The Arizona Historical Society Education Department designs and produces cutting edge textbooks, teaching tools, educational programs, professional development training workshops, presentations, and demonstrations for students, teachers, and the general public. Not all programs are available at all Society locations. 

Arizona Historical Society museums are an ideal extension of the classroom. Museum tours and programs draw connections between people, places, and events in Arizona history, exploring Arizona’s diverse communities. In addition to guided museum tours, AHS staff and volunteers take history into the classroom and the community with a variety of approaches.

Children from kindergarten through high school participate through in-school presentations, museum tours, summer camps and special programs.

The Museum Youth Curator Experience (MYCE)is a summer program in Tempe and Tucson where teenagers work as a team to design and create a museum exhibit at the Arizona Historical Society. Teens from the ages of 13 to 17 choose a topic, research their subject, write exhibit labels and choose artifacts and historic photographs. They paint the exhibit space and utilize cases and wall mountings to create a professional-quality exhibit that remains open to the public until the next MYCE team follows them a year later. The students also advertise the exhibit, and arrange and host the exhibit opening. Donors provide a number of MYCE program scholarships each year. 

For adult learners, leading authors, historians, and anthropologists present evening and weekend programs on Arizona history, folklore, and cultural heritage at our museums and other venues. Many adult education programs qualify for Continuing Education (CE) credits for educators and Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits for attorneys.

The AHS Education Department works closely with the Arizona Department of Education and teacher organizations to develop and implement the Arizona State Department of Education Standards for geography and social studies. All our publications, programs, and teaching materials comply with these standards. The AHS Education Department provides college-credit courses and teacher workshops that address applying the state standards in the classroom.

Tax Credit Donations
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Arizona taxpayers can receive a tax credit if they make a donation to a public school in support of extra-curricular activities. When you donate to a school of your choice you can request that the money be spent to support AHS museum field trips and living history performances. Contact your local public school office for more information.

The AHS Education Department publishes excellent books and teaching materials. While focusing on 4th and 8th, materials are available for kindergarten through high school. In 1999, the AHS 8th grade textbook Studies in Arizona Historywon awards from the American Association of State and Local History and the Arizona Council for Social Studies. A teacher’s guide is also available. The book integrates Arizona and U.S. history, promotes critical thinking, and makes history enjoyable by providing stories and examples that students can relate to.

Orders are currently being accepted for The Arizona Story, an AHS textbook for 4th grade students, to be distributed by leading publisher Gibbs-Smith in early 2008. The new textbook uses stories, historic photographs, maps, biographies, and oral histories from the AHS collections to illustrate our state’s vibrant past. The book shows students how to use historians’ methods and tools to “do” history instead of just reading about it. The Arizona Story Textbook Event.

The AHS Education Department also publishes Arizona Constitution and Government – an informative and entertaining high school textbook that examines Arizona's constitution and three branches of government. 

Downtown Underground: Archaeological Clues to Tucson's Past is a teachers' guide that presents archaeological concepts and methods through classroom activities geared to elementary school levels. The book was written by Arizona Historical Society Rio Nuevo education coordinator Kyle Lyn McKoy, and sponsored by the City of Tucson and Desert Archaeology Inc.

The Education Department also designs lesson plans for teachers. Current plans include “World War II: The Home Front Experience,” (8th grade focus), and “Arizona Tales: Using Literature to Teach Arizona History and Geography,” for students in grades K through 8. Both lesson plans meet the Arizona State Department of Education Standards for geography and history. 

“World War II: The Home Front Experience” is designed to accompany a learning plan focused on the key elements of World War II. The AHS lesson plan topics include food and gas rationing, scrap drives, women defense plant workers, and Japanese internment camps. The five-day lesson plan includes a field trip to the AHS Museum at Papago Park (optional), and primary source research. Students immerse themselves in the times by writing their own “letters from the home front” and analyzing historic photographs.

The Arizona Tales project surveys hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books relating to Arizona and presents fifteen lesson plans on topics such as the desert environment, American Indian and Mexican culture, westward expansion, ranch life, and World War II. It includes an extensive bibliography separated into primary elementary, upper elementary and secondary grade levels.

During the school year, AHS Pioneer Museum staff and volunteers take a variety of demonstrations into the Flagstaff public schools and host special workshops in the museum or on the grounds. Thousands of local students tour the museum each year and learn about history through demonstrations on spinning and weaving, candle dipping, and historic toys and games. Living historians bring the past to life in an entertaining manner. During the first weekend in June, the annual Wool Festival provides demonstrations in sheep shearing and pioneer cooking as well as the arts, crafts and skills listed above.

Museum tours and programs draw connections between people, places, and events in Arizona history, as well as explore Arizona’s diverse communities. Programs such as the traveling trunks, Amazing Arizonans, and add-one programs are available for a minimal fee. Amazing Arizonans is a team of living historians who portray notable pioneers such as town co-founder Jack Swilling or average citizens representing various lifestyles and cultures in several historic eras from the frontier to the World War II home front.

Amazing Arizonans
Students meet history face to face as AHS Amazing Arizonans,dressed in authentic costumes, portray characters from Arizona’s past from famous officers and lawmen to schoolteachers and housewives.   Presentations last approximately one hour, and all programs must be scheduled ahead of time.

Lantern Lore
Every year on a Saturday evening in early December, a holiday atmosphere prevails at the Museum at Papago Park in Tempe. The grounds are illuminated by festive fairy lights and lanterns as whole families sit around the campfire and enjoy storytellers’ adventures. Visitors of all ages sip hot chocolate and spiced cider while they learn about the folklore, songs, and poetry of Arizona’s diverse cultures.
 
Teacher Programs and Materials
The Arizona Historical Society presents several professional development workshops and renowned guest speakers each year at the Museum at Papago Park, college campuses, and other Maricopa County locations.

Tours of the Museum
Volunteer guides conduct lively one-hour tours of permanent and special museum exhibits covering Arizona history from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1540 to modern times with an emphasis on the Territorial Period, 1863-1912.

Group tours are available for adults and school children; there must be at least five persons in a group. All exhibits are wheel-chair accessible. Regular tours of the museum do not include “Exploring 1870s Tucson,” a hands-on exhibit designed especially for children, but special arrangements can be made for school groups to tour this American Association of State and Local History award-winning exhibit.

Outreach Programs
The Arizona Historical Society Suitcase Program brings history to life in the classrooms all over the greater Tucson area.  Docents, often in authentic costumes, use artifact kits to present one-hour interactive programs that explore past Arizona lifeways.

Presentations are available for grades K-12, and adult groups as well. All suitcases comply with the Arizona State Department of Education Standards. The one-hour presentations are limited to thirty individuals. Suitcase Program topics include: Territorial Children, Mountain Men, Apaches, Spanish settlement, Vaqueros and Cowboys, and Women in Arizona.

AHS docents are also available to do living history presentations and teach crafts to children at local festivals and cultural events.

Summer Youth Programs
In addition to the MYCE program for ages 13 to 17 (see description above), Cemetery Sleuths, Inc. (CSI) is a fun and exciting week-long summer program for kids aged 9 to 12.  Kids investigate Tucsonans of the past while learning valuable research skills in the AHS archives and other local repositories.  Activities include trips to Evergreen Cemetery, downtown Tucson, Pima County Superior Court, and the Pima County Recorder's Office. At the end of the session, families and friends enjoy an always delightful performance about Tucson pioneers created and performed by the CSI students. Scholarships are available for CSI as well as the MYCE program.

Workshops
The Education Departments periodically hosts workshops for teachers and professional educators of all grade levels. Workshops often meet school district Continuing Education credit criteria.

Speaker's Bureau
AHS staff and volunteers are available for presentations on several topics for Southern Arizona clubs and organizations. A minimum audience size of twenty is appreciated.

Arizona Lecture Series
The Education department sponsors a series of Wednesday evening lectures several times a year. Lecture series themes include various historical eras, cultures, occupations, and lifestyles.

The Sanguinetti House Museum in Yuma has a variety of educational programs that can be tailored to specific age or group needs.

Tours
Staff and volunteers provide an informative one-hour tour of the Sanguinetti House Museum exhibits and aviary gardens. Tours are given by appointment only, Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Walking tours of Yuma’s Main Street or Brinley Avenue Historic Districts are offered by appointment as well. The hour-long walking tours discuss architectural styles, construction details, historic residents, and what was happening in Yuma when these buildings were new.

Community Outreach
Local schools and organizations may check out slide shows and videotapes, or they can be presented to classes and groups by an AHS staff member. These programs highlight Arizona and Yuma area historical subjects from pre-territorial gold mining to the 1930's Depression Era.

History Comes Alive
The Sanguinetti House Museum has a trained living history character who visits schools and adult groups. Martha Summerhayes is a U.S. Army officer's wife from the 1870's who discusses the hardships of travel, climate and living conditions for an army wife and her children in the Arizona Territory.

Teaching Programs to Go
The Sanguinetti House Museum created a new series of education programs that deal with such subjects as area archaeology, history and natural history. Each program is supplemented with large photographs, reproductions of historic items, and activities that make the teaching process more exciting.