5-07-2025 4:39am

Loyola Teacher Wins

Maryland History Day is a program of Maryland Humanities and is an affiliate of National History Day, which has affiliates throughout the nation and the world. In addition to coordinating the state contest, Maryland History Day provides professional development for teachers and works in partnership with district coordinators who operate the program and conduct contests at the local level.

Each year more than 31,000 middle and high school students in classrooms throughout Maryland immerse themselves in in-depth research and create original documentaries, exhibits, performances, research papers, or websites exploring a breadth of historical topics within an annual theme.

Lindsay Matthews, Social Studies Teacher at Easton Middle School and Sam Manelski, History Department Chair and Teacher at Loyola Blakefield, were named this year’s Maryland History Day Statewide Middle and High School Teacher of the Year, respectively.

Sam Manelski, recipient of the Maryland History Day Statewide High School Teacher of the Year Award, also loves how the program’s open topic selection means the students’ interest can drive and shape their project.

Maryland History Day “gives them the opportunity to pick something that they are really passionate about or find really fascinating and really explore it. I think it’s great,” says the History Department Chair at Loyola Blakefield in Towson. This year marks Manelski’s thirteenth year at the school. He comes to History Day as a former student as well as a teacher.

“It’s a great project in [that] it requires a lot of long-term planning, it requires a lot of research, it requires a lot of effort. It requires public presentation and speaking skills, like all these things that I think are super important for students to build competency in. And I think it’s great for them to be able to kind of explore their passions and explore their interests and build really valuable skills.”

Manelski feels like the program helps students with “learning how to research, learning how to write research questions, learning how to overcome adversity when you’re researching,” he says. “And sometimes things don’t go the way they’re supposed to, and learning how to write and talk to people and face those challenges is a huge, huge, huge piece.”

Students also learn “how to form their own opinions” and “how to be critical consumers of information” through Maryland History Day, which he says boosts the confidence of his students.

“Making a 10-minute documentary about something you kind of barely heard of three months ago,” Manelski says as an example, “It’s a lot of work, and then they put a lot of effort into it and I think it helps them kind of realize what they’re capable of….They prove to themselves that they’re smart and motivated.”

A student who nominated Manelski for the award writes that learning to form opinions is part of the reason they nominated him.

“When we take tests and quizzes,” the student writes, “they are not about whether we can memorize something and circle the answer, but they are about making us form our own opinions and almost coming up with answers to why things happened.”

Manelski, who also runs the school’s Model U.N., thinks History Day helps students “discover what’s great about history,” but his own teaching style has an influence over that. “I have never had a teacher that has been so genuinely excited to help his students have a great time while learning,” writes another student who nominated Manelski. “I have never enjoyed learning about history so much.”

Another student nominator writes that Manelski “has a contagious love and passion for history that has really been able to benefit myself and my fellow peers. He is also very knowledgeable about practically every part of history and is always willing to share more information about certain periods of history,” the student continues.

“Mr. Manelski is an unsung hero,” writes a third student. “Mr. Manelski’s passion drives his students to exploring new heights… he is very kind to us with the help he gives when we struggle in APUSH [Advanced Placement United States History] exam. Taking his class, I not only feel highly confident for the APUSH exam, but also better prepared in understanding the world around me and better pushed toward my potential in life.”

Matthews and Manelski, the 2025 Maryland History Day Statewide Middle and High School Teachers of the Year, respectively, will be honored at the Awards Ceremony portion at the Maryland History Day State Contest on May 3. Annually, the Maryland Humanities team selects one middle school and one high school teacher for the statewide honor.