Can we find a teachable moment through the smoke?

If you are on Facebook, I bet your feed is filled with stories about the fires. Mine is.

These articles brought to mind a post I wrote awhile back about using disasters as a way to engage students in larger questions. 

It also made me wonder if this year’s fire season offers a “teachable moment.” If so, here are some resources for teaching about fire and fire history. Most are taken from the Montana: Stories of the Land Teachers Guide and Companion Website, Chapter 12. 

• Tales of the 1910 Fire is an exhibit, including a first-hand account of the fires by a forest ranger, created by Archives & Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.
• The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' "Fire of the Land" website is a great resource in itself and includes links to many additional resources.
• The US Forest Service has gathered information on the history of smoke jumping.
• The Great 1910 Fire is a website that has transcribed newspaper articles, lists of fire victims and photographs.
• There's also been much written about the Mann Gulch fire, the most beautiful contribution being Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire. US Forest Service History also dedicates a page on its website to the deadly 1949 episode. 

Interested in changes how fire policy has changed since 1910? We created this bibliography for National History Day students, but it’s a good starting point for any researcher.  Other interesting sources include:

• NOVA’s Fire Wars 
• National Park Service Fire Timeline
• “Forest Fire in Washington State”
• Articles in the Missoulian, by Shery Devlin, on the Big Burn. To find these online type “Big Burn of 1910 Sherry Devlin” into the Missoulian’s “Advanced Search.”

Wildfires and the appropriate response to them are also at the center of policy debates. 

• What should the government’s approach be toward fire protection in the Wildland-Urban Interface?
• How do state and federal policies affect fires? (Recently, Senator Daines called for more logging to prevent fires and Senator Tester called for action to slow climate change.)
• What are the budget implications of increasing forest fires and how should we pay for fire fighting?

Consider asking students to research and then write (and/or present) policy briefs to your local legislator and/or county commissioners on one of these issues. (Former middle school teacher Jim Schulz said having students present decision-makers with their research—and proposed solutions—to current problems was the all-time best activity he ever did with his students.)

 
If you do end up exploring fire in a meaningful way in your classroom, I'd love to learn what you did and how it went. And in the meantime, I'm sure you join me in wishing for snow.