Institute for Louisiana Culture and History Announces Regional Workshops

During the 2023-2024 school year the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) will host four Institute for Louisiana Culture and History (ILCH) regional workshops for social studies K–12 educators throughout the state. This year’s regional workshops will focus 18th-century Louisiana history in alignment with the Louisiana Department of Education’s (LDOE) new 6th grade social studies standards.

These one-day regional workshops will provide Louisiana public school social studies educators the opportunity to build their content knowledge by engaging with historians and participating in social studies working sessions exploring how to use expanded standards-aligned content found on LEH’s 64 Parishes online encyclopedia, 64parishes.org, in the classroom.

The institute will provide a $150 stipend to all regional workshop participants on completion of the one-day workshop. Applications will open August 15, 2023, and be evaluated on a rolling basis. Social studies educators and specialists employed by public schools in Louisiana, with a preference for those working with 6th grade social studies content, are encouraged to apply.

This year’s regional workshops will take place:

• November 4, 2023: Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum in Monroe (open to educators from northeast Louisiana)
• December 9, 2023: Louisiana State University-Shreveport (open to educators from northwest Louisiana)
• January 20, 2024: McNeese State University in Lake Charles (open to educators from southwest Louisiana)
• February 24, 2024: West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen (open to educators from southeast Louisiana)

About 64 Parishes Encyclopedia and K-12 Educational Resources

Encompassing an award-winning quarterly print magazine and website, encyclopedia, and K–12 resources, LEH’s 64 Parishes explores Louisiana history and culture. 64 Parishes encyclopedia hosts over 1,200 entries about Louisiana accompanied by thousands of archival images, documents, and audio files. The encyclopedia is the LEH’s most-used resources, reaching hundreds of classrooms across Louisiana each year.

The institute is expanding encyclopedia content and adapting and grade-leveling encyclopedia entries for the classroom. As part of the effort to better serve students and teachers, institute staff has also rolled out a new search function that allows teachers to search content by the new Louisiana social studies standards numbers.

The LDOE, one of LEH’s partners on the 64 Parishes encyclopedia expansion, has introduced new social studies standards to be rolled out in the 2023–24 school year. The new course frameworks will expand the study of Louisiana history and culture in the state’s public schools from third and eighth grade to nearly every grade. Together, LEH and LDOE are mapping these new social studies standards to the content on 64parishes.org, creating resources for teachers and students, including grade-level appropriate adaptations of key texts.

The ILCH workshops and 64 Parishes encyclopedia expansion are made possible in part by a grant from the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation.

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Please contact ILCH Program Manager Kathryn O’Dwyer at o’[email protected] with any questions.