Monday, February 10, 2025

Byron Middle School teacher selected for History Day program

Matt Weyers, a history teacher at Byron Middle School, is one of only 120 teachers selected for a National History Day spring professional development program.

The course focuses on using online Library of Congress resources to develop and support historical arguments and is a feature of National History Day’s membership in the Library of Congress with Primary Sources Consortium.

The teachers chosen for this webinar represent NHD’s 58 affiliates across the country and around the world. NHD affiliates include all 50 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and international school programs in China, South Asia and South Korea.

“The skills and strategies Weyers is developing through this series will benefit his students over the course of their academic and professional careers,” said National History Day Executive Director Dr. Cathy Gorn.

“As a Library of Congress TPS Consortium member, NHD is incredibly fortunate to be able to offer this opportunity for teachers, especially now as teachers and students continue to address challenges of non-traditional learning settings required by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”

For several months Weyers is working with his peers around the country and National History Day staff to build knowledge for teaching with online Library of Congress resources. Upon completion of the series, Weyers will have demonstrated the ability to share with his students key strategies for researching, supporting and presenting historical arguments bolstered by these primary sources.

Weyers applied for the course after seeing an application available on the Minnesota History Day website. He applied for “no other reason than I wanted to be a better teacher for my students. I had no idea so few teachers around the world were able to participate.” This is Weyers’ fourth year participating in National History Day.

As a 7th grade classroom teacher, Weyers has chosen to run a National History Day program at Byron Middle School. His 180 students engage in the history day process, which involves students creating a historical argument that is defended by a thesis statement. The thesis statement must incorporate the annual theme that National History Day chooses. This year’s theme is ‘Communication in History: The Key to Understanding.’

Students research topics of their choosing that connect to this theme and then create one of five products individually or as a group: research paper (individual), documentary, performance, exhibit or web site. All students are judged on the quality of their work by outside judges. Students who are evaluated the highest can choose to move on to a regional competition, and there is a state-level competition in May and a national competition in June.

“It is my job to support students on their History Day journey,” Weyers said, “by providing them feedback, helping them find primary sources and in general supporting them in any way possible. History Day is a rigorous journey, it is easily the largest project that students have undertaken at this point in their school careers.”

The spring professional development program Weyers is participating in runs from December 2020 to April 2021. There is one live webinar session per month with intermediary assignments along the way, such as peer discussion boards and individual research projects. The last webinar is April 7.

Weyers said history offers a natural story-telling component, which he greatly enjoys. The more he works with students, however, the more he appreciates that history offers a pathway for students to not only learn about the past but examine how they are impacting present-day issues.

“Talking about how the past connects to the present allows students the chance to critically examine how they feel about these connections, which often align with many of the hot-button issues of today,” Weyers said. “I think school is a safe place for students to discuss their feelings on these issues through a historical lens, which I believe will only help them grow as people.”

 

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