Oral History in Interpretation and Museum Education

This curriculum packet was designed for a Teaching with Primary Sources workshop titled “Oral History and Interpretation” offered by Local Learning in partnership with Vermont Folklife and Washington State Parks.
Class Subjects

Themes

Research Topics

Supplies
This curriculum packet includes worksheets, primary source sets, and graphic organizers ready to download for educational use. Please review activities and determine what worksheet or primary source copies need to be made for your learning space.
Downloads

 

Acknowledgements

This curriculum packet is supported in part by an award from the Teaching with Primary Sources program of the Library of Congress. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed by authors are their own.

CONTENT CREATED AND FEATURED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE TPS PROGRAM DOES NOT INDICATE AN ENDORSEMENT BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Flowers growing after the Mount St. Helens eruption. Courtesy of the United States Forest Service.

This Curriculum Packet was designed for a Teaching with Primary Sources workshop titled “Oral History and Interpretation” offered by Local Learning in partnership with Vermont Folklife and Washington State Parks.

Learning Objectives

  • Access new primary source sets developed from the Mount St. Helens oral history project
  • Consider new ways to hear and share stories for learning
  • Discover tools for accessing other primary sources that directly connect to your site or classroom

Our project engages the digitally available archival holdings of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress alongside local and regional collections, bringing them into conversation with each other to create a fuller, more complex narrative of American communities, history, and people.

Curriculum Packet

Hear from a program participant, Mount St. Helens Interpreter Alysa Adams, about why Oral History matters in Museums and Interpretation–one of many professional development opportunities that have been offered by our TPS Team. (Video thumbnail from the Library of Congress collections: Krollmann, Gustav Wilhelm, Artist. 1920. Mt. St. Helens Northern Pacific North Coast Limited. Poster/Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010651156/.)

Table of Contents

Below is the Table of Contents, sharing an outline of the resources that can be adapted to your classroom, museum, or other learning activities.

Discover Folk Sources, by Lisa Rathje
Comparison Worksheet
Primary Source Analysis Tool 

Mount St. Helens and the Art of Destruction and Creation, by Kuen Kuen Spichiger
Destruction and Creation Primary Source Sets with Graphic Organizers for Student Use
Mount St. Helens Primary Source Sets Organized by Individual       
Mount St Helens Images, credit lines and descriptions

Exhibit Response Journal
Museum Observation Field Journal
Insider and Outsider Reflection
Additional Reading