John Allen, president of the Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society, said it is logical that we have a support role in the teaching of history in area schools. “With Alabama’s Bicentennial coming up, we designed the HOPE program to support that celebration,” Allen said.

MADISON COUNTY – Just in time for Alabama’s bicentennial, history teachers in Huntsville, City of Madison and Madison County have computer access to an enormous cache of local history resources.

The name of the resource is History Outreach Program for Educators or HOPE.

Dr. Deane Dayton with the Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society spearheaded the program. Organizers developed the HOPE program using educational resource pages on Dayton’s existing HuntsvilleHistoryCollection.org website.

“HOPE also uses information gathered from a variety of other educational and historical resources,” Dayton said. “It includes local history lesson plans, historic music, full-text books and journal articles, historic markers, videos on Huntsville history and spoken audio recordings from local historians.”

John Allen, president of the Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society, said it is logical that we have a support role in the teaching of history in area schools.  “With Alabama’s Bicentennial coming up, we designed the HOPE program to support that celebration,” Allen said.

Educators can browse a full list of the website’s resources. Anyone can choose to explore resources relating to the themes of “Early Statehood,” “Civil War,” “Historic Places,” “African-American History,” “Native American History” and “Women’s History.”

Kelly Hamlin, the historical society’s school liaison, has collaborated with Dr. Catherine Vasile, Director of Elementary Instruction for Huntsville City Schools, and school personnel to better understand their instructional needs. Hamlin has gathered information about local history resources (speakers, events, museums and publications) to make that information available to the schools.

“HOPE is available now for Huntsville City Schools and will soon be available to all area schools, including home-schooled students,” Hamlin said.

For more information, visit huntsvillehistorycollection.org and click the “Education Resources” link at the left.