Do you remember your first-year teaching? Best case: you had a great mentor, who encouraged you, helped you navigate school politics, provided tips for classroom management, and shared lesson plans and resources. If you were were one of the lucky ones, you know how much difference that person made to your life. And if you weren't, I bet you can imagine how much easier that first year of teaching would have been. Which begs the question: Would you like to be a mentor to a first-year rural teacher?  MentorMT is a program designed to help address Montana’s critical rural teacher shortage by ..read more

Today is the last day of school for Rapelje. Congratulations, Rapelje teachers and students. You made it! As yet another school year winds to a close, I’d appreciate getting your feedback. I’d also like to gather information on what has worked for you in the classroom, so I can share it with other teachers next year. Would you be willing to take an online survey? If so, click here. Need a little incentive? I’m offering prizes to the fifteenth, thirty-first, forty-second person to complete this survey. P.S. I'll continue posting for a little while now since most of us still have more school ahe ..read more

As we head toward the end of the school year, I'm curious: How do you keep your students engaged and learning through the very last day of school? (This is a real question, not a rhetorical one, so and I'll share out.) I did a little online sleuthing and came up with the following blogs that you might like if you are looking for inspiration. My first stop, as it often is, was Glenn Wiebe, who came through with "7 Resources for the End of School" and "3 Things You Need to Do Before the End of the School Year". (The latter encourages teachers to reflect on what worked and what didn't last year ..read more

 The Digital Inquiry Group is recruiting high school U.S. history teachers to receive free professional development from the Digital Inquiry Group (DIG) and use new Reading Like a Historian lessons that include digital literacy instruction.  Participating teachers will  Attend one virtual professional development institute on teaching with Reading Like a Historian lessons and assessments. (Sessions are synchronous and will not be recorded.)  Complete an asynchronous online course about DIG's digital literacy curriculum, Civic Online Reasoning.  Teach 4 to 8 new R ..read more

 Do you subscribe to the Montana Free Press? If I taught government, current events, or Montana history in high school or even middle school, I'd have students to take turns finding and presenting articles from the site. It's hands-down the best news reporting in the state. Catching up on my reading, I noticed several Montana Free Press articles that tie nicely with Montana history topics. I think they would lend themselves to interesting discussions, possibly using Project Zero's Circle of Viewpoints Thinking Routine: Mill closures ‘shock’ industry, but officials say demand for wood rem ..read more

  Save the Date! The 51th Annual Montana History Conference, "Central To History: Exploring Great Falls and Beyond," will be held September 26-28, 2024, at the Heritage Inn in Great Falls. Keynote speakers will include Montana poet Laureate Chris LaTray, cowboy poet Randy Rieman, Indigenous foodways and cooking expert Mariah Gladstone, and Malmstrom Air Force Base historian Troy Halsell. 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 yea ..read more

 I love cemeteries! And they make great classrooms. That's why I was excited to learn about the Butte Cemetery Symbolism Masterclass hosted by the Foundation for Montana History on Saturday, May 18. The Foundation is offering 5 OPI credits for this training, which will focus on the history of ethnic and fraternal groups in Montana’s mining towns as evidenced in local cemeteries. Attendees will learn about cemetery symbols, the history of fraternal societies in mining communities, and Chinese burial practices before touring Butte's Mount Moriah Cemetery, observing the Chinese tomb sweeping ..read more

 Retired Billings elementary school librarian Ruth Ferris recently shared this website from the University of the Arts on teaching with primary sources. The TPS-UArts downloadable Teacher Resource Guides cover a range of arts-based topics and historical contexts. The guides are designed to help K-12 teachers incorporate arts-based primary resources into dynamic, cross-curricular classroom experiences. Each guide includes hands-on classroom projects, discussion prompts, and examples of ways to use the guides with Common Core Standards and National Core Arts Standards. I was particular ..read more

Juneteenth is a federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on June 19, 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, enslaved people learned they had been set free under the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. Montana became the forty-sixth state to recognize the holiday when it named the third Saturday in June as Juneteenth National Freedom Day.  In honor of the holiday, the Montana Historical Society and Holter Museum of Art invite students in all grade levels from across Montana to participate in a sta ..read more

Although we'll only be able to see a partial eclipse in Montana, it's still pretty cool! And just in time for the eclipse, the Montana Office of Public Instruction's Indian Education Division pulled together this page of lessons and other resources relating to astronomy.   On a more sober note, between April 9 and May 24, the Western Heritage Center (WHC) will be hosting a traveling exhibit from the Heard Museum, "Away from Home: Stories from Indian Boarding Schools."   Learn more about the exhibit and find related curriculum. Learn about the contest WHC is hosting for 4-1 ..read more