Montana History Portal Meme Contest

The Montana History Portal Meme Contest is back!

Entries are accepted between May 1 and May 15. Montana State Library staff will post the finalists' memes on May 16 on its website for community members to vote on. The winning memes will be the top two entries in each age group with the most “likes” at the time the voting period ends. Voting is open to all. 

Entering is easy. Just pick (or have your students pick) a photo from the Montana History Portal, convert it to a funny meme, and send it in. That's all it takes. The contest is a great way to get students looking at historic photos--and having fun doing it.

• Find the full list of the rules and procedures.
• Explore contest submissions from 2024.
• Explore contest submissions from 2023. 

FREE Courses on Teaching Historical Argumentation and Research

 

Online Course on Historic Argumentation

May 19-August 8, 2025

Join MTHS interpretive historian and National History Day in Montana co-coordinator, Dr. Melissa Hibbard, for 3 credit, 12-week summer course on historical argumentation and learn strategies to help your students think like historians and develop solid historical arguments.

This course includes four live webinars and other online asynchronous work. This course is available for FREE to Montana Teachers grades 4-12 thanks to a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources grant. Space is limited, so sign up asap.

Questions? Contact Melissa Hibbard.

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!

Scholarships to attend the Montana History Conference

 

Save the Date!

The 52nd Annual Montana History Conference, "A Place in Time," will be held September 25-27, 2025, at the Best Western Great Northern Hotel in Helena.

Keynote speakers will include first-person interpreter Hasan Davis as York, Montana historian Kirby Lambert on memorable historic places; Montana journalist and conservationist Todd Wilkinson on Montana identity, and Piikuni elders Smokey and Darnell Rides at the Door on Blackfeet oral traditions. 

Renewal units will be available for both the Thursday educator workshop and all conference sessions and tours. (Check here after July 1 for more details.) We hope you’ll consider attending!

As in past years, we will be offering travel scholarships for both teachers and college students.

About the Schedule

Thursday, September 25

The conference begins with an all-day educator workshop on Thursday and presentations by

• OPI Indian Education Specialist Mike Jetty (Spirit Lake Dakota) on the Declaration of Independence and its reference to "merciless Indian savages";
• Language and Cultural Preservation Department original territories researchers Nolan Brown and Bailey Dann (Newe) on curriculum they've developed for teaching about the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, whose traditional homeland includes parts of Montana;
• Dylan Huisken (2020 Montana Teacher of the Year) on teaching about treaties; and 
• Kathy Martin and Mary Ellen Little Mustache (Piikuni) presenting the Blackfeet Medicine Show, featuring artifacts, art, stories, and games. 

A welcoming reception Thursday evening will offer a sneak peek at the new Montana Heritage Center, followed by a showing of Winter in the Blood at the Myrna Loy Center.

Friday, September 26    

Whereas the Thursday educator workshop includes a combination of content and teaching strategies, Friday focuses exclusively on content, with presentations on a range of Montana history topics, from the 1855 Lame Bull Treaty to the dams that changed western Montana. Tours of two historic cemeteries and a tour of Helena's African American history will be offered Friday afternoon for folks who are interested in visiting historic places. The evening will end with dinner and a movie, in this case a screening of Episode 3 of The Story of Us: The Women Who Shaped Montana.

Saturday, September 27 

Saturday morning brings more focus on content, including talks about Bannack's Chinese community, the Western Federation of Miners union, graphic design of the WPA, and more. Optional tours of Charter Oak Mine and Mill and Hidden Helena historic building tour closes out the conference on Saturday afternoon.  

About the Scholarships

Funded by the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, the scholarships will consist of full conference registration plus up to $400 in travel/expense reimbursement. All teachers and students in Montana’s colleges and universities are eligible to apply (residents of Helena and vicinity are eligible for the conference registration scholarship but not the travel reimbursement). We will also be offering scholarships to cover the $30 registration fee for teachers who only wish to attend the Thursday workshop.

Teacher recipients of the full scholarship must attend the entire conference, including Thursday’s Educators Workshop and the Saturday sessions (afternoon tours are optional). Student recipients must commit to attending all day Friday and Saturday, including a Saturday tour.

Preference will be given to

• Helena area teachers
• Teachers and students from Montana tribal colleges
• Teachers from Montana's on-reservation schools
• Students from Montana community colleges and four-year universities
• Teachers from Montana's rural, under-served communities.

Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. June 16, 2025. Awards will be announced on Friday, June 27, 2025. Applying for a scholarship is quick and easy. Apply online.

Free Audio Recordings of Every Chapter of Montana: Stories of the Land

Since we first published Montana: Stories of the Land, we've relied on Learning Ally, an organization that provides services for students struggling with reading, to provide the audio book. These professionally created recordings are GREAT, but we know that not every school can afford to access them. 

That's why we've created our own, less professional recording of Montana: Stories of the Land. We've posted these free recordings on the MTHS YouTube channel and have included links on each chapter page under the heading "Listen to the chapter." 

We hope this improves your students' learning!

Notes from the NCHE Conference

 I had the great privilege of attending the NCHE conference a few weeks ago.

I heard Glenn Wiebe talk about his new book, The Social Studies FIELD Guide: Strategies and Tools to Captivate Students, Cultivate Critical Thinking, and Create Engaged Citizens. His presentation reminded me how cool "hexagonal thinking" is. And I also learned how to make collaborative maps using Google My Maps.

Another strategy that I picked up from this conference (with apologies, because I didn't write down who shared them!): 

• After students read a nonfiction book, have them ask these three questions: 
  • What surprised me? 
  • What did the author think I already knew? 
  • What challenged, changed, or confirmed what I knew? 
• HIPPY is an acronym that students can use to analyze sources: 
  • Historical context
  • Intended audience
  • Purpose
  • Perspective
  • Y this matters

I also learned about some organizations that have created great resources:  

• The National September 11 Memorial and Museum offers virtual fieldtrips and lesson plans, including a three-part high school lesson Muslims in America after 9/11. 
• TeachRock has free lessons on using music (and related primary sources, like concert posters) to teach history. Note: It's not just rock music--they have a unit on post-Civil War America. As the presenters noted, one exciting aspect of using music as an avenue to study history is that it gets you away from a "great man/woman" framework, providing a "people's perspective" on historical events. The unit they presented focused on performer Josephine Baker's "homecoming" to St. Louis--and highlighted the on-the-ground fight for school desegregation that was happening there, two years before Brown v. Board of Education.
• RetroReport is an "independent nonprofit newsroom" that creates short documentaries and lesson plans that teachers can use for FREE (with registration).  
• The Fred Korematsu Institute offers lesson plans and other educational materials focused on Japanese American incarceration during World War II.

And I met some old friends, including the folks at the Right Question Institute, which focuses on teaching students how to ask their own questions. 

All and all, it was a very successful conference!

How much time does your school spend on social studies in grades 1-5?

 In past posts, I've promoted the idea that teaching more social studies in elementary school can help reading scores. Data for this comes from Adam Tyner and Sarah Kabourek's study, "Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study," published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (September 2020). That study suggests

that shifting twenty, thirty, or even forty minutes away from less effective ELA activities (such as practicing comprehension skills) and reinvesting that time to learn more about geography, history, civics, and the like will improve students’ reading ability. Just as important, additional social studies time will probably also help students develop the strong knowledge base needed for a successful transition to middle school. 

According to this study, social studies instruction in elementary school averages 28 minutes a day even though Council of Chief State School Officers (e.g., state superintendents of instruction) recommend elementary classrooms dedicate at least 45 minutes to social studies each day.

I'm almost positive that most Montana school districts are not teaching social studies the recommended 45 minutes a day. In fact, I suspect that many districts don't even teach social studies 28 minutes a day. But I'd like to know the current state of our state. Will you take this survey, which focuses on how many minutes a day Montana schools are teaching social studies in grades 1-5? 

Chris La Tray and Speakers in the Schools

Monday morning, I wrote that Humanities Montana was canceling the Speakers in the Schools program because the National Endowment for the Humanities had zeroed out its general operating grant. I immediately heard from Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray, who said he planned on continuing presenting across the state despite these cuts.

Chris has two programs: Montana's Poet Laureate and The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians: Métis Buffalo Hunters of the Northern Plains. 

If your school has IEFA money available, you can use it to fund his appearance, and he is happy to help you with the logistics and reporting. This is also an option if you want to bring in other Native speakers, including ones who have been working through Humanities Montana. (Chris said he'd be happy to walk you through the paperwork for other Native speakers as well.) They include:

• Louise Ogemahgeship Fischer, Living with the Land
• Franco Littlelight, Song of the Dawn Priests: A History of the Crow People
• Lanny Real Bird: Plains Indian Sign Language--Indigenous Language Acquisition Method and History 
• Lailani Upham, Connecting to Land Through an Indigenous Lens and Storytelling: The Power to Connect Our World
• Carrie Lynn Bear Chief and Lailani Upham, Documenting Sasquatch: An Indigenous Storytelling Journey
• Aspen and Cameron Decker, Our Belongings: Sqelixʷ ‘Salish’ Art and Toolmaking and Sqelixʷ ‘Salish’ Storytelling
• Buck Hitswithastick (Morigeau), Bridging the Worlds and Legacy Reclaimed: Honoring Montana’s Indigenous Narrative and Sovereignty
• Harry Rock Above, Crow Stories in Both Crow and English Languages

Chris is also actively pursuing alternative funding, so even if you don't have IEFA money available, if you want to bring him to your school, contact him and he will see what he can do. 

P.S. My coworker Melissa Hibbard wants to add that Louise Ogemahgeship Fischer, Lanny Real Bird, and Lailani Upham spoke at regional History Day competitions this February and she highly recommends all of them.

P.P.S. You can track any new developments in NEH (and Montana Humanities) funding at the Federation of State Humanities Councils website.

Humanities Montana Speaker in the Schools Program Is Canceled

On Wednesday, April 2, Humanities Montana received notice that its general operating grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was canceled. The general operating grant pays for all of its programs, including Speakers in the Schools, which brought expert humanities presenters like first-person interpreter Mary Jane Bradbury and Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray to classrooms across the state.

With the cancelation of the grant, all Speakers in the Schools programs, including presentations that have already been scheduled, are canceled. You can learn more about the work of Humanities Councils, including Humanities Montana, and find out if there are any new developments, at the Federation of State Humanities Councils website.

IEFA Resources at the Library of Congress

 Looking for more primary sources or want to get your students doing research? 

Montana Historical Society Historian Melissa Hibbard, who is also the co-director of National History Day in Montana, put together some useful guides for searching for IEFA-related materials available online from the Library of Congress. 

• Searching for Images in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

• Library of Congress IEFA Primary Source Sets & Research Guides

• Chronicling America: Researching Indian Boarding Schools (This has useful advice for searching any topic, but it uses Indian boarding schools as an example.)

Happy searching!

P.S. Don't forget to register for our LAST Tuesday Professional Development session, April 8 from 4:30-5:30 p.m.: Teaching Thematically, with Cynthia Wilondek.

P.P.S. The deadline to join the Teacher Leader in History program is April 7. Learn more about the program and find a link to apply here.