CHRISTINE ROBINSON Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:00 am
The more history teacher Paula Volker instructs, the more she realizes she can learn.
She says the roughly $1 million "Teaching American History Grant" enriches the way she teaches and the way her students learn.
"It has made me more cognizant of how to better use primary sources in the classroom," she said.
The American History Cowboy Coalition was initiated in Natrona County by Kim Ibach and was created as a way to help teachers better understand their material as well as personally experience history.
The three-year grant paid for by the Department of Education was renewed this summer and pays for classes for teachers taught by professors and experts from Casper College, the University of Wyoming, the National Archives and other institutions. It also includes field trips to places like the Oregon Trail, Yellowstone National Park, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
Through these experiences, Ibach said the teachers can better explain history to their students.
"It's to help U.S. teachers deepen their knowledge and concepts of history as well as modify or change how they have traditionally taught history," Ibach said. "History shouldn't necessarily come out of a textbook 100 percent of the time, or a lecture 100 percent of the time."
One of the program's focuses is to develop a network of history teachers and a community of historians to share ideas and primary sources.
The program is available to 105 history teachers who instruct 3,700 students in fourth, 8th and 12th grades in the district's 40 schools, according to a grant presentation given by Ibach.
History makes students know how to think and problem solve, Ibach said. By improving the way history is taught teachers are doing a service to the students and the community.
While Volker said the program hasn't completely altered the way she teaches, it has helped her realize how to efficiently access primary sources and improved some lesson plans.
"We did a lesson on the Cuban missile crisis and gave the students correspondence between (President) Kennedy and then-Soviet premier Nikita) Khrushchev," she said. "Then we can look at it and ask, who wrote this? Did they type it or handwrite it? What does it tell us?"
Guy Sallade, Wood's Elementary School's 2nd and 3rd grade co-teacher, said the courses inspired him - leading to inevitable inspiration of his students.
"When you are excited and enthused about history and have had parts of history come alive, how can that not be contagious?" he said.
He and other history teachers spent a week on the Oregon Trail in the summer of 2006, riding in wagons, on horseback and walking.
Sallade said the experience gave him a feel of what pioneers endured and allowed him to understand and therefore teach history better than if he had simply read about the wagon trails in a book or journal.
Natrona County High School American history teacher Mary Beth Peden went to Washington D.C. in 2006 with the Coalition. They visited the National Archives and saw how many resources are available to teachers.
"The classes have made a difference in my classroom," she said.
Reach Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@casperstartribune.net