"The Montana Heritage Project is not just a class -- it's an adventure!" That's out of the mouth of a high school kid, one of a hundred gathered at the state's capitol in Helena to present to Montana governor Judy Martz a book they had written and published. Project Director Michael Umphrey reports on their work in Volume XXXIV number 4 of the Folklife Center News, available free from the Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington D.C. 20540. Their book, and a multi-media presentation which accompanies it, will be preserved at the Montana State Historical Society archives as a resource for future researchers.
At each stage in the process, adult community members were invited to become mentors, co-researchers, and guides, so students were engaged in a comprehensive learning model while community members were invited to help document and research their own lives. Teachers were invited to design rigorous projects and provide accountability through public exhibitions.
Art Ortenberg and his wife Liz Claiborne challenged the American Folklife Center to initiate the project, and funded it themselves. The community became both a subject of research and a network of resources. An acronym for the process is **ALERT**: **Ask** important questions; **Listen** to the historical record as it exists in libraries and archives; **Explore** beyond the library by conducting interviews, visiting sites and events, and creating a detailed history; **Reflect** on what has been learned and how it fits with or changes existing knowledge; **Tell** the story of what has been found by creating a scholarly product that can be given back to the community. See http://www.edheritage.org/tools/alert.htm
Subsequently more than a hundred projects have followed this model in Montana. In Townsend, an English class completed an 85-year history of Broadwater High School. In Roundup, an advanced photography class created an exhibit featuring historic barns and interviews with people who could tell their histories. In Bigfork, students gathered vivid stories from veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. In Chester students wrote a regular local-history column for the local paper.
The model is being copied elsewhere. Educators from Louisiana, Oregon, Wyoming, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Washington State have begun their own projects. The New Hampshire Heritage Project now has a team of educators who will offer, in June, the first summer institute to focus on the theory and practice of using the community as a basis for studying history, literature, and the environment. "Adolescents are trying to construct identities on the threshold between family and the larger society," Umphrey points out. "Substantial research indicates that when the various adult groups that surround teenagers send coherent messages, teens are better able to make the transition."
