Kentucky Association of Teachers of History

KATH Meeting/Lunch at UK Boone Center, December 2, 2011

Present: Melanie Goan (UK) and Kate Hesseldenz (UK), but missing Jake Gibbs (BCTC) who had planned to come

We discussed what the duties of a “glue-person” might be:

• Communicate with board members and plan meetings
• Plan the annual conference in conjunction with the board
• Plan other programs or professional development
• Communicate with members (newsletters, etc.)
• Membership-generate new members with mailings etc.  and maintain membership database
• Promote KATH and maintain web site
• Control finances
• Keep records
• Fundraise and explore grant options
• Identify resources and serve as a clearing house for history educators
• Administer Paper Awards

We felt that looking at other organizations like KATH would be helpful in determining structure, staffing, etc. Looking at the NCHE website is a good start because it lists all of the state history councils with links to several web sites:  http://www.nche.net/page.aspx?pid=386

We discussed the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies (KCSS) group and that perhaps they are drawing the K-12 teachers and KATH maybe should focus on the higher education group.  A joint annual meeting may be a good idea – similar to what is done in Michigan:  http://www.michiganhistoryed.org/annual-conference/. Rebecca Hanly recently went to a KCSS meeting and she brought up this idea.  Many members were encouraging about the possibility of KATH holding a strand of sessions at KCSS.  They said there is a need for strong history content sessions for high school teachers because of the new end-of-course assessment.  If KATH wants to explore partnering in any way, the contact is Rick Daniel, the president at Rick.Daniel@jefferson.kyschools.us.

We feel that institutional support from Kentucky Historical Society or UK would be good.  A discussion with Jody Blankenship at KHS is needed since he is listed on the NCHE web site as being the contact for our state with a link to the KATH web site.

We recommend that more research be done by looking at other organizations like KATH and by bringing in more people (i.e. current KATH board members, history educators, etc.) into the discussion to determine the relevancy of KATH and future of the organization.