Ball, A. (2003, August 5). Logging history: students as archivists [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/montanaheritage
This article is about a student project on the northwest Montana logging town of Libby. When a large mill and largest employer in town shut down in January 2003, there was fears that the town would lose not only it’s major economic resource but its history and identity as well. Working with the “Montana Heritage Project, an organization with a strong online presence that works throughout Montana to spread project-based, community-centered models of education” (Ball, 2003). High School English and history students studied local history outside of the traditional class room interviewing mill workers and exploring archives at the local newspaper. They then uploaded their findings on to the Montana Heritage website and culminating the project with a slide show at the end of the year to which the whole community was invited. The Libby project was successful in ways greater than the actual education of the students. The article makes it appear that students were more engaged with the Montana Heritage project then they would have been had they been in a traditional text and classroom environment. The project was also the impetus for the restoration of an old high school gym that became a place dedicated to the arts and home to the annual project presentations.
My reaction to this article initially was why is this in the diversity section of the selected readings. As a person who was born in, has family and regularly visits Montana, I can personally tell you that Montana is one of the least racially, ethnically and religiously diverse states in the country. However I later understood it’s placement. These projects not only actively engage students outside the classroom; they promote more understanding of their own communities but communities that are different from themselves. For example a student was surprised to find such little local news in the archives of the local newspaper. This student didn’t understand why even a large event like a city wide fire went unreported. The student learned that the town was so small in the early 1900s that everybody already knew everything about the fire, and wanted their newspaper to inform them of news from other parts of the world. Another Montana Heritage project in Harlowtown, MT focused on the Hutterite colonies that were nearby. “Hutterites are similar to the Amish in that they want little to do with the modern world, schooling their children themselves and rarely making appearances in town.” (Ball, 2003) This project allowed students to connect with a neighboring community that they would not otherwise, and to educate others about their neighbors. By promoting understanding these projects not only empowered the students personally but their larger communities as well, and thereby achieved one of the larger goals of education in a natural and organic fashion.
