A Sierra Vista Middle School teacher is among 25 educators nationwide who have been selected to study the Pueblo culture of the Mesa Verde Region this summer though the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colo.
Barbara Hall was awarded a $2,700 grant to take part in the prestigious summer institute titled, “People of the Mesa Verde Region: Connecting the Past with the Present through Humanities Research.” The select group of teachers will spend three weeks based in the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in southwestern Colorado, where they’ll focus on archaeology and cultural anthropology as they engage in laboratory and field word. Hall, who teaches seventh-grade humanities, and her colleagues will get to tour Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly and Salmon Ruins, and they’re scheduled to dig at Hovenweap National Monument. The group will also go to the Hopi Mesas in Arizona to spend two days with a modern Pueblo community that has existed continuously since the 1100s. Themes of investigation will include the human response to climate change, human impact on the environment, the concept of sustainability, depopulation, migration and the connections between the Pueblo past and present. Based on their discoveries, the participating teachers will develop lesson plans to bring back to their respective classrooms. The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government that is dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.