The Tempe Historical Museum does a joint project with the Arizona State
University Art Museum.  We work with students taking American History
(most of them are juniors), but this is a required course.  The program
deals with the Great Depression and the New Deal.  The students come to
the museums for a day - spending half a day at each museum.
 
During their time at the Tempe Historical Museum, they work with maps
letters, city directories, newspapers, magazines of the time, high school
annuals from the time (1930s), photographs, music, videos, and also
artifacts from the time.  As a community museum, we encourage them to
study their community to learn more of its details.  While they are
researching, they are using study guides.  These study guides are co-
ordinated between both museums.  We have eight topics and under each
topic there are directions and a question appropriate to the art museum,
then another question and directions appropriate to the historical museum.
 
We have found the amount of time the students have in your institution to
be a key factor.  Our program is three years old, and the first year we
ran it, we asked more questions in our study guides.  The students became
frustrated, so we slowed down the process, eased up on the level of
questions, and determined that the purpose of the questions was more to
focus the students on the area at hand rather than require lengthy explana-
tions.
 
One other key factor is the accountability of the students.  In our case,
the teachers helped develop this program and the students are held account-
able and actually are graded on a final project that is done at the end of
the day.  The students work in teams and this has been helpful in promoting
a lively exchange of information between the students and helped them to correct
or catch those who are making things up rather than using the research.  We
found that high school students here have no qualms about making up informa-
tion to fill in blanks, unless some way they are held accountable for the
information in a very tangible way.
 
During the first year we ran this program, we brought the students directly
into research areas and collection work areas.  The students did not recognize
this as a privilege and remained curious about the exhibit hall and frustrated
that they were not shown the exhibits as well.  After the first year, we
added a quick general tour of some of our exhibits.  This helped improve their
attitude a great deal.
 
Hope this information helps, and good luck with your project.
 
Anna Johnson, Curator of Education, Tempe Historical Museum, Tempe, AZ
 
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