Welcome to the AK-CSS Members Forum! Please sign up to join the discussions.

Replies

  • Hello, my name is Cindy Worley.  I am a special education teacher at West Valley High School in Fairbanks.  I assist students with their homework from other classes and teach resource English as well.  Resource English follows the school district curriculum so I teach 10, 11 and 12 grade English courses.  Students in their history and English and government classes are required to have primary sources for some of their projects.  They have difficulty distinguishing internet google with primary resources.  I do not know how to navigate the archives so want to learn and be able to be a better resource for them.  I went to the archive in Washington DC with my daughter in law just this summer and it was a thrill.  I learned by the reading on this course website that Anchorage has an archive as well.  I will be in Anchorage for a conference this week and hope I can stop by. 

    Cindy

     

  • Hi, everyone,

    Hope I'm doing this correctly. :) I'm Bev Thornburg in the central office of the Anchorage School District. I'm the "grants lady" here and have worked with exceptionally talented people--some of them are on this very forum-- to help snag TAH grants for---what we are doing here. ANUAH is the culmination of this work so far!  Our vision is that the use of primary sources to immerse people in real history (and science, and literature, and art, and so on)  will go viral. I am excited to join this class. It's a treat. I can't wait to explore NARA with the guiding hands of the experts. Also I'm really looking forward to learning from the classroom practitioners in this forum about how they are using primary sources and NARA to magnify kids' learning.   OK--my background--high school English teacher when I was young--mostly writing and theater. MA in English and MBA; then economic development (wild), health care administration (wild), and back into education here at ASD (also wild).   Thanks for letting me join!

  • It's amazing how small of a town Anchorage still is... I'm taking a class with my former music teacher (Corinne), the teacher I student taught with (Todd), and a parent of one of my current students (Dallas). I love the community we have!

  • I am Corinne McVee. I am a grant writer for the ASD. I wrote the district's last TAH grant, along with an incredible team of educators. It's a real thrill to be taking a TAH-sponsored class! It's an honor to be collaborating with all of you.

    I am a former music teacher, and, believe it or not, a former social studies teacher. While teaching jr. high band in the mid-1980s, I was assigned a section of 7th grade World Geography for a couple of years. Obviously, that was before the requirement to be Highly Qualified! I survived mainly because I had wonderful, helpful  colleagues who were actual social studies teachers.

    I love to learn about history and often travel to historical sites in Alaska, the U.S., and the world. Some of my favorite topics are the history of Alaska statehood (I was born in Alaska in 1959!) and World War II in the South Pacific, where my dad served as Chief Radio Operator in the 8th Fighter Control Squadron, 8th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force, U.S. Army Air Corps. I have some amazing primary sources: my dad's WWII diary describing his reaction to Pearl Harbor, and his photo album of the war in the jungles of New Guinea and the beaches of Australia.

    I'm also working on my family history and look forward to learning how to access records and documents within the National Archives.

  • Hello,  I am Amanda Zogas.  Like Greg, I teach at Service High School in Anchorage.  I am part of the Seminar program (a smaller learning community that uses the Socratic method) and seem to teach different things every year.  Currently I am doing Language Arts, US History, and Economics.  Last semester I took a course about using more primary documents in my classroom and realized this course would be a natural segue into supporting what I learned in that class.  I found myself searching archives to complete some of my homework from that course and on occasion was overwhelmed by the process and wealth of information. 

    In the US History course I teach students must write a ten page research paper.  One of the requirements is that they consult at least four primary resources.  After the course last semester I had at least some ideas for which direction to point them in for getting these resources but am hoping to learn more about how to streamline searching for these documents.  Many archival type websites I've used seem to have a really poor way to search their online materials - I'm hoping there is a better way!

  • Hi everyone.

    First, please forgive the delay in posting. I was doing battle with the flu. That being said--

    I'm Robyn Dexter, the archivist at NARA at Anchorage. I moved here in April of 2011, from Virginia. My background is in military history, with a special emphasis on women's studies. I was ready for a new challenge, and truly found it here. My bachelors is in American History with a minor in Military Science, and my Master's is degree is in Information and Library Science. My interests are varied--from dogs to bellydance and cross-country skiing to paleography and antique book repair. It's usually not boring at my house. :-)

     

    I am not a teacher, but do have considerable background experience in adult education. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone and making this a great experience. I'm here to assist you, please don't hesitate to contact me. If you have thoughts on things you'd like to see added, a way that better suits your learning style, or a suggestion to streamline, please don't hesitate to let us know.

     

    --Robyn

     

  • Hi!  My name is Todd Heuston,  I teach history and government classes at South Anchorage High School.  I am also a product of amazing Social Studies teachers in the Anchorage School District while growing up, graduating from Chugiak High School.  Having so many gifted role models led me to teaching Social Studies and always striving to become better at my craft.  Hoping that a course like this add to my abilities and also give me confidence to work with students in more resource based activities.

    I hope to one day start actually writing history, so really looking forward to this opportunity.  I have been acting as a teacher trainer in civic education for the last decade, and I like to travel with my students, recently returning from adventures at the inauguration.

  • Hello! I'm Maralee Guiher and I teach music K-5 at Harborview Elementary in Juneau. My husband (a retired band director) and I have also lived and taught in Angoon and Barrow since moving to Alaska in 1982 from Illinois. (Greg-I was raised in Peoria, the home of the Bradley Braves.) I have worked on my husband's and my genealogies since the late 70's/early 80's, back when there were no Ancestry.coms or home computers. Research was done at libraries and courthouses in person or by mail. In fact, I have sent in requests for military records from the National Archives and even made one visit to the Anchorage National Archives. I hope to expand my limited knowledge of the National Archives and its holdings to help me in my personal & classroom teaching research.

  • Hi.  My name is Greg Eschenlohr.  I am a teacher of World History, German I, and Weight Training at Service High School in Anchorage.  I also coach Football at the school.  I am a Front End Manager at Carrs Abbott in my "free time".  I have three children;  Sylvia, 11, Jackson, 10, and Isabelle, 6.  I have been in Alaska since 1997, and I am originally from Frankfort, IL (near Chicago, go Bears!)  I graduated from Bradley University, in Peoria, IL, where I received my BA in History.  

  • Howdy Folks,

    Well, after years of organizing cool social studies professional development opportunities for others, I'm finally getting a chance to take a few myself!  Carol, I have been looking forward to this course and the opportunity to get a bit more systematic about primary source hunting.

    For those who don't know me, I am broad field social studies, history and educational technology teacher with more than 25 years in Alaska.  I have taught around the state from the North Slope to Southeast Alaska; in schools as small as 2-room schoolhouses (K-12) with 18 kids, to high schools with almost 2000 student in them.  For most of the last decade I have worked in the Anchorage School District Social Studies curriculum department as a Teaching American History grant coordinator, and it is in that capacity that I know many of you.  Right now I'm a K-12 Educational Technology coach for the ASD, but I hope to be a documentary producer some day when I grow up...

This reply was deleted.