Teachers

Some of you may have students who are already thinking about primary sources for their History Day projects. But even if that step is far in the future for you and your students, it’s not a bad idea to start compiling a list of reliable websites where students can access some excellent primary sources. Of course, we always encourage students to get their hands on actual primary sources at libraries and archives, but the Internet is becoming a better and better resource for young researchers.

Here are a few sites that have some excellent primary sources available:

Library of Congress American Memory: Encourage your students to narrow the field as much as possible by choosing specific collections. The Teachers’ section of this website also has some excellent, subject-sorted sources.

National Archives History Day Resources: The Archives assembled some of their sources related to particular Innovation topics, as well as connections to other topics within the subject areas.

Harvard University Library Open Collections: Harvard has collected some intriguing sources based on four different topics — Women and Work, Immigration, Diseases and Epidemics, and Expeditions and Discoveries. Women Working is particularly helpful.

Yale Law School Avalon Project: The documents from Yale Law span several thousand years, although more are available in recent centuries. The topics are mainly law and diplomacy.

Famous Trials: A law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City has assembled documents and context about more than 50 famous trials, from the Trial of Socrates to the Trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

American Journeys: This collection contains thousands of documents related to the exploration of America, from 1000 to 1844, including the journals of Lewis and Clark.

There are many more fantastic websites with extensive primary sources, but these are a few reliable sites with vast holdings. If you encounter others, feel free to pass along the tip!

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Our theme workshop on October 19 turned into a great discussion about the 2010 theme, “Innovation in History: Impact and Change.” This is a theme with a lot of nuance, and the attending teachers and staff contributed some really interesting insights about the little quirks of “Innovation.” Here’s a list of some of key points to emerge from our workshop.

• Students must consider an innovation’s time and place. If students wanted to study the innovation of peaceful protest, they would have to research back thousands of years to find the inception of that concept. Instead, they could study how a peaceful protester, such as Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., used peaceful protest methods that were innovative for their particular time and place.
• Invention and innovation are not interchangeable words. Many inventions go through several modifications before they achieve success, but the end result is not necessarily an innovation. Edison’s lightbulb was not an innovation; many others had created some form of that invention. Edison’s innovation, instead, was the system he helped create that made use of the lightbulb easier.
• Not all innovations have a significant impact. Students must consider if an innovation significantly changed the way people lived or was a significant change to society. Women’s bloomers changed the way that women were able to function in society, but fashion innovations such as the mini-skirt or bellbottoms did not affect the same sort of significant change.
• Non-invention innovations can often allow for greater depth of research. Instead of researching the invention of the camera, students could research the innovative ways that cameras were used in wartime. Governmental innovations, such as the Three-Fifths Compromise or the Homestead Act, are great examples, too.
• Innovations do not have to have a “positive” impact. The Third Reich’s use of the Lebensborn program, which provided resources to women and families who had “Aryan” children, was very innovative, but had certain eugenics qualities about it.

When helping students choose topics, guide them through their interests and help them ask questions about time, place and significance. Students may settle on an invention, because they believe that is the only course, but you can help them choose more creative topics by exploring the world outside of the creation of a new piece of technology.

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2009 was a great year for Minnesota History Day –  we had a number of new schools participating, the overall quality of the projects was improved, and seven groups of our students earned medals at nationals in June — and the staff has high hopes for 2010 as well.

Here are some bits and pieces as we start up another History Day season…

• If you enrolled as a History Day educator last year, you will be receiving your introductory packet in the mail shortly. If you have not yet enrolled, please visit our website and click on the “Enrollment” tab to ensure that you receive our free mailings throughout the year. Please pay particular attention to the website category details in your packet; the rules have changed for 2010!
• The theme for 2010 is “Innovation in History: Impact and Change.” It will be a tricky theme, as students mull over the meaning of innovation and determine how their topic affected significant change. We will be discussing the theme at length and compiling topic ideas at our first-ever theme-specific workshop on Monday, October 19. You can register online and be part of the discussion!
• History Day staff are shifting duties as we begin another school year. Check the website and be on the lookout for updates about your regional History Day representatives!

As always, feel free to contact us with questions at historyday@mnhs.org or (651) 259-3426.

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As of yesterday, seven of the 12 History Day events are complete. We have seen a lot of excellent projects and are anticipating many more at the remaining five events.

Yesterday, at the South Central History Day event in Mankato, an incident reminded the History Day staff of the great dedication of History Day teachers and students. The Northfield delegation was involved in a serious bus accident on their way to the event. Despite the tragedy and confusion and some pretty shook-up kids, the Northfield delegation soldiered on to the competition and performed marvelously. We want to commend them for pressing on and allowing the students to present their hard work!

History Day and a few students were also featured in a short news spot on a local Mankato news station. For the clip, check out the KEYC website and scroll down to South Central History Day.

Just a reminder to teachers who have students advancing to state: The History Day staff will be hosting a full day of help sessions for students on Saturday, April 4. Students can sign up for 20-minute time slots by e-mailing me the following information:

1. Name
2. School
3. Category (exhibit, documentary, performance, website, paper)
4. Preferred time slot

I still have plenty of spots left. This is a great opportunity for state qualifiers to get individual help with their projects.

Remember that state registration forms are due to the History Day office by Friday, April 3. This is a received-by date, not a postmark date.

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For those teachers who had students submit papers or websites for judging yesterday, here is what your students can expect from the judging process.

1. This week, the History Day staff will sort all the papers and websites into judge teams and send them out to our judges.
2. The judges will evaluate the papers and websites and choose their top entries. Judge decisions are due to us by March 27.
3. Paper and website finalists will be notified by the History Day staff of their advancement to the next level by April 3. Students who do not receive notification will not be advancing.
4. Finalists will receive their judge sheets and can make any revisions they choose for the state competition. Revised papers and websites are due to the History Day office by April 20.
5. Although only notified finalists will be interviewed at the state contest, all paper and website students will receive their judge sheets by about the second week of April.
6. Finalists will be interviewed at the state competition on Saturday, May 2. Two papers and two websites from each age division will be chosen to represent Minnesota at the national competition. Non-finalist papers will be on display at the state event, but unfortunately, space and technology will not allow us to display all websites.

If you have any questions about this process, please let us know. Finalists are encouraged to make changes before state, based on judge comments and teacher input.

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The Dirksen Congressional Center, based in Pekin, Illinois, is offering a four-day workshop for teachers of history, government, civics, political science or social studies called “Congress in the Classroom.” The workshop, scheduled for July 27-30 in East Peoria, Illinois, focuses on the exchange of ideas and information for teaching about Congress. Sessions focus on Congressional scholarship and on methods for teaching students about the federal legislature.

This appears to be a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and teaching skills on Congressional subject matter. The workshop is limited to 40 teachers and is competitive. You can find more information about the program and applications, which are due by April 15, on their website.

Another, more local opportunity can provide subsidies for school trips to Minnesota’s historical sites and museums. These subsidies are made available through Sesquicentennial funding through June 30, and can be used for field trips to one of the following Minnesota Historical Society sites:

• MInnesota History Center
• Minnesota State Capitol
• James J. Hill House
• Historic Forestville
• Jeffers Petroglyphs
• Mille Lacs Indian Museum
• Northwest Company Fur Post
• Forest History Center

To apply, visit the education website.

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Our first regional event is Thursday, March 5, and they continue through Tuesday, March 31. Here is some information to help you and your students survive the craziness that is regional event season.

• Make sure you send in your school’s registration forms by the deadline, which is two weeks before your regional event. Late forms delay event schedules.
• When you check the event schedule, posted on our website a few days before the event, check for name misspellings. These are the names that will go on certificates, so you’ll want to ensure they’re spelled correctly. Also check for missing entries — we don’t want to leave anyone out who is supposed to be competing!
• Unless it is an emergency, we can’t change judging times after the schedule has been posted.
• Information and directions for all events is posted on our website. You can send parents here to print out PDFs if they are coming to view the event.

Please feel free to contact us, and please be patient with us during this busy time. This is a great time of year, but the sheer size of the events certainly keeps everyone on their toes. Here’s a little glimpse of the regional participation in Minnesota for 2009:

• 12 regional events within 26 days
• 218 schools participating in regional events
• Approximately 4,300 students participate in the regional events
• About 1,100 students (excluding paper and website) advance to the state competition

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As of today, all History Day teachers who will have students participating in the regional competitions should have received allotment faxes. These allotments will give you the numbers, as a school, that you may send to the competition in each category. These are not numbers per teacher. Please call us with any questions about your allotments, but please don’t ask us for more spots at the competitions! We are filled to capacity at most events and cannot add any more projects.

Shortly, you will receive in the mail your registration forms. Please copy these and give them to your advancing students to fill out and send in by the deadline on the form.

Paper and website forms are also included in your mailing; these forms need to be attached to the students’ projects that are due to our office by March 10. Be advised that this is not a postmark deadline. We need to have three copies of the websites and four copies of the papers in hand by March 10 so we can begin to sort and distribute to judges. The paper and website registrations forms are also available on our website, at the bottom of the event info page.

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I found an interesting page on the Harvard Library website with a collection of primary sources related to working women. Some of the sources are from the women themselves, others are from their contemporaries, biographers or other contributors. A few of the big names on this site are:

• Jane Addams
• Clara Barton
• Elizabeth Blackwell
• the Grimke sisters
• Julia Ward Howe
• Margaret Sanger
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Lucy Stone
• Ida Tarbell
• Frances Willard
• Victoria Woodhull

The site also gives a brief biography, other links, and the collections can be searched by subject or source genre. I like this site because I feel like some of these women’s sources can be elusive.

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/

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As our economic situation becomes darker, it may become necessary to search outside schools and distrcits for sources of funding. I was poking around on the internet for grants and came across this website for teachers seeking grants: http://www.grantwrangler.com/.  The website appears to feature 135 different grants for teachers and schools. I didn’t delve too deeply, but if anyone finds any helpful grants or applies for any of them, let me know and I’ll post your helpful hints.

Other places to seek out grants are technology corporations, such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Best Buy.

One more interesting site that might be helpful, especially since we have so many Unsung Heroes in our History Day teacher network, is ING’s Unsung Heroes award program. If you have a class project that needs some additional funding, apply for this grant. This past year, in Minnesota, the Winona Area Learning Center received one of these grants: http://www.ing-usa.com/us/aboutING/CorporateCitizenship/Education/INGUnsungHeroes/index.htm

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