Free online PD from National Geographic

National Geographic is offering FREE online professional development this summer. They include

• Connecting the Geo-Inquiry Process to Your Teaching Practice (June 24-August 18), all grades, 30 hours
• Teaching Global Climate Change in Your Classroom (June 24-August 11), middle school, 45 hours
  Collecting Data to Explore Plastic Pollution in Our Communities (June 24-August 11), all grades, 25 hours
• Mapping as a Visualization and Communication Tool in Your Classroom (June 24-August 5), all grades, 20 hours
• Integrating Service with Learning Goals (June 24-August 5), grades 5-9, 15 hours.

I need to learn to use Google Classroom! Want to help me? Plus: STORYCORPS Is Coming To Montana (Virtually)

Online Montana History Class

I'm looking for 5-10 generous Montana history teachers who use and understand Google Classroom to actively participate in a 6-hour online class this June (Starting June 15).

I'll be honest: my motivation is not pure and this is going to be different than most of the workshops we offer. Participants WILL walk away with 6 OPI renewal units and a better understanding of the resources available to teach Montana history. But you'll also be expected to teach me the ins and outs of the platform and to be patient with me as I fumble through the learning process. (FAIL=First Attempt In Learning, right?)

Those of you who know me probably know that I'm a bit of a control freak. For this class, I'm going to let that go. We'll be in this together, teaching one another, about Montana history resources, and ways to harness technology to better serve students. 

Interested? Email me (Martha Kohl) at mkohl@mt.gov.

StoryCorps Is Coming to Montana

On an entirely different note, Montana Public Radio will host StoryCorps for 4 weeks to record the stories of local residents and preserve them in the Library of Congress.

In a StoryCorps interview, two people are able to record a meaningful conversation with one another about who they are, what they’ve learned in life, and how they want to be remembered. A trained StoryCorps facilitator guides them through the interview process. After each 40-minute recording session, participants receive a digital copy of their interview. With participant permission, a second copy is archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress for future generations to hear.

The first 1/2 of the reservations to record will open May 20 at 10 a.m., with the remaining recording reservations available on June 9 at 10 a.m.. Reservations can be made by calling StoryCorps’ 24-hour toll-free reservation line at 1-800-850-4406 or visiting storycorps.org.

Will we be distance learning again next fall? Maybe. As you plan for that possibility, you might find these articles useful:

• "How Can Educators Tap Into Research to Increase Engagement During Remote Learning?" EdSurge, May 5, 2020.
• "The Single Most Essential Requirement in Designing a Fall Online Course"  by Cathy Davidson is aimed at college professors, but provides food for thought for K-12 teachers as well. It begins: "Let's start the week by repeating that a summer of planning for better online learning this Fall will be wasted if we do not begin from the premise that our students are learning from a place of dislocation, anxiety, and trauma. So are we. This is the single essential that must be built into the structure, assignments, thinking about what and how we will teach online in the Fall. Face to face too."

Whether instruction is face-to-face or at a distance, it's worth thinking about the big questions--especially in the summer when you aren't slammed by the daily grind. Here are some articles that might start you contemplating:

• "These are the 7 most important things our students should be learning. Or maybe not". Education blogger Glenn Wiebe wrote most of this a few years ago in response to a Washington Post article that asked "history gurus ... What are the most important things young people should be learning in school today?" (If you have time this summer, I highly recommend spending some of it with Glenn's blog--he's got an archive filled with practical suggestions as well as more philosophical posts like this one.) 
• ‘Schools are killing curiosity’: why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn," The Guardian, January 28, 2020. (This isn't as annoying as the title suggests--it's really about the importance of teaching students to ask questions.

And speaking of... Harvard's Project Zero is offering a course on teaching that very skill from July 6-July 26: "Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions: Best Practices in the Question Formulation Technique".  It costs $199 per person (group rates are also available) and you will receive a certificate that you have completed 10 hours of instruction. I talked to a teacher who took this course and he said it was transformative.

Time to Explore

I wish you a happy, relaxing summer filled with good hikes and better books. I also hope you'll have time to do some digital exploring. If so, stop one should be at the Smithsonian, which has launched a "vast and diverse digital resource," Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. And they aren't done: "the Smithsonian is committed to releasing over 3 million items throughout 2020 alone. Beyond 2020, it will add more items on a continuing basis as they are digitized, researched, and published online."

Recent Articles about Indian Country

I saw ""Returning to roots: The Fort Belknap Indian Health Service hospital is seeking applicants for two traditional practitioner positions — the first of their kind in Montana" in the Montana Free Press, May 15, 2020 ((if you don't subscribe to Montana Free Press, you should! And true to its name, it is free.) But the article is actually part of one of the Native Journalism Project, annual project featuring work by University of Montana journalism students.

Other stories featured in this year's project include

• A Thousand Miles from Crow Country (about Crow tribal members' work with the Field Museum to create “Apsáaalooke: Women and Warriors”)
• Meat for the Mind: Bison and the spiritual revitalization of the Sioux and Assiniboine
• and a series of articles on Coronavirus in Indian Country (scroll down). 
• Past issues have focused on a variety of topics, from Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women to tribal sovereignty. You can find even more issues here.  

Remember Newsela (the website that rewrites articles at a variety of Lexile levels)? They are now featuring an article originally published in the Christian Science Monitor: "For Native Americans, coronavirus looks heartbreakingly familiar."

On a somewhat unrelated note: please help me out by spending a few minutes completing our end of the year survey. The quality of this listserv depends on your input. If you have not yet shared your favorite Montana history lesson, how you've adapted MHS resources to distance learning, or expressed your opinion on what topics the listserv should focus on next year, please do. Everyone's favorite posts are the ones where I share what's worked in classrooms across the state, but I can't do that unless you tell me what's worked in your classroom. Need a little incentive? I added a prize for the fifty-second person to complete the survey. Will it be you?

Middle School Teachers, this is for you

Instead of one long post, I'm going to send out three more targeted posts this week, so ignore the ones that don't apply to you. But for middle school teachers looking for online resources, read on.

The National Archives' series of twenty-minute mini-webinars on using DocsTeach,  which offers tools to use primary sources from the National Archives. You can participate in person Wednesdays at noon Montana time or watch past webinars on YouTube.


Speaking of primary sources, check out this Image Analysis Choice Board to use with students analyzing maps, lithographs, photos or other images.

April Wills of Bainville, who is also a Teacher Leader in Montana history, discovered that Newsela has gathered all Montana-related articles under the heading "My State, My Community: Montana." If you don't know Newsela, you are in for a treat. The site takes written sources (including news articles and historical documents) and rewrites them at a variety of Lexile levels. Their toolkits provide information on using the site for distance learning.

Check out this article from Junior Scholastic on Navajo code-talkers during WWII: "The Code That Couldn’t Be Broken."

Do You Want to Be a Cowboy/Girl? is a new lesson I've excerpted from Unit 3 of our new fourth grade curriculum because I thought it could be easily adapted to distance learning. It was scheduled for classroom testing this spring along with the rest of the unit but life got in the way. I'm optimistic that it will be useful, however, in our current situation, so I went ahead and posted it. I'm sharing it with you because even though it was designed for fourth grade, distance learning makes it harder to scaffold material and these sources should be accessible and understandable to middle school students without scaffolding. Other "fourth grade" lessons that might work for middle school students include "Exploring Montana Today through Population Data," Part 1 of Montana Today: A Geographical Study. The resources we've gathered for biography projects may also be useful. These links to 48 Montana Biographies and The Gallery of Outstanding Montanans, and the Biographical Poems Celebrating Amazing Montana Women Lesson Plan. (The lesson plan is easily adaptable to include both men and women.) And, of course, there's always Montana: Stories of the Land, the accompanying teaching resources, including the Learning from Historical Document units.

And now a plea: The quality of Teaching Montana History depends on your input. If you have not yet shared your favorite Montana history lesson, how you've adapted MHS resources to distance learning, or expressed your opinion on what topics we should focus on next year, please click here to take our survey. Everyone's favorite posts are the ones where I share what's worked in classrooms across the state, but I can't do that unless you tell me what's worked in your classroom.

Need a little incentive? I’m adding another prize for the fifty-second person to complete the survey. Will it be you?

K-5 Teachers, this one's for you.

Instead of one long post, I'm going to send out three more targeted posts this week, so ignore the ones that don't apply to you. But for elementary teachers looking for online resources, read on--including you K-3 teachers.

Teaching Montana History is typically light on materials to help teach our youngest students, but here are a few:

Kid Citizen promotes itself as "a new way for young students (K-5) to engage with history through primary sources. ... In KidCitizen’s interactive episodes, children explore civics and government concepts by investigating primary source photographs from the Library of Congress. They also connect what they find with their daily lives." Episodes include a nice introduction to primary sources and episodes on topics like child labor, community helpers and the American flag. I haven't watched them all, but I did see episodes that were clearly designed for early elementary.

I've mentioned them before, but I love Songs from the Indian Reading Series so much I think they are worth mentioning again. These videos have Mariah Gladstone and Rob Quist performing songs based on stories available from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's Indian Reading Series (140 culturally relevant stories written and illustrated by Indian authors and illustrators.) Rob Quist sings and plays the guitar and Mariah Gladstone translates the lyrics into Indian Sign Language.

Upper elementary teachers may be interested in the National Archives' series of twenty-minute mini-webinars on using DocsTeach. You can participate in person Wednesdays at noon Montana time or watch past webinars on YouTube.

Do you ask your students to analyze primary source images? If so, check out this Upper Elementary Image Analysis Choice Board.

Do You Want to Be a Cowboy/Girl? is a new lesson I've excerpted from Unit 3 of our new fourth grade curriculum because I thought it could be easily adapted to distance learning. It was scheduled for classroom testing this spring along with the rest of the unit but life got in the way. I'm optimistic that it will be useful, however, in our current situation, so I went ahead and posted it.

Second grade teacher April Wills of Bainville, who is also a Teacher Leader in Montana history, discovered that Newsela has gathered all Montana-related articles under the heading "My State, My Community: Montana." If you don't know Newsela, you are in for a treat. The site takes written sources (including news articles and historical documents) and rewrites them at a variety of Lexile levels. Their toolkits provide information on using the site for distance learning.

And now a plea: The quality of Teaching Montana History depends on your input. If you have not yet shared your favorite Montana history lesson, how you've adapted MHS resources to distance learning, or expressed your opinion on what topics we should focus on next year, please click here to take our survey. Everyone's favorite posts are the ones where I share what's worked in classrooms across the state, but I can't do that unless you tell me what's worked in your classroom.

Need a little incentive? I’m adding another prize for the fifty-second person to complete the survey. Will it be you?

Resources for High School Teachers

Instead of one long post, I'm going to send out three more targeted posts this week, so ignore the ones that don't apply to you. But for high school teachers looking for articles, projects, and other online resources, read on.

The Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton is central to the search for a vaccine.  Ever wonder why such a facility is in Montana? Would your students be curious?  Here's an article on the history of the lab's work on yellow fever during WWII. The lab's own website also has information on its history.

Did you know that if you teach at a Title I high school you and your students can now get free subscriptions to the NY Times for two years.  (Government teachers: The Times also has weekly news quizzes--one for adults and one for students.)

Becoming US is a new educational resource from the National Museum of American History for high school teachers and students to learn immigration and migration history in a more accurate and inclusive way. Even if you don't end up using their lessons (which look good at a quick glance), you are definitely going to want to raid their collection of artifacts and documents.

An article and a video I also thought were worth sharing:

• Ellen Carol Dubois is a big name in women's history, so I was excited to see this article in National Geographic: "A pandemic nearly derailed the women's suffrage movement." 
• American Experience on PBS has a new seven hour series on the Chinese Exclusion Act. It looks as if it is all free to watch online. (For a Montana connection check out the National Archives lesson on Butte's anti-Chinese boycott and the lawsuit Butte Chinese merchants filed in response.

And now a plea: The quality of Teaching Montana History depends on your input. If you have not yet shared your favorite Montana history lesson, how you've adapted MHS resources to distance learning, or expressed your opinion on what topics we should focus on next year, please click here to take our survey. Everyone's favorite posts are the ones where I share what's worked in classrooms across the state, but I can't do that unless you tell me what's worked in your classroom.

Need a little incentive? I’m adding another prize for the fifty-second person to complete the survey. Will it be you?