Logging History: Students as Archivists

Ball, A. (2003). Logging History: Students as Archivists. Edutopia. Retrieved from  http://www.edutopia.org/montanaheritage

In this article, Ashley Ball takes a look at a high school in Libby, Montana that is participating in a project called the Montana Heritage Project. This lumber-mill community has had ties to the logging industry for over a century and when the town’s largest employer, Stimson Lumber, shut down their mill, it was very painful. The logging way of life started to slip away, but thanks to the Montana Heritage Project and students at Libby High School, history was preserved.

English and history classes have taken the Heritage approach to learning and have ignored the usual textbooks. Instead, students learn through their own local history and at the end of the year present their finding in a fair called Heritage Night. Students collect photos, stories, interviews, and information about the mill-town culture of late. When the mill closed in 2003, students were able to hand out records to each employee of why they were important to the community.

Students also gain a perspective of the outside world. Heritage classes visit places like D.C. where students have actually tried to submit their stories to the Library of Congress. The project also brings the students from communities that are sometimes a hundred miles apart closer together. Students are able to understand other communities by looking at their Heritage websites and come together in conferences. In a conference in Helena, students get to meet with historians, present their projects to each other and try to be the one town that gets selected to present their project in Washington D.C.

The project follows a model called the ALERT Model (Ask, Listen, Explore, Reflect and Transform/Tell). Teachers are given a large amount of resources and rubrics continuous development and innovation makes the projects better each year.

The idea for this project really hits home for me because I also come from a small logging town. We did a similar project on our personal family histories called “Cultural Fair” where students presented their projects to the public and winners were selected to participate with an exchange with a school in South Seattle. Although I learned a lot from Cultural Fair, I think I may have been able to get more out of a project like this one. Our logging and farming culture was also quickly disappearing and I think it would have been extremely valuable to have students involved in preserving that culture. I hope to be at a school that would participate in such a project.