Minnesota Historical Society

(This is a catch-up post.  The now-in-progress renovation and related construction kept us too busy to post events as they came and went.  We'll try to make up for it and post regularly throughout the rest of the school year.) 

One of the highlights of this year was our first quarter field trip to the Minnesota Historical Society with three sections of sophomore U.S. History classes.  The goal was to help the students do archival research on a local topic of their choice so they could physically interact with their primary sources.

Inspired by the Historical Society's US-Dakota War exhibit honoring the 150th anniversary of the war, one of our Social Studies teachers assigned her classes a local history project.  The classes came into the library for a tutorial on searching the museum's online archives to request the materials they wanted before the field trip; topics ranged from Sister Kenny to Eugene McCarthy to gangsters to Vietnam War veteran art therapy.  The librarians at the Historical Society's archives were extremely helpful in organizing this field trip and making sure there was a a box of primary sources waiting for every student.

A student pours over newspaper clippings about gangsters in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

We provided document cameras so students could record sources for later study.

A few students were even brave enough to try the microfiche machines.

They also, of course, got to explore the museum's exhibits and generally pretend to be gleeful little kids again instead of surly, too-cool teenagers.

Students pretend to be farmers plowing fields...

...and coal miners down in the mines.

Students document references in the US-Dakota War exhibit.

After the field trip, we conducted a survey of the students to gauge their experience with archives and primary sources.

We were THRILLED.

Click here to see the data in more detail.

Student papers were vastly superior to previous years, and the students showed a real and lasting interest in their topic over the course of their research and throughout the writing process.  Physically handling their primary sources, seeing original documents in real life and working directly from the sources made a big difference for most students.  Hopefully, the success of this field trip means we can do this every year.