Making history come alive for Wisconsin students.
The million-dollar “ Life During Wartime ” project seeks to help Wisconsin teachers in the teaching of traditional US history through content-rich discussions with nationally-known scholars and Wisconsin veterans.
“From what I can tell the teachers who are working with us they're doing a great job. … Some of the people who we've brought in — the Wisconsin Veterans Museum is one of our partners — and some of the teachers, the Vets Museum already know them. They already work with the Veterans Museum, they bring veterans into their courses, they've used other resources from the Vets Museum's collections. So I think the teacher's we've got here are really people at the top of their game.”
Project co-director and MATC instructor Dr. Jonathan Pollack says the one-year review of the teacher-training program looks good. Life During Wartime focuses on the American experience throughout the conflicts from the Civil War to the present. The three-year project began last July with a federal grant (from the US Department of Education ) of $935,000.
“It's a grant program designed to improve teachers' historical content knowledge as well as their knowledge of how to help their students think historically.”
Pollack says teachers come armed with a packet of materials to illustrate the lecture, including cartoons, newspaper articles and writings by historians. Lectures can also be supplemented by the use of copies and replicas from the collections of historical memorabilia at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and Wisconsin Historical Society .
NOTE: The program is a partnership between MATC , UW-Madison , the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, the Madison School District and the Cooperative Educational Service Agency ( CESA ) in central and southern Wisconsin.
AUDIO: Jackie Johnson report (1:37 MP3)
