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Fort Morgan, Colorado - 100 Years of Progress and Promise
Roth Tollin
Ft. Morgan Junior High School, Ft. Morgan, Colorado
Subject: Special Education
Grade: 8-9
"For hard to motivate students who are often turned-off to
learning, who often engage in inappropriate behaviors, and who
have learning disabilities, using photography provided an opportunity
for them to feel successful in a learning situation."
Purpose and Description of Project
The group of 10 eighth and ninth graders who completed this project
spent one to three hours a day in the school's Resource Room program
for students with learning disabilities or significant identifiable
emotional or behavior disorders." In general, these students
were distracted, had a history of failure and truancy when they
were in the regular academic curriculum, and had very low self-esteem.
In connection with Fort Morgan's centennial year, Ruth Tollin
devised a project that would not only teach the students community
history but also address their emotional and behavioral problems.
Activities
Students participated in numerous activities two days a week over
3 1/2 months. They learned and practiced interviewing skills by
role-playing, and a local newspaper reporter also provided suggestions.
The students utilized these techniques while discussing the history
of Fort Morgan with senior citizens who came to the school and
with those whom they visited in the local nursing home. Other
outside resource persons who visited with the class were a local
amateur archeologist, a cattle buyer from the town's beef processing
plant, a longtime teacher and local historian, and a member of
the local museum staff who discussed the old fort. Throughout
the project, students periodically watched movies on aspects of
the area's history.
The local media specialist discussed how to create a slide show
and gave tips on taking still photos. For two class periods students
discussed
photography and
photographic composition,
and watched a demonstration of
camera
use. Students also practiced taking
slides without film.
They then took photography-oriented field
trips to the local museum, the Indian museum, the town's beef
processing plant, a large modern farm, some nearby sod houses,
Fort Morgan, Centennial Village in Greeley, and Pawnee Buttes.
After the slides were completed, the students wrote and recorded
their script, with background music, and synchronized the final
presentation which was shown to students and faculty, the nursing
home residents, and the resource persons at Fort Morgan Museum.
Materials, Resources, and Expenses
In addition to the resource persons mentioned above, the vice-principal
recorded the taped narration, and the school psychologist offered
support and loaned Tollin's students audio equipment.
The students used a school-owned 35 mm automatic camera and
two student-owned Kodak cameras for the slides; another Kodak
camera was used for the prints. They used 10 rolls each of color
slide and print film. Additional
equipment included: 2 cassette tape recorders, 10 cassette tapes,
a microphone, and a KODAK CAROUSEL Projector and slide tray.
Outcomes and Adaptability
Pre- and post-project scores on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept
Scale indicated that 5 of the 7 students tested had increased
self-esteem. Tollin also noted increased knowledge of local history
(based on an informal discussion of the subject between Tollin
and the individual students), improved slide-taking skills, and
improved attendance.
Among the important affective outcomes were the open acceptance
of the students by the senior citizens and the sharing relationships
that developed as these students were positively accepted. The
students took pride in their successful completion of the project
and in the positive feedback they received from the groups who
saw it.
Tollin advises that the project can be replicated by teachers
at any level and particularly recommends it to those working with
hard-to-reach students who have had problems with traditional
teaching methods and the regular curriculum, who have difficulty
relating to others, or who have other affective needs.