your social studies classroom. Register here.

If this session is even half as good as the last one, you are in for a treat. And speaking of...

Place-Based Learning/Local Studies

I really enjoyed our January 9 PD, which focused on place-based learning and local studies. Bonner middle school teacher Dylan Huisken gave a great talk that both focused on the whys (e.g., why would you want to do this) and the hows. I'm not going to summarize his entire presentation, but I do want to share one project he does with his students--having them produce local history "one-pagers," which he makes available online and advertises using QR codes. 

Let me break that down:

1. He works with students to come up with topics that might interest them (his students find flipping through old yearbooks and talking to old-timers in the community to be great ways to come up with topics.)
2. He helps them come up with key words that they can use to look for information on their topics in digitized historic newspapers. 
3. He has them look for additional information on the Montana Memory Project (you could use your local museum for this if you have fewer collections digitized than Bonner, where Dylan teaches.)
4. He has them craft one-pagers. He says you can make them fancy using an app like Canva, but he keeps things simple and just has the students create their one-pagers in a Google Doc. Here's an example of a one-pager one of his students created on ice-skating in Bonner. 
5. The students create QR codes and post them around town (at the bus stop, at coffee shops, near the sites they are describing in their one-pagers) to share their research with the community. There are any number of free QR generators. Here’s one.

By having his students research local topics of personal interest and share their findings with the community at large, Dylan is giving his students an opportunity to connect to their community and become engaged and excited about history. He's also meeting SO many standards, including

• SS.K12.1 Developing questions;
• SS.K12.2 Planning inquiries;
• SS.K12.4 using sources to gather evidence to develop and refine claims;
• SS.K12.5 Communicating conclusions; and
• SS.K12.6 taking informed action.

Dylan said he'd be happy to visit with anyone with questions about how to implement a place-based education project at their school. He can be reached at dhuisken@bonner.k12.mt.us. 

The Rural Experience in America

If you are intrigued by place-based learning and live in a rural community, consider applying for The Rural Experience in America: Community Civics through Historical Inquiry. This is a three part program.

• Part 1 is a FREE online asynchronous class focused on using primary sources and inquiry. Frankly, this would be good for everyone--and if you take it and send me your completion certificate, I'll get you OPI Renewal Units.
• Part 2 is a FREE online colloquia consisting of three synchronous Saturday professional development sessions around the theme Rural Lives in Context. This is a prerequisite to apply for the very exciting Part 3 (but you can participate in this even if you don't plan on applying for Part 3). 
• Part 3 is an onsite colloquium at which teachers will work on a plan for their students to create a public history project in their own community. Fifteen K-12 teachers from rural schools will be selected to attend a two-day learning experience at the University of Oklahoma. Teachers will receive $750 to defer travel costs and up to $750 to support their community project.  

Learn more on the National Council for History Education's Rural Experience in America website.

 

 

Help Us Document and Share Your Community History

 ICYMI--or looked at it a while back but then forgot about the site--I want to remind you about the existence of Historic Montana, a great resource for community study. The website and companion app, originally launched in 2017, started out with about 250 properties. Over the years, MHS historians have added over one thousand more historical narratives, thousands of “then and now” photos, and numerous new historic district and themed tours. 

Historic Montana users learn about architecture; social, economic, and cultural life; and significant events and movements in Montana and national history as they relate to specific Montana places. With so much information and a variety of historic and contemporary photographs, Historic Montana is a valuable resource for teachers and students working on place-based Montana history projects. You can even use the text and photos to create your own walking tours. 

We also invite you and your students to help shape history by making HistoricMT.org even better! If you have a class assignment that asks students to

• photograph National Register-listed buildings or districts to document your community,
• conduct new research on a National Register-listed site (or buildings that contribute to an NR district), or
• record interviews or podcast episodes about places in your town

we would love to feature it on HistoricMT.org. For more information on ways to use and improve Historic Montana, contact MHS Interpretive Historian Christine Brown at 406-444-1687 or Christine.brown@mt.gov.

 

New Resource for Community Study

I'm excited to introduce Historic Montana, a new resource for community use and study--and also to ask for your help!

We need PICTURES from towns across Montana of historic places listed in the National Register and interpreted with a National Register sign. This would be a great project for a photography class, Montana history class, or school club. Learn more in this guest post, written by my colleague Christine Brown:

Did you know that Montana Historical Society historians have written more than 1,700 National Register of Historic Places signs? You can read the signs one by one as you travel across the state, or you can learn about and see pictures of all these historic properties in one place on the Historic Montana website and companion app.

 The website and app, originally launched in 2017 as ExploreBig, started out with about 250 properties, and over the last three years, MHS historians have added over one thousand more historical narratives, thousands of “then and now” photos, and numerous new historic district and themed tours. Historic Montana users will learn about architecture; social, economic, and cultural life; and significant events and movements in Montana and national history as they relate to a specific Montana place. With so much information and a variety of historic and contemporary photographs, Historic Montana is a valuable resource for teachers and students working on place-based Montana history projects.

 Populating the website and app with a variety of photos is an ongoing project. Teachers and students are invited to help make Historic Montana better by submitting contemporary (or historic) photographs of the properties in your community that have a National Register sign posted. Participants will have their historic property photos published (with credit!) on Historic Montana. Email christine.brown@mt.gov or call 406-444-1687 for details.

Putting Montana History on the Map

Every spring I ask teachers to share their favorite lessons and every fall I share what folks send in three posts, one for elementary classrooms, one for middle school and one for high school. These always top the most read list and are my favorites too. At the end of each of these posts I include a plea: "it's not too late! Send me your favorite lesson to share with the group," but teachers are busy and I don't usually get any responses. That's why I was so pleased to get an email from Deb McLaughlin (Belgrade High School), who wrote: "Every once in a while we stumble on to a project or idea that exceeds our wildest expectations. This project is one of those. I called it 'Putting Montana History on the Map.' ... My students loved it and it made Montana History so alive and personal."

Here are Deb's instructions: 

1.Go to http://mtplacenames.org/

Using the pull down arrow under “place names” go through the list spend enough time to familiarize yourself with the map.

2. Pick a place.

3. Locate it on your Montana map.

4. Cut and paste the history information from the web site into a Google Doc.

5. Decide what part of the town’s history you want to explore and then EXPLORE.

6. Find at least three websites that focus on some aspect of the town history, and save your research.

7. Summarize your findings in a paragraph.

8. Add the historical information from http://mtplacenames.org/, your own research (summary) and a picture that supports your summary on the map poster.

9. Label the top of the poster with your town, or place and indicate your place on the map.

10. Participate in a Gallery Walk around Montana.

Here's her rubric:

Map identification of place and labeled	10,5
History of place from website cut/paste	5
Saved Research	10,5
Three quality web sites	10,5
Summary	20,15, 10
Historically supported picture	10, 5
Gallery Walk (3)	15,10,5
Neat and organized	10, 5

P.S. It's not too late! If you have a lesson you think other teachers should know about, for any grade, drop me a line!

Travel Back in Time

I think the digitized newspapers on Montana Newspapers and Chronicling America are the best thing since sliced bread. Maybe even the best thing since before sliced bread. 

Never explored them? Stop reading RIGHT NOW (I promise, we'll be here for you to come back to), click on this map, and choose a newspaper close to where you live. Then go to an early paper published on your birthday (or during your birthday week). 

Are you back? Good! Find anything interesting? Did you get sucked into exploring? I thought so! 

The fact is, I've never met anyone--kid or adult--who didn't like to read historic newspapers. They are, as my colleague Zoe Ann Stoltz says, the closest thing we have to a time machine.

That's why I was so pleased to learn from our Digital Projects Librarian Natasha Hollenbach that the Montana Historical Society has new content available (and a total of 579,875 pages!) to search and browse on the web site Montana Newspapers: 

• The Thompson Falls Public Library has finished their huge push to make the Sander County Ledger/Sanders County Independent Ledger available. With this addition of the Sanders County Independent-Ledger (1925-1929) the whole surviving run from 1917 to 1963 is now available. Unfortunately a gap since exists from 1921 to 1924 but as far as we know no copies of these issues have survived. This particular date range is a great addition, since it was a new find which had never been microfilmed. 
• Hellgate High School has added the Hellgate Lance (1964-1982 and 2013-2017) to their previous run of 1983-2008.
• The Lewistown Public Library has made possible the addition of the Fergus County Argus (1920-1929), which adds to their contribution of Lewistown papers.
• Celebrate the addition of a new city with Grass Range Review (1917-1923), made possible by the Grass Range Community Foundation. 
• The River Press has made it possible to extend the date range for The River Press another 19 years, so 1889-1902 and 1915-1976 is now available.
• The University of Montana Western and the Dillon Public Library has added three years of the The Dillon Tribune (2013-2015). Dillon now has papers available from 1883 to 2015!

Montana Newspapers is one of two sites where Montana's digitized newspapers reside free of charge for researchers. The other is Chronicling America, where in addition to many other titles, you can find The River Press (1880-1888 and 1902-1914) and the Fergus County Argus (1886-1906). 

Looking for ideas on how to use these with your students? Here is a past post about activities I conducted with third through fifth graders in a gifted and talented class. Here's a post from Natasha on Using Historic Newspapers to Increase Student Understanding of World War I and here's yet a post on Resources to Help You Use Chronicling America. Looking for more inspiration? Edsitement has more suggestions for you.

11-11-11

In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Allies and the German Empire signed the armistice, which marked the end of the First World War.  

In observance of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, Montana Historical Society is holding a symposium in Helena on November 9-10. Montana & the Great War: Looking Back 100 Years will include tours of MHS’s acclaimed WWI exhibit and the Original Governor’s Mansion, highlights of MHS’s archives collections relating to the war, and speakers Ken Robison, Rich Aarstad, Mary Murphy, and Todd Harwell. Educators can earn up to eight OPI Renewal Unit--and attendees can come to as many or as few sessions as interest them or for which they have time--so if you live within an easy drive of Helena, even if you can't miss school, consider coming down for the Saturday sessions. You can see the full schedule here.

This symposium is just the last in a series of initiatives to commemorate the centennial of the U.S. involvement in World War I. So if you are too far to make it to the symposium, never fear. We've got you covered. I hope you've already spent some time exploring Montana and the Great War, the website that we created to provide resources for teaching about this complicated period in history. Among the highlights of that site are 

• the ArcGIS story maps, which include 70 anecdotes from across Montana that reflect the various ways the war changed the lives of Montanans both at home and while serving overseas--as well as ways the war's impact continued into the 1920s,

• the teaching resources, which include two lesson plans (one for grades 5-8 and the other for grades 9-12) and a Montana and the Great War Scavenger Hunt, and

• the digitized primary and secondary sources, including articles from Montana The Magazine of Western History, military enlistment cards, and correspondence from the Montana Council of Defense Records. 

I've talked about most of these resources before, but the Council of Defense correspondence is new so I'm going to elaborate a little on this remarkable resource. As you likely know, the Montana Council of Defense was established during World War I to coordinate county war efforts. The Council first concerned itself with agricultural production and boosting enthusiasm for the war. The war propaganda campaign however gradually led to the suppression of all dissent. County councils investigated "disloyalty," leading to the arrest and imprisonment of seventy-nine Montanans.
Several high school teachers have used portions of these records with their students as they researched the affects of World War I on their local communities. We published some of their students' work here. Now research in these records is easier than every--not least because they are key-word searchable. Try it and see: Visit the collections page, and then type your town or county seat's name into the search box at the top of the page. (Or the name of your county--if it was established before 1917.)

I'd love to add a few more county projects to our World War I website by May 2020. Check out the lesson plan we created to guide teachers interested in taking their class on this learning expedition and email me for additional resources (I may even be able to get you copies of letters that residents of your county wrote to Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin about the war and their other concerns. Like most of the items in our archives, these have not yet been digitized.)

And if you are less enamored with World War I than I am, check out my other favorite Veterans Day Resource, designed for grades 8-12.

High School Students' Authentic Research Contributions

For the centennial of the U.S. entry into World War I, we created a website, "Montana and the Great War," with lesson plans, Story Maps, bibliographies, oral history excerpts and more. 

We also worked with several teachers, who led their students in documenting the war's effect on their home communities using the Local Experiences of World War I Lesson Plan. After the students completed their research, they (or their teacher) built a website (most used the free Weebly platform, and we linked to their project on the County Projects page of our WWW website.

I was extremely impressed with what the students created--and their teachers were thrilled with the level of student engagement in the project: "they were truly acting like researchers and they loved it!" wrote Bigfork teacher Cynthia Wilondek.

Most teachers chose to do this with a high school class--but teachers in Savage, Montana, worked with their middle school students!

The centennial continues through November 2018, and I'm happy to add new student projects even after that if you'd like to try this lesson. But making the decision to have students conduct new research and share their findings can be done on any topic with a local component, and building a website is a great way to share student work. 

If you teach high school (or even middle school), I hope you'll check out the amazing work of students did last year on WWI, and then think about how to incorporate public history research into your history classes.

P.S. For more recent history, consider an oral history project--we've got tools to help!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Thanks to the hard work of my colleague, Natasha Hollenbach, the Montana Historical Society is pleased to announce that new content is available to search and browse on the web site MONTANA NEWSPAPERS. 

The following newspapers have been added.

• Fallon County Times (2010-2013) with the sponsorship of the Fallon County Library with the permission of Country Media, Inc.
• Hardin Tribune/Hardin Tribune-Herald (1907-1927) with the sponsorship of the Big Horn County Historical Museum
• Fergus County Argus (1907-1910) with the sponsorship of the Lewistown Public Library
• Fergus County Democrat (1917-1919) with the sponsorship of the Lewistown Public Library.

These new additions put Montana Newspapers at over half a million searchable pages. The titles join issues from 71 other newspapers (1883-2015) at Montana Newspapers AND an additional 257,000 pages from 59 Montana newspapers (1864-1922), which can be found on Chronicling America. 

Both Chronicling America and Montana Newspapers are freely accessible to all Internet users; no subscriptions or fees are required. 

Intrigued? Here's a map of all of the Montana newspapers that have been digitized. Here's the portal for both collections.  And here are some suggestions for using the digitized newspaper collections in your classroom. 

My coworker Zoe Ann Stoltz is fond of saying that newspapers are the closest thing we have to a time machine. I encourage you (and your students) to board your Tardis, strap on your seatbelt, and take a trip back in time--to Lewistown on September 6, 1917, Dillon on December 8, 1941, or to another place and date of your choosing.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving, one and all! 

Meet our Newest Footlocker: Oral History in the Classroom

I'm delighted to announce the debut of a new mini-footlocker, "Oral History in the Classroom." Unlike most of our footlockers, which are designed for fourth grade—but used successfully at all grade levels with some adapation—this footlocker is designed with upper grades in mind. 

Most of our footlockers include replica artifacts and focus on particular topics (immigration, the early reservation period, or World War II, for example.) Oral History in the Classroom is more of a DYI kit, designed to get students working as oral historians, recording the history of their own communities. The footlocker includes eight Sony IC Audio Recorders, batteries and chargers, useful reference material, and detailed lesson plans for creating a classroom-based oral history project. 

As with all of our footlockers, educators are welcome to download the user guide whether or not you order the footlocker. The user guide includes detailed lesson plans, most of which can be done without ordering the footlocker, assuming you have access to digital recorders. (Students can even use a digital recorder app on their cell phones, but the audio quality won't be as good.)  

The lesson plans include information on WHY and HOW to conduct classroom oral history projects—covering methodological questions (what does oral history offer that other types of research don't) and offering practical suggestions (how to recruit good narrators and teach students to ask open-ended questions.) It also contains useful forms—sample release forms, interview summary worksheets, as well as a rubric for grading student projects and suggestions for project topics. 

As with our other footlockers, Oral History in the Classroom can be reserved for a two-week period (and if you think you'll need the footlocker for longer than two weeks, you can reserve it for two consecutive reservation periods). The only cost to the school of ordering a footlocker is the cost of shipping it to the next user or back to the Montana Historical Society. 

I'm pretty tickled with how the footlocker turned out. I hope you'll check it out—literally, by using our online reservation form, or figuratively, by downloading and reviewing the user guide. Then let me know what you think! I sure hope it's useful.

P.S. We'll be bringing this footlocker and lots of other resources to MEA-MFT. Come by our booth and check it out. And, if you have time, join us Thursday evening (5:15 p.m.-) for an informal meet-up at the Montgomery Distillery, 129 West Front Street. (The distillery serves both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails.)

World War I and Other Veterans Day Resources

Veterans Day is less than a month away. This year we are in the midst of commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, which led to the holiday's creation, so I wanted to share both some general resources and WWI specific resources for you to consider using in your classes this year.

Montana and the Great War is a website that we created to provide resources for teaching about this complicated period in history.

The website includes 

• Story Maps: interactive maps featuring images and events from across the state, exploring different ways the war—and its aftermath—affected Montanans. (The Story Maps are divided into three main sections: Over Here, Over There, and Home Again. Each section includes an introduction and at least one map featuring specific stories. Also available are a demographic map--in the Over Here section--and a map showing county enlistment numbers--in the Over There section.)
• Books and Articles: a list of published works that explore Montana during World War I—including links to full text of many of those resources.
• Voices: short oral history clips featuring Montanans’ memories of life during World War I—overseas and at home.
• Information on Archival Material and Digitized Newspapers available for students conducting more in-depth research projects.  
• And, of course, teaching resources.

What are those teaching resources, you ask? 

Montana and the Great War Scavenger Hunt offers a fun way to engage students in an exploration of the Montana and the Great War Story Maps.   

Montana and the "Great War" Lesson Plan (Designed for 5-8, but adaptable to high school). After exploring the Story Maps to learn more about individuals' experiences during World War I, students will write a short piece of historical fiction (a letter or journal entry) from the perspective of a Montanan--on the home front or serving in the armed forces--during the period.

Local Experiences of World War I Lesson Plan (High school). Students will conduct and share original research on ways the war impacted the people of their own county. The Montana Historical Society will include a link to their project on its Montana and the Great War website. 

I'm excited about all of these lesson plans, but particularly excited about the more in-depth high school lesson that engages students in community study for an authentic audience. (Longtime readers will know this is a passion of mine. See, for example, this article from March 2012, this one from March 2014, this one from April 2015, and this one from March 2016.) 

Several teachers have taken up the challenge of examining their county's WWI history and Phil Leonardi, who helped create and test the lesson plan, had his class complete the assignment last spring. You can see their work here. 

There are SO MANY national resources that have been created for the centennial, that I'll just mention a few: 

The National Archives has launched a WWI Research Portal as has the Library of Congress. My favorite LOC collection is the WWI sheet music collection, both because the cover art is incredible (and sometimes disturbing) and because Billings school librarian Ruth Ferris told me about a Sheet Music Scanner app, which lets you hear historic sheet music. And, of course, you can also listen to some of original recordings on the National Jukebox. (Here, for example, is Nora Bayes' recording of "Over There.")

Other Veterans Day Resources Beyond World War I

Among my MHS favorite lesson plans is "Readers Theater: Letters from Home." Learn more about it here and watch Helena High theater teacher Rob Holter's students perform it here. (In what hardly ever happens, students responded to the lesson exactly as I hoped they would. According to Rob, when he introduced the lesson, many of the students asked: "why anyone would save old letters by ordinary Montanans"? During the Q and A, after their performance, many of these same students vowed to write letters in order to provide personal reflections to posterity. And they were saying things like, "ordinary people make history." In addition, Rob told me that one of his struggling students responded to the letters with dawning recognition: "people just like me can make a difference in this world!" In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined any lesson we produced would have such an impact.)

Using Historic Newspapers to Increase Student Understanding of World War I

At MEA-MFT in October, my colleague Natasha Hollenbach offered a presentation on using digitized historic newspapers to conduct research on World War I. She graciously agreed to share some of that information to the list.

While she focused on World War I, you can adapt many of the skills and strategies to other events.  Also while primarily focused on history classes, several of these ideas could be used for English, debate, or civics classes. 

The Montana Historical Society currently has 536,000 pages of historical newspapers available online, either through Chronicling America and Montana Newspapers. This is less than 5 percent of our overall collection but still a useful resource for researchers and teachers. Here’s Natasha:

The front page of the September 27, 1918, issue of the Roundup Record is an excellent example of the types of World War I content found in newspapers.  Covering everything from the battles at the front, deaths and promotions of local soldiers, liberty loans, the influenza epidemic, various aspects of the draft, and even fluff stories (in this case a photo of a French soldier having his first American donut), newspapers like this one provide a wealth of information.

Often students complain that they don’t like history because to them it’s just memorizing dates, people, and events.  But that’s not history.  History is the personal stories of how individuals or communities created and dealt with events of their time.  Below are some sample searches and suggested techniques for moving students to a new understanding of history.

Immigrants and the War

For example, some textbook descriptions about US entry into World War I often include discussion of German (and other) immigrants’ opposition to US entry, and these often suggest that they were more loyal to their native country than to their adopted one.  In response, I recommend the article “Montana Boy to Fight His Father in the Trenches," Ronan Pioneer, September 14, 1917, p.4.

Have your students write a reaction.  How would it make them feel to realize that they would be fighting a war opposite their father, brother, cousins, and/or friends?  How would that affect their attitude on US entry?  What is the impact of the tension between personal loyalties and national allegiance? How does this article confirm or contradict textbook views of immigrants and the war? And why do they think the newspaper published this story? Solely as human interest? Or was there a political agenda?

Jeannette Rankin

One of Montana’s most famous World War I stories is Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin’s vote against the war. To find articles describing her vote, I limiting the date range of my search to April 6, 1917-April 13, 1917 (the week after her vote) and then searched Jeanette Rankin “as a phrase”.  I could have limited it to Montana also, but I was interested in national coverage of the event.

Below are links to a number of results.

• Columbus Commercial (Mississippi), April 8, 1917, p, 2.
• “2,000,000 Men in 2 Years.” Topeka State Journal, April 6, 1917, p, 1.
• Ward County Independent (North Dakota), April 12, 1917, p, 2
• “Most Dramatic Congress Scene in U.S. History.” Harrisburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania), April 6, 1917, p. 8.
• “Woman Votes No.” Free Trader-Journal (Illinois), April 6, 1917, p. 3.
• “By a Vote of Three Hundred Seventy-Three to Fifty The House Casts Lot With The Powers of the Entente”. Hawaiian Gazette, April 6, 1917, p. 1.
• “Dramatic Scene.” Daily Gate City and Constitution-Democrat (Iowa), April 6, 1917, p. 1.

Ask your students: Which articles do they find more convincing?  What details differ between articles?  What opinion on women’s suffrage do you think the newspaper supports and why?  How is the attitude towards the vote different than what students have been exposed to before this (contemporary coverage was generally much more negative than we view her vote today) and why is it different?

If you teach English/writing, perhaps you could use these articles to examine how word choice affects meaning and to illustrate different writing tones.  Several of these articles clearly came from the same source but have been slightly changed. How do those changes affect how the article’s tone?

Liberty Loans

The National History Day 2017 Themebook includes a list of ten strategies for using digitized newspapers, including two involving advertisements.  (For the full list, see pages 65.) Both work well for Liberty Loan advertisements.  To find these ads, set the date range for 1917-1919 and search liberty loan “as a phrase”.  Even limiting the search to Montana will return a lot of hits.  Looking through them, choose a few that are full page ads.  The liberty loan ads are both fascinating and slightly terrifying.  They have this overall feel that their motto is “give until it hurts … and then give more”.  

Consider paring one of the ads with the article that ran in the Columbia Falls Columbian, April 11, 1918.  The story, which talks about volunteers going house to house collecting money, includes this line: “while it has been estimated what each person should subscribe, there is nothing to prevent an over-subscription, neither will the party … be told what his allotment is, but he will be asked to subscribe for as much as he cares to, and if the sum does not equal the figure estimated to be his share, the matter will be taken up in a different way.” There are so many things you could talk about with this:  privacy, peer pressure, big data and how it’s used, and official intimidation/coercion to name a few.

Sedition

Lastly, instead of having the newspapers as your focus, consider using them to supplement other materials.  If you haven’t looked at the Montana Sedition Project, you should. It documents the 79 Montanans convicted of sedition in 1918-19. Consider having your students conduct a simulation. Assign a different person to pairs of students (one to argue for convicting the person and the other to argue against).  Have them use the newspapers both to find out generally what was considered sedition and how it was discussed and to see if they can find information specifically about their person.  I did a quick search for the individuals listed on the Sedition Project’s “Selected Profiles” page and I found all but one of them (Janet Smith) in Montana Newspapers (which seemed to have better results than Chronicling America, but I recommend students checking both).  I found the coverage of Ben Kahn particularly compelling.  Compare how they describe what he said over these three articles.

• “STOP! LOOK AND LISTEN!” Big Timber Pioneer, May 9, 1918, p. 4.
• “Sedition Act Up To Supreme Court”. Choteau Montanan, May 9, 1919, p. 5.
• “Clemency Is Urged In Kahn Sedition Matter.” Dillon Tribune, December 17, 1920, p. 4.

Newspapers can be a fabulous resource for you and your students so I hoped I sparked some inspiration for how you can incorporate them into your classroom.  When you do, please let us know what you did and how it worked out.