Saturday, November 23, 2013

Glory Road Teaching Materials Contest!

We just learned of a neat contest to develop teaching materials about the historic Texas Western (now UTEP) basketball team from 1965-6.

From the website:

"One of UTEP’s most important moments came on March 19, 1966, when the men’s basketball team beat Kentucky for the NCAA National Championship. Coach Don Haskins and the entire team were later admitted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997 and 2007, respectively. In 2011 the team was featured on a Wheaties box and the next year, during the 75th anniversary of the NCAA tournament, ESPN ranked the victory the #3 moment in the entire tournament history.

But the victory’s significance extends beyond basketball. The fact that the Miner team started five black players against Kentucky’s all-white team thrust the game into the nation’s civil rights movement. In 1955, the school had been the first in Texas to desegregate but the national struggle for rights was far from over. The victory challenged the color line in college athletics and the rest of national activities. The Miners’ story was immortalized in the 2006 motion picture Glory Road.


The Center for History Teaching & Learning invites recommendations for teaching this story and its significance in El Paso schools during 2014. We seek innovative and exciting strategies that will take this story to a new generation.

1. Review the resources on this page to familiarize yourself with the history. Feel free to draw on any other resources of which you are aware.

2. Design a learning activity for social studies (especially grades 4, 7, and 11) or any other subject. We don't seek entire lesson plans, but rather exciting ideas that teachers may use to create their own plans to meet their own students’ needs. See these samples.
3. Submit your activities via email to chtl@utep.edu by December 22, 2013.
The best ideas will be published by the Center and the creators will receive a UTEP Centennial Prize Pack."

Click HERE to go to a terrific website about the 1966 NCAA Basketball Champions! (Loads of photographs!)



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