Homer High Students Present Alaska History Exhibit at Museum

Hands-On Learning: Homer High Students Explore Alaskan History Through Museum Exhibit

Homer High School students recently had the opportunity to dive into Alaskan history through a unique, hands-on learning experience. The project culminated in a temporary exhibit of their semester-long work at the Pratt Museum, offering visitors a glimpse into the rich and diverse history of Alaska.

The initiative began with students in HHS’s Alaska History class being given the chance to select artifacts from the Pratt Museum’s permanent collection for study. Over the course of the fall semester, starting in September, they researched their chosen items and explored their connections to Alaskan history. The students then created educational displays to share what they learned. The exhibit was open from December 2 to December 6 in the downstairs classroom at the museum.

Approximately 60 students worked together in small groups to create 27 different displays for the place-based exhibit. The items on display ranged from Alaska Native artifacts to relics from the state’s pioneering days and even items representing more recent events. Maghan Monnig, the Pratt Museum Education and Public Programs Manager, noted that the artifacts selected covered a wide spectrum of Alaskan history, from pre-contact times up to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Monnig explained that the exhibit, which was part of a partnership between the museum and HHS language arts teacher Lucas Parsley—who also teaches the Alaska History class—originally started as a “guinea pig” collaboration last semester. At first, the exhibit was only open for an evening, but students requested it be extended. “We got feedback from the students that they wanted it to be longer than that,” she said. “But originally, Lucas approached the museum about collaborating on a type of project, and we came up with the idea of students making their own exhibit.”

Monnig selected several items from the museum’s permanent collection that could be displayed for a longer period and would represent a broad range of Alaskan history. “To have permanent collection items out for more than an evening, they need to fit in a case, and to fit as many items as we needed, we had to make sure they were still pretty small,” she said. “I pre-picked items from our collections so everyone had a choice with what they wanted to do.”

Some of the items on display included toy soldiers, a snowshoe hare pelt, an adze, a halibut hook, a piece of etched slate, a berry scoop, traditional basketry, a postal letter scale, a harpoon head, ulus, a sample of North Slope crude oil, and more. Monnig noted that Parsley had asked for “as much of Alaska history as possible” to be represented.

“From these items, some of the students took it in a whole other direction that I wouldn’t have even thought of, initially,” she said. For example, one group that studied the postal scale expanded their research beyond the item itself, connecting it to Alaskan mail ships like the Starr or the Dora and exploring how the mail system functioned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Monnig mentioned that the oldest artifacts available for the project were the etched slate and harpoon head, which were donated anonymously to the museum years ago. “They were most likely archaeological items, so they could be at least a thousand years old,” she said.

Looking ahead, Monnig expressed interest in continuing the collaborative exhibit as long as the high school is willing. She and Parsley have already begun discussing new approaches to collections research. “We aren’t quite sure what that is yet, but we’re going to start thinking of other ideas for how to get students involved in the museum,” she said.