Marta Brooks

Two years ago I traveled to Washington D.C. with two students from St. Ignatius High School. It was a fabulous experience! I began creating a curriculum that examined the Founding Fathers and the principles of democracy related to civic virtues. Then I linked that work with the work I was doing in local heritage education. In the process I received a Christa McAuliffe Fellow, and this year I have had the opportunity to further this work for other teachers who are interested in heritage education. My greatest love has been helping students connect with their past through drama, language arts, history and environmental education.

Thanks to the American Memory Institute, my team partner and I will extend this curriculum to a study of the conservation movement. Montana is a beautiful state and you cannot live here without knowing about the environment. I want to help my students know how Montanan's fit into the larger picture. Working at the Library of Congress and using primary source documents will help my students recognize how important the West as "place" has been in the development of the conservation movement.

I began teaching after I experimented with several other professions. My BA is in English and history. I spent a summer at Breadloaf in Vermont and a summer completing Shakespeare studies in Ashland, Oregon because I enjoy the performing arts as well. I'll complete a master's in curriculum and instruction from the University of Montana prior to this summer's institute. I've taught in the local school system for 7 years serving as middle school team leader, high school English, speech and drama teacher. The school is quite small so I've had opportunities to teach a variety of subjects. Next year I'll teach Montana history, English and sociology.

St. Ignatius is a small town on the Flathead Indian Reservation and it has been my home for 20 years. The last three years I've worked extensively with the Montana Heritage Project funded by the Ortenburg Foundation. It is a local history project in which rural students collect and archive "community memory." It has provided many opportunities for professional growth and I have come to know my neighbors and the history of our town through the research that my students have completed. I'm looking forward to connecting with other teachers this summer and learning more about their "place" and their "heritage" during the American Memory Institute.

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Jodi Allison-Bunnell

I am now in my second year at archivist for The University of Montana--Missoula, where I am responsible for all aspects of the acquisition, reference, and preservation of over 10,000 linear feet of archives and manuscripts and over 50,000 historic photographic images. I participate in the library's very active instricution program, providing instruction in primary-source research for undergraduate and graduate students in history, literature, anthropology, and other disciplines. I am also increasingly offering instruction to non-university groups, particularly high school students. We are one of only three major repositories of archival materials for the entire state of Montana. One of our challenges is to make our materials widely available to our scattered populations--and to do so in a manner that is cost-effective in the ninth poorest state in the Union. Digitization of primary-source materials is certainly the hot topic for archivists and librarians. But before I could ethically commit to such projects for the materials in my care, I would like to know more about how citizens of the state, particularly teachers, would use these materials. I applied for the Fellows program to participate actively in the process of answering that question. My previous positions include Project Archivist, The Papers of Katherine Anne Porter, the University of Maryland at College Park; Lemelson Fellow, Archives Center, National Museum of American History; Fellow, The George Meany Memorial Archives.
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