What We Provide
The Montana Council for History and Civics Education is dedicated to providing K-12 inservice and preservice teachers with quality professional development. Our professional development programs come from the National Council for History Education's colloquium model, whose three-pronged approach to professional development helps teachers learn content, effective pedagogy, and appropriate curriculum alignment. Many sessions include work between all grade levels to create a dialogue for how history is taught over the school years, while also including separate grade-level work sessions to allow teachers to discuss ways of integrating content to the grade levels they teach.
Professional Development programs provide teachers with resources, classroom materials, and books relevant to the era being studied. Perhaps the most important component of MCHCE's professional development programs is how teachers are treated as professionals, and a dialogue is encouraged and promoted between teachers and between teachers and the professional development staff.
Professional Development Workshops
MCHCE is pleased to offer inservice and PIR professional development programs to schools in the state of Montana for a small fee. Please contact MCHCE if your school is interested in one of our professional development 1 or 2-day programs. Fees for workshops include travel, per diem, and honoraria. Through memberships MCHCE is able to keep the costs minimal.
MCHCE workshops are tailored to fit the needs of your school or district. These include:
• Professional development in American and/or World history content;
• Professional development in curriculum development;
• Standards development; and
• Standards alignment.
MCHCE workshop staff include historians who have worked extensively with in-service teachers to help build content knowledge and master classroom teachers from the early elementary, elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Current and Former Programs
Teaching American History Programs
Biographies of the Nation (2010-2013)
Professional development program in history, serving Great Falls, Helena, and Bozeman teachers.
Title: "Biographies of the Nation"
LEA: Great Falls Public Schools, Great Falls, MT
Partners: Montana State University’s (MSU) Department of History and Philosophy and Department of Native American Studies, the Montana Council for History and Civics Education (MCHCE), the American Computer Museum and Education Northwest (formerly NWREL).
Project Wiki: Biographies of the Nation Participant Wiki
Annual Performance Executive Summaries
Year One: 2010-2011 Executive Summary
Biographies of the Nation is a three-year professional development program in American history for K-12 teachers in three of Montana’s largest school districts. The Great Falls Public Schools (LEA), in conjunction with the Helena and Bozeman Public Schools, and our partners, Montana State University, the Montana Council for History and Civics Education, and the American Computer Museum, will serve 36 teachers annually and 54 teachers over the life of this grant.
During each year of the grant, we will take an era of American history (Colonial and Early National Period, the Era of Sectional Conflict, and the Era of Global Power) to examine each era’s political and social conflicts through the lives of individuals. To do this, we will offer annual two-day fall colloquia, three-day winter colloquia, four-day summer institutes, and master-teacher-led book study groups that focus on how biography and history can be woven together to teach students major historical themes and narratives in ways that will help them understand how history is relevant to their own lives.
From the American Historical Association: Teach History the Old-Fashioned Way--Through Biography, by Ken Wolf.
"History is people, after all, and even great social, economic, intellectual, and political forces take shape in our minds and in our historical records through the actions of people."
From the American Historical Association: Biography and Autobiography in the teaching of History and the Social Sciences, by Ann K. Warren.
"Nothing gives more insight to students than to discern both the connections and the dissimilarities between their lives and the lives of others in places and/or times that seem remote and somehow unreal."
From teachinghistory.org: Teaching American History through Biography: Lessons from Maine Educators.
"Biographies enhance the ability of teachers to stimulate critical thinking across developmental levels."
From AP Central: Using Biography to Teach AP History.
"One method I use to strike a balance between the "big picture" and the specific evidence that makes up history is to use biography as a teaching tool."
From Education Weekly: Why Teach Biography?
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Our external evaluator, Education Northwest, will measure the success of the project based on the following objectives and performance measures:
(1) Increase teachers’ knowledge of American history
(1.a.) Percent of participants who complete 75% of hours offered (GPRA 2)
(1.b.) Average percent change in scores of participants who complete at least 75 % of hours offered by project (GPRA 1)
(1.c.) Development of a community of practice at local sites
(2) Improve the quality of American history instruction
(2.a.) Percent of participating teachers regularly using strategies to help students “think like an historian,” and apply “contextualized storytelling.”
(2.b.) Number of participants who develop high quality Instructional Plans
(3) Increase student achievement and attitudes toward studying history
(3.a.) Annual % of students (of participating teachers) who improve achievement on lessons/units taught from project Instructional Plans
(3.b.) Annual % of positive student attitudes toward studying history
(4) Disseminate and extend project activities
(4.a.) Annual dissemination of project materials and resources
(4.b.) Annual extension of activities to a broader audience
The West as U.S. Teaching American History Program (2007-2010)
Title: “The West as U.S.”
LEA: Bozeman School District, Bozeman, MT
Partners: Montana State University’s (MSU) Department of History and Philosophy and Department of Native American Studies, the National Council for History Education (NCHE), and the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL)
Project Wiki: The West as U.S. Participant Wiki
West As U.S. Final Performance Report
“The West as U.S.” is a three-year professional development project dedicated to teaching traditional American history through the use of biography, America’s founding documents, and museum-based artifacts. By focusing on the centrality of the American West for America’s national history during three turning points in American history—the era of the American Revolution and early national period, the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the era of the Great Depression and the Second World War—we will advance teachers’ understanding of and ability to teach traditional American history. This project relies on the expertise of our partners to provide comprehensive professional development for 36, K-12 teachers, organized into Professional Learning Teams, across 18 Montana counties in order to improve teachers’ and students’ understanding of traditional American history. The content focus is on teaching history to both teachers and students through America’s founding documents, artifacts and the interpretative tools that historians employ in “doing history.” The project will be disseminated, through twice-yearly colloquia, summer institutes, teacher project learning teams, and concurrent American history sessions at the annual Montana Education Association meetings, to an audience of over 3,500 teachers statewide–no small accomplishment in a state as vast as Montana. The Montana Council for History Education will provide an additional organizational basis for a network of teachers and administrators committed to improving the teaching of American history. Through NWREL’s evaluation design, “The West as U.S.” will provide empirical data on the results of our efforts to improve the teaching of American history locally, regionally, and across the state of Montana.