What if you could spend time building
your knowledge with other teachers who
cared about their students and our
future as much as you do?
What it together you could talk not only
about the past but with the past–
with earlier Americans who recorded
their struggles and choices as they faced
them?
 
Teaching American History seminars bring
teachers together to discuss our past–
the stories, letters, speeches, and debates
through which earlier Americans still
speak to us. These conversational
seminars offer graduate level
instruction in the content social
studies teachers need. Scholar
specialists introduce the documents and
give historical context but instead of
lecturing, they guide you as you read and
discuss with your fellow teachers what
the documents mean. In these voices of
the past we'll hear antagonists and allies
those who challenge our thinking and
those who deepen it. Talking through the
questions and struggles of those who
live before us will help us understand
why an American government "of the people,
by the people, for the people" is both a
gift and a challenge.
 
They say the best way to teach is by
example. That's how our seminars work.
When we discuss the meaning of a
document,
we're deliberating on the important
issues that shaped American history.
Each conversation causes us to think through
the problems that we in some cases still
face. In each seminar we enact the debates
and deliberations that occur in our
Republic at large. This gives you
confidence to open the same conversation
in your own classroom–to help students
practice the art of democracy: the habit
of thinking for oneself, listening
carefully to what others think, and then
thinking again.
Join us and explore America's story in
the words of those who lived it in our
classroom republic, then carry it home.
 
 
