On Friday morning, Joseph Suina, the former governor of Cochiti Pueblo, told a group of teachers a story about the early days of Los Alamos National Laboratory they'd never get from a history textbook.

When he was a boy growing up in the 1950s, Suina said, his people used to conduct a weeklong ceremony that included taking water from a cave in the Pajarito mountains.

A crucial part of the ceremony was making sure that nothing entered the small cave opening after an ordained pueblo member went in to get the water. To do so, someone else used a blanket to cover the opening.

After the lab started operating and detonating explosives in the mountains, the cave opening grew larger and larger, eventually making it impossible to ensure nothing got in.

The longtime ceremony, Suina said, was discontinued.

While many of the lab's exploits, including the invention of the first atomic bomb, are well known to the world, stories like Suina's give added depth to the place and its impact on the surrounding communities.

It was exactly the kind of history coordinators of a three-day workshop focusing on the Manhattan Project hoped teachers would hear.

Twenty-five teachers from across New Mexico participated in the workshop, which was sponsored by The Atomic Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, along with the Office of Environmental Management, The Kerr Foundation Inc., the Los Alamos County Council, Los Alamos National Bank, the National Nuclear Security Administration and LANL.

The intent was to give teachers material to draw from and use in their history and science classes.

The focus on the Manhattan Project proved especially useful, teachers said, because of the state's requirement to teach recent New Mexico history in high school.

While they have plenty of resources and are adept at teaching early New Mexico history, teachers had had a trickier time with the period from statehood to the present because of a lack of resources.

"I didn't have all the tools and information I needed," said Debbie Vigil, a teacher at St. Michael's High School.

During the three days, teachers visited Los Alamos, including the J. Robert Oppenheimer house, and heard from local historians who specialize in the lab and the Manhattan Project. They also worked together to develop lesson plans to take back to classrooms.

"It's going to help us build our arsenal to teach it," said Stacy Jenkins, a history teacher in the Albuquerque Public Schools.

Catherine Hollander, policy director for the Atomic Heritage Foundation, said teachers receive a $250 stipend and are housed and fed as part of the workshop. She said the group intends to host the workshop for at least the next two years.

Contact John Sena at 986-3079 or jsena@sfnewmexican.com.