More Summer PD--In Person and Online

We are still accepting applications for MTHS's in-person summer workshops in Helena, Missoula, and Billings, all of which offer renewal units and travel scholarships. (Learn more and find links to apply here). However, we aren't the only game in town! Here are some other great opportunities for teachers this summer. 

Indian Education for All Workshop

July 8 - 9, 2025

Join Stone Child College Department of Education and OPI for In Relation: Teaching and Learning Together. This two-day event, 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.) will focus on exploring culturally relevant IEFA resources. Keynotes include Oglala Lakota Olympian Billy Mills and Chippewa-Cree and Diné youth leader and environmental advocate Watson Whitford. The event will be held on the Stone Child College Campus - Rocky Boy, Montana. Questions? Contact Clintanna Colliflower at ccolliflower@stonechild.edu or 406-395-4875, ext. 1260. Register. 

NIEA Online Professional Learning Series: Community-Based Education through a Native Lens.

This on-line IEFA professional development opportunity is FREE for the first 250 Montana teachers that sign up. Sponsored by the National Indian Education Association. Course overview and registration.

Camp Many Stories: Immersive Place-Based Education in Glacier National Park 

Two camps: One for Educators and one for students ages 8-12

August 15 - 19, 2025, Big Creek Outdoor Education Center, on the border of Glacier National Park

Educator Institute: Join the Glacier Institute for an extraordinary teaching and learning experience at Camp Many Stories, an immersive five days and four nights of storytelling, place-based education, and creative exploration. Led by internationally acclaimed storytelling educator Jonny Walker and guided by local Native American elders, participants will deepen their understanding of using primary sources — including oral traditions, land-based histories, & student-created work — to bring learning to life. Educators will receive continuing education credit through the Primary Source Teaching Initiative, sponsored by the Library of Congress and will leave with ready-to-use strategies for integrating place, story, and primary sources into your own classrooms. Some scholarships are available. 

Children's Camp: Campers ages 8–12 who would thrive in this setting, especially students from rural or underserved communities, are also sought. While students cannot receive travel costs, full scholarships are available to cover camp expenses for selected students. Through writing, art, music, and movement, every child will find a way to express their creativity and connect with the natural world. Students will contribute to a shared book of stories, poems, and artwork that celebrates the many ways we tell — and live — our stories.

• Learn more.
• Students Click Here to Apply
• Educators Click Here to Apply

 

Reading Like a Historian Paid Summer PD Opportunity

 Long time readers have heard me talk up Reading Like a Historian lesson plans for quite some time now. These lessons provide students opportunities to explore historical questions by examining documents and developing arguments supported by evidence. Teachers who use it report that the lessons are easy to implement and that when they do, deep learning happens. 

If you are a high school teacher who have not used this material, but are curious about it, do I have an opportunity for you.

The Digital Inquiry Group (DIG), formerly the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), is working with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to conduct an independent study of new Reading Like a Historian materials that incorporate research-backed digital literacy strategies from the Civic Online Reasoning curriculum. (I love Civic Online Reasoning too!)

This opportunity is being offered to high school U.S. history teachers who have not previously participated in a DIG or SHEG professional development and have not systematically implemented Reading Like a Historian or Civic Online Reasoning in their U.S. history classes.

Participating teachers will receive $1,000 and 20 hours of professional development, provided at no cost, and will implement the new curricular materials in their classrooms.  

To learn more about the opportunity, please review this flyer. You can also watch a pre-recorded informational session that provides an overview of the program and study (slides).

To apply to participate, please complete AIR’s Teacher Consent Form. 

Once you submit the consent form, AIR will be in touch with you with next steps for participation. 

Limited spots are available, and admissions are rolling, so apply as soon as possible, and no later than May 23, 2025.

P.S. Looking for something less time-consuming? Check out MTHS's free summer PDs.

P.P.S. If you are changing schools next year, and want to continue receiving Teaching Montana History, make sure to provide your new (or home) email! 

 

Four Great Summer PD Opportunities

 I promoted all four of these opportunities, but we still have room--and travel scholarships are still available.

Integrated Literacy Strategies for Building Background Knowledge, with Dr. Tammy Elser

June 30, Helena and July 18 Missoula:

• Best for teachers grades K-5
• 6 Renewal Units
• Lunch included
• Bring: One of your favorite picture books to share with others and to analyze
• Learn more.
• Register for Helena.
• Register for Missoula.

Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research, with Jamie Holifield

August 5-6, Montana State University-Billings

• Best for teachers grades 4-12
• 16 Renewal Units
• Meals and hotel included
• Learn more.
• Apply.

52nd Annual Montana History Conference, "A Place in Time

September 25-27, Best Western Great Northern Hotel in Helena

• Best for teachers interested in gaining deeper understanding of Montana history (focus is on content, not application)
• Up to 22 renewal units.
• Learn more.
• Apply for a scholarship.

P.S. Don't forget to complete our end-of-year survey to be entered for a prize!

Share your favorite lesson and (maybe) win a $100 gas card

 May 8 is the last day of school in Rapelje. Congratulations, Rapelje students and teachers! You made it through another year.

As the school year ends, I hope you'll take a moment to share with us your favorite lesson plan, strategy or resources. Teacher recommended strategies, lesson plans, and other resources (whether created by MTHS or by someone else) are reliably readers' favorite posts to Teaching Montana History. I've noticed that fewer people are providing write ups, so I'm sweetening the pot. I have two $100 gas cards that I'll give to two teachers (drawn at random) who thoroughly shares information about resources or strategies (No one-word answers will be entered into the drawing).

I’d also appreciate your feedback on the services and resources MTHS.

Would you be willing to take an online survey? If so, click here. In addition to the gas card drawing, we'll be offering prizes to the 13th, 23rd, and 32nd person to submit a response, so there are lots of chances to win.

P.S. I'll continue posting for a little while now since most of us still have more school ahead of us--but wanted to get the survey out in order to reach everyone.

P.P.S. There's still room in our free summer workshops, which will be held in Missoula, Helena, and Billings (travel scholarships are available!). Learn more and find links to apply.

Free PDs for K-5 Teachers

We don't do enough for elementary teachers, especially those of you who teach K-3. That's why I was very excited when Salish Kootenai College professor Tammy Elser agreed to offer two daylong PDs, one in Helena, June 30, and the other in Missoula, July 18 that focuses on using picture books to help elementary students build the social studies background knowledge and vocabulary that will help them become better readers. If you teach K-5, this workshop is for you!

Integrated Literacy Strategies for Building Background Knowledge

No time to teach social studies? No time to read during the school day?  Then this workshop is for YOU!  Throughout the day you will learn powerful strategies for using picture books to enhance reading practice and build background knowledge and vocabulary for elementary learners. Tammy will demonstrate powerful one minute extensions to your regular read aloud routines that will support your students in building conceptual understandings making new content, facts, and vocabulary "sticky."  Employing principles from cognitive science, you will explore ways to enhance students' long-term memory and retrieval and determine short fast lists of facts - or as Tammy calls them, "sets of knowns" that behave like magnets for acquisition of new knowledge.

Do you live over 45 miles away? We invite you to apply for a travel scholarship. 

In Helena

• June 30, 9 am-4 pm, lunch provided
• Lincoln Center, 1335 Poplar St.
• Register. (Helena teachers: Please register directly with the district.)

• Bring: One of your favorite picture books to share with others and analyze for new learning opportunities

In Missoula

• July 18, 9 am-4 pm, lunch provided
• University of Montana, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education, Room 123
• Register.
• Cosponsored by Montana Council for Social Studies

• Bring: One of your favorite picture books to share with others and analyze for new learning opportunities

P.S. It's not too late to take our survey about how many hours per week elementary students in your district are studying social studies--and be entered to win a $100 gas card. Curious why we are asking? Read more here. 

P.P.S. NHD in Montana is sponsoring another free workshop (with travel stipends) for grades 4-12 teachers: "Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research," August 5-6, 2025, at MSU-Billings. Learn more and apply.

Discussion Guides for MMWH Articles

 Thanks to the work of Teacher Leaders in History Dylan Huisken and Kim Konen, we've been able to add discussion guides for select articles from Montana The Magazine of Western History Discussion Guides. 

Kim and Dylan will each periodically choose one article from the magazine to spotlight. Each discussion guide includes a summary of the article, learning activities, discussion questions, and links to relevant resources. We'll post their guides along with a PDF of the article for free download.  

Here are their first two articles pulled from the Winter 2024 issue: 

“A Hotel and Its Novelist: Thomas Savage and Dillon’s Andrus Hotel”

• Article by Author O. Alan Weltzien
• Discussion guide by Kim Konen

“When Did People Arrive in Montana? An Excerpt from Land of Beginnings: The Archaeology of Montana’s First Peoples”

• Article by Douglass H. MacDonald
• Discussion guide by Dylan Huisken

Also available for your reading pleasure (and your students' research quests) are articles we've digitized from the magazine in years past--some with discussion questions but others as part of special projects, including women's history articles provided as part of

the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of non-Indigenous women's suffrage; 

the commemoration of World War I; and

a free digital magazine focused on African American experiences in the West.  

Happy reading!

P.S. We have three in-person workshops this summer, two for K-5 teachers in Helena and Missoula on literacy integration and one for 4-12 teachers on Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research in Billings. All offer travel scholarships. Learn more and find links to apply.  

Free Workshop in Historical Thinking

 

Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research

August 5-6, Montana State University-Billings

Want to engage your class with student-driven research projects using primary sources? Want to promote more historical thinking and critical analysis? Join teachers from across the state as Jamie Holifield, an educator for National History Day and former Milwaukee public schools social studies teacher, teaches you how to facilitate student research, analyze sources, and think historically. Think of it as a two-day “doing history” bootcamp.

In this workshop you will learn about:

• Keywords and frameworks to help students write historical research questions and thesis statements
• Free online databases where students can locate primary and secondary sources
• Research organization strategies
• How to focus student research around a common theme
• How to modify primary and secondary sources to make them more accessible for a range of students
• How to teach students to place topics in historical context and think about short and long-term impacts
• How to define lenses of historical analysis
• How to support historical arguments with reasoning and evidence

You will get hands-on practice:

• Analyzing and curating primary sources related to federal policy to assimilate American Indians
• Creating and annotating historical questions and thesis statements
• Differentiating descriptive from analytical writing
• Evaluating historical projects created by real students

Eligible Applicants:

• Teach 4th-12th grade in Montana
• Can commit to teaching student-driven historical research projects using primary sources in the 2025-2026 school year
• Can commit to attending BOTH days of the August 5-6 summer institute from 9 am to 5 pm at MSU Billings

Successful Applicants will receive:

• Meals during the workshop
• Lodging
• Travel stipends
• 16 OPI renewal units

Applications will be accepted until all spots are filled. Apply now!