Posted 3:24 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, 2013
Twenty-five K-12 teachers from across the nation will attend a three-week Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center program to explore how human cultures adapt to complex and ever-changing environments.
Teachers will fashion arrowheads, use spear throwers, take part in archaeological site excavations and more during a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers at UW-La Crosse.
Twenty-five K-12 teachers from across the nation will attend the three-week program to explore how human cultures adapt to complex and ever-changing environments. They will learn how Native American and Euro-American peoples have adapted to the rugged landscape, challenging climate and rich resources of the Upper Mississippi River Valley over the past 13,000 years, and how those adaptations keep changing. The participants can then take the new teaching approaches back to their classrooms.
The institute offered by the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center will run July 14-Aug. 1, 2014. The institute includes field trips to Effigy Mounds National Monument, area archaeological sites, local Amish farms and organic growers, and other locations.
UW-L was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support the institute. The institute links archaeology to a variety of topics and teaching areas, along with offering teachers stipends to cover registration costs. The deadline for teachers to apply is March 4, 2014.
The institute will offer lively classroom discussions, demonstrations, field trips and readings. Participating teachers will also work on individual projects tailored to their own teaching. Many of the projects will be posted online to make them available to teachers nationwide.
The Institute’s director is Bonnie Jancik, MVAC’s director of public education. Also providing content instruction is UW-L Professor Emeritus Jim Theler, who draws on four decades of archaeology experience and Kathy Stevenson, MVAC’s projects director.
Past participants were enthusiastic about the experience saying it gave them a wealth of information and ideas to take back to the classroom. “Those are the results we’re looking for,” Jancik says. “We want this program to have the broadest possible benefit — not just for the participating teachers, but for their students and colleagues as well.”
Register or get more information at: www.uwlax.edu/mvac/neh.