Take a look at what freshmen will learn about state’s history

It’s only a coincidence that Professor Brandon Morgan, who wrote the recently approved online instructional materials for Rio Rancho Public Schools’ ninth-grade New Mexico history, lives in Rio Rancho.

By day, he teaches at Central New Mexico Community College’s main campus in southeast Albuquerque.

Spanish colonization, Juan de Oñate’s troubled tenure, independence from Mexico, slavery, the Civil War in New Mexico, the “Long Walk,” statehood, Pancho Villa, the effects of the Great Depression, Sen. Dennis Chavez and the Hispanic New Deal, the Manhattan Project and the Trinity Site – it‘s all covered and “image-rich,” he said.

The 16-chapter online text covers the gamut, from “Why New Mexico History?” in Chapter 1 and “New Mexico’s First Peoples” of Chapter 2, right into Chapter 16, “Into the 21st Century,” which includes “Lowrider Culture” and even some Sandoval County highlights, “Jemez Pueblo & Valles Caldera,” which Morgan admitted are among his favorite places to visit.

“We didn’t just start with 1912 (and statehood),” he said. “The beginning starts with why study New Mexico, and why do you study the past?”

“It’s interactive and has multi-media, so that was the goal,” he said, hopeful of someday including a teacher’s guide for the course.

Also in that final chapter are information about the state’s lowrider culture and the Indigenous People’s “Rock Your Mocs” event that began in November 2014 – history of a sort that happened during these freshmen’s lifetimes.

What’s really cool for kids in this class are the numerous links they can click on, instead of Googling something online or using an actual encyclopedia, which in this latter reference take “clickers” to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and Laguna Pueblo, where a teen there started the iconic event.

“It’s a cutting-edge digital textbook,” is the way Morgan described it, and it’s unlike printed texts in that errors can be corrected and “new” history can be added easily. There are countless references to books and other documents, plus numerous video clips throughout, including a great insider’s look at the oldest, continually used building in the U.S.: Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors.

“History is based on human perspective,” Morgan said, and some of the humans interviewed for their perspectives included noted University of New Mexico’s professor Paul Hutton, an authority on the American West of the 19th century, and Matthew Martinez, about pueblos and the conquest.

It’s easy to become enthralled with New Mexico’s history, which began for Morgan during his two-year mission here for the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the summer of 2000. A native of Salt Lake City and a graduate of Weber State, he spoke Spanish and got a lot of out of the time he spent here, when he especially enjoyed Santa Fe and its galleries and what he saw in northern New Mexico.

“That’s kinda what sparked my interest in learning more about the history of the place and the people,” he said.

Five years later, he was attending the University of New Mexico, en route to obtaining his master’s degree in history. He’s been teaching New Mexico history on a full-time basis for the past four to five years, he said.

It took him a year to write the new online text for freshmen, he said, and a lot of it is based on his lectures and activities he uses at CNM: “This was made for college-level (students),” he added.

There’s a caveat of sorts, says Morgan.

“History is based on human perspectives. The evidence of history is human records, right? So different people are going to tell the story in different ways,” he explained. “We have so many different cultures here, locally, rooted in Hispanic culture or Pueblo culture or Apache culture, or the Anglos that came since the U.S.-Mexico War.

“So just recognizing that they need to look at various perspectives throughout the book; it’s mentioned New Mexico ‘histories,’ in the plural, so just we can drive that home, so they can think about which perspective it is.

“I don’t shy away – I don’t not want (students) to memorize things or know certain things, but I think understanding how to study the past and the complexities of it, and getting the skill of reading is more important than necessarily coming away with XYZ.”