Check out this amazing April PD with the Montana History Portal

Have you ever wanted to research a Montana or US history topic and share the details of your discovery with your students, including images and other primary resource materials as references? Now is your chance. Spend two days—hotel, meals, and tours included at no cost—with the Montana History Portal staff learning how to create various types of digital exhibits using the content from the History Portal. Participants will earn 16 OPI credits and a $425 stipend for your finished exhibit. 

Select a topic, gather the details, read, research, and create an exhibit of your topic.  Your exhibit will be published on the History Portal website, where you can access it, and it will be available to the public as a history lesson of its own. 

The History Portal contains over 88,000 items to help tell the story of a variety of topics. U.S. History and World History can be taught through Montana primary source materials, and primary sources can be used successfully with ALL ages. 

As part of the 2-day workshop, you will get a sneak peek tour of the new Montana Heritage Center and a historic walking tour of the Montana Capitol grounds to help inspire ideas and learn more about our state history. 

Register to join this April 12 and 13, 2024, workshop, which will be held at the Delta Hotels Helena Colonial, 2301 Colonial Drive, Helena.

What is "sovereignty"?

 Teacher Leader in Montana History Elysia Bain shared some useful resources for teaching about tribal sovereignty with me that I thought I would share with you!

The first is this article, published in Indian Country Today in 2014: "Professor Breaks Down Sovereignty and Explains Its Significance," by Shaawano Chad Uran, professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. 

Elysia has her government students read the article and then answer some basic questions:

• Define the term sovereignty. (Okay! This one isn't basic, but according to the article "Sovereignty is a type of political power, and it is exercised through some form of government." In addition, "The defining aspects of sovereignty are the international relationships carried out as sovereign nations.")
• What are the three types of sovereigns in the United States? (Federal, state and tribal governments) 
• What section of the U.S. Constitution recognizes tribal sovereignty? (Article VI, Clause 2) 
• What are treaties and why are they important to understanding sovereignty? (Because "treaties are agreements made between sovereign entities...by signing a treaty, both sides are showing that they recognize the sovereignty of the other.")

I think it is a really great article, and I were teaching it, I might add some other "check for comprehension" questions, like

• Is the sovereignty of tribal nations the same as or different from the sovereignty enjoyed by individual states? (Different)
• According to Professor Uran, if tribes are "domestic dependent nations" (which is how the Supreme Court has defined them), how can they still be sovereign? (Absolute power, independence, and autonomy is not necessary for sovereignty to exist. and rights "not explicitly given up to the US Federal government are still held by the tribes.")
• Professor Uran does not think tribal nations should be blamed for their economic dependence on the United States. Why not? ("Tribal economies were based on access to land" and "lands were ceded to the U.S. by treaty in exchange for tribal economic security and other provisions."

Elysia follows this activity by having her students watch the four-and-a-half-minute video "Sovereign Rights, Sovereign People." 

Looking for more short videos? Check out the National Museum of the American Indian's four minute "Nation to Nation" and twelve-minute "The 'Indian Problem'," two other videos created as part of NMAI's "Nation to Nation" exhibit. 

Do you have resources that work really well with your class that you'd like to share? Let me know!

Dreaming of Summer

Each summer, the NEH offers tuition-free opportunities for K-12 educators and higher education faculty to study a variety of humanities topics. Stipends of $650 to $3,450 help cover expenses of these one-to-four-week programs. Programs may offer continuing education or graduate credits (often for an additional cost).

Teachers who participate in these institutes (including our own interpretive historian, Melissa Hibbard) rave about the opportunity and talk about how energizing, restorative, and enlightening the experience is.

All applications are due March 5, 2024. These programs are extremely competitive, so if one interests you, don't leave the application until the last minute (especially if the application requires a letter of recommendation.)  *NOTE* Special priority is given to applicants in their first five years of K-12 teaching.

Program Formats

Professional development programs include the following format options:

• Residential: All participants attend for the duration of the project at the host site.
• Virtual: All participants attend for the duration of the project using an online platform. This can include synchronous and asynchronous sessions.
• Combined Format: All participants attend a portion of the project online and a portion of the project at the host site. Online and residential sessions occur at different times, but participants attend the same format simultaneously.

Here are just a few of the many diverse institutes offered this year:

Indian Education For All

• Grand Coulee Dam: The Intersection of Modernity and Indigenous Cultures (Spokane, WA)
• Reclaiming the Narrative: Learning the Truth About Indian Boarding Schools in Arizona (Phoenix, AZ)

Japanese American History

• Heart Mountain, Wyoming and the Japanese American Incarceration (Powell, WY)
• Little Tokyo: How History Shapes a Community Across Generations (Los Angeles, CA)
• Japanese American Post-War Resettlement in Chicago (Chicago, IL and Online)

America 250 (Democracy, Citizenship, and Civil Rights)

• Exploring the First Amendment (Philadelphia, PA)
• Democracy and Education: A View from Detroit (Detroit, MI)
• American Women, American Citizens: 1920-1948 (New York City & Online)
• Freedom Summer: 60 Years Later (Jackson, MS & Online)
• The Problem of the Color Line: Atlanta Landmarks and Civil Rights History (Atlanta, GA)

Community Archives

• The Missing Stories: Reclaiming History through Community Archives (Philadelphia, PA)

And of course there are many other topics represented including LGBTQ+ History, the Gullah-Geechee people, using comics to teach social justice, and three institutes on Shakespeare.

Check out the NEH website and start putting together your application. Learn more about the program and how to apply here. You won't be sorry.

The Rural Experience in America

 This is the third year that the National Council for History Education is offering The Rural Experience in America, a program that seems tailormade for Montana schools. It's been going on for a few years, but this year, we will be offering OPI Renewal Units when you submit your certificate of completion to MTHS (mkohl@mt.gov). Read on to learn more, with text taken almost verbatim from the National Council for History Education's website.

Funded by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, National Council for History Education is offering a series of free, professional development opportunities designed to support K-12 teachers focusing on this year’s theme, Change and Development in Rural America. Support will be provided throughout all three parts of this project with built-in additional collaboration opportunities with other teachers and the NCHE staff.

Part A: Asynchronous Learning

From December 2023 through March 2024, 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 is highly recommended! (12 OPI Renewal Units). Register.

PART B: Synchronous 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 once a month on March 23, 2024, April 20, 2024, and May 11, 2024, from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm (EST) and will focus on a variety of topics related to Change and Development in Rural America. During this time, teachers also applying for the onsite colloquium will identify a community partner to assist them with their public history project. (5 Renewal Units for each Saturday session, with a total of 15 possible.)  Register.

PART C: Onsite Colloquium

Fifteen teachers (from those who participated in Part B) will be selected to travel to an onsite location (to be determined) along with a community partner in July 2024 (specific dates to be announced). During this two-day learning experience, teachers and community partners will learn from historians and build civic connections to develop a plan for implementing a public history project in their own community.  Teachers will receive up to $850 to defray travel costs and up to $750 to support their community project. The application deadline is March 15, 2024. (10 hours of OPI Renewal Units.) Register.

Final Thoughts

• Teachers who've already taken the Right Question Institute's "Teaching Students to Ask their Own Primary Source Questions" have raved about it.
• Studying your own community with a partner (e.g., a local museum) can be absolutely life changing for students. 
• If you enroll in any of these courses and want renewal units, email me!

Christmas 1873

What do you think Christmas was like 150 years ago? Compare your vision to the account, excerpted below, from the Helena Weekly Herald.

Any surprises? I was struck by how communal Christmas was, with public balls and presents (even friend to friend) distributed from trees at various churches. I was also surprised that people were shopping on Christmas Day. Finally, I was surprised by the expectation of Christmas Eve mischief. (Things were much worse in 1868, when the newspaper reported excessive drunkenness, fights with "many torn garments, black eyes, bloody noses," broken windows, and people who threw lit firecrackers under dancers' feet at a local hurdy-gurdy house.)

"Christmas Times," Helena Weekly Herald, January 2, 1873

Christmas eve found the citizens of Helena with good sleighing and moderate weather to begin with, and from the continual jingling of sleigh-bells, we are of the opinion that every had his wife, and every bachelor his "girl' out riding. At the different churches assembled the teachers and children of several Sabbath Schools, and all were made happy by presents from off the respective "Christmas trees."

At the Bazaar hundreds flocked in and out during the evening, feasting the eye upon the many beautiful things wrought by the hands of Helena's fairest daughters for this special occasion....

No fights or unduly boisterous merriment were indulged in ... yet some mysterious changes of signs ... were made during the night, causing confusion ...

Long before noon [on Christmas morning] the streets were full of life. ... Past all pedestrians [shopping] go whizzing jolly parties in cutters, bob-sleds, and long sleds, the most of whom are recipients of numerous snow balls from the many mischievous urchins posted at convenient distances.

The Bazaar was not forgotten by any means; for at the dinner hour there appeared score upon score of men, women and children to partake of the good things there set forth.

Delicious egg-nog was set out at the principal hotels and saloons ... The Helena Brass Band was out in the forenoon, dispensing enlivening music on every corner. The new "Cornet Band" was also out...we must say that the noise was terrific--a cross between an earthquake and a Chinese New Year. ...

On repairing to the Broadway M.E. Church at an early hour in the evening, we found that edifice densely crowded with the Sunday School scholars, their parents and friends. The services were opened with singing and prayer, and then from the branches of two gigantic Christmas trees were dispensed innumerable gifts, to gladden and make light-hearted the one hundred or more children of the school. Many of the presents, gifts from friends to friends, were elegant. Later in the evening our reporter visited the Ladies Bazaar, at the Masonic Temple, and found the ball crowded. Business was lively... Many of the fancy articles were disposed of at private sale, and the balance were sold at auction. 

Looking Ahead to 2024

Teaching Montana History won't come out during the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone happy holidays. I hope your Christmas plans don't include throwing firecrackers at anyone's feet! But I do hope you'll sign up for Finding Primary Sources Online, our January 8 Monday Meetup. Join us online from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. to earn one OPI Renewal unit. See you in 2024!

Christmas, 1910

 For the holiday, I’m changing it up with two posts that invite you to compare Christmas past with Christmas present.

If you have a Christmas tree, how do you decorate it? And if you have a traditional Christmas dinner, what do you eat?

Here’s how Edna Patterson, who moved with her parents into a homestead cabin north of Glendive, remembered her 1910 Christmas. (Taken from Dave Walter’s book, Christmastime in Montana).

We were going to get a cedar tree for Christmas. We went up about half a mile or more from the house, and we found two little cedar trees in the coulee. That’s all we found. They were too precious to cut for our Christmas tree so we cut down a bullberry bush, and we took it home.

Mother had a couple of newspapers…she let us cut them into little strips, and she made us some flour past. We made those strips all into chains, paper chains. Then we decorated the bullberry bush with the chains. It was a sight to behold, I tell you….we had some crayons that we had brought from Iowa with us—some color crayons—so we colored some of those pieces of paper…

For Christmas dinner, Mother had put this big prairie chicken pie in the oven to bake. And she had baked cookies the day before, so there were lots of cookies.

 

Turning Points in History

I recently listened to A.D.A. Now! from NPR's Throughline, an incredible podcast that explores, through first-person stories, the history of how disability came to be seen as a civil rights issue, how the Americans with Disability Act changed American society, and what the disability community is still fighting over 30 years later.

It occurred to me that exploring how the ADA impacted (and continues to impact) your local community--and what life was life for disabled people before this landmark legislation passed--would be a great class project.

It would also make an amazing National History Day project for an individual student or group of students, especially because this year's theme is Turning Points in History, and the passage of the ADA is nothing if not a turning point.

What's National History Day, you ask? It's a program that has grade 6-12 students conduct in-depth research to develop projects around annual themes before sharing their findings in one of five presentation categories (papers, performances, exhibits, documentaries, and websites). This can be an exclusively classroom-based experience, or students can also enter their projects into History Day competition. This year, regional competitions will be held in Helena and Miles City in February. The statewide competition will be held in Bozeman in April. Winners at state can go on to compete in Washington, D.C. Visit the National History Day in Montana website or email nationalhistorydaymt@gmail.com for more information. 

It's not too late to get your students involved in National History Day, but if you are unsure whether you want to take it on, I'd encourage you to sign up to judge at one of the competitions. That's the best way to see how powerful the program can be, and NHD in Montana is offering OPI renewal units to teachers who judge. Sign up to judge at the contest closest to you: 

• Western Regional: Capital High School, Helena, Saturday, February 3, 2024
• Eastern Regional: Miles Community College, Miles City, Saturday, February 24, 2024,
• State Competition: Montana State University, Bozeman, Saturday, April 6, 2024.