Since 2006, Emerging America’s Windows on History program has mobilized more than 30 research teams of K-12 students with their teachers and in partnership with historical societies, museums, town and college libraries, expert individuals, and other very local resources. Students learn to think historically as they track down primary sour…
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Exploring Emerging America’s Windows on History Program
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Teachers Karen McKay and Caroline Allison first posted these ideas as part of the Emerging America Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Training of Trainers program.
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Last summer, a distressed teacher friend shared an all too common story. Throughout the school year, she had sparked students’ skills and passions with a cross-curricular exploration of slavery. It was heady, demanding, and bang-on target for both state content standards and her 4th graders’ interests in fairness, difference, and understanding where we come from. At year’s end, her principal co…
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Guest Post: Rusty Annis, Belchertown, Massachusetts, Teacher
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Fourth and fifth grade students at the Hilltown Cooperative Charter School published their research at: Colonial Voices of Williamsburg. The site lays out students' entire path of discovery, including: photos and discussions from visits to local archives, student-created traditional Colonial floor cloths, a historical timeline, and ultimately, the gravestone of Master, Jonathan Warner.
Document E…
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In Fairbury, Nebraska–pop. 5,000–where I grew up in the 1960s, there lived literally zero black people. It was not by chance: the Klan and its allies had driven blacks out of much of the rural Midwest. (My parents' Civil Rights advocacy found scant welcome in my home town. But that's another story.) When I was in 6th grade, my older, wiser brother (a 9th grader) handed me the Autobiography of M…
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Guest Post: Rusty Annis, Belchertown, Massachusetts, Teacher
World War II marked a watershed for American identity, equality and opportunity. Advocates called bastions of racism into question and for the first time effectively challenged many aspects of discrimination. The war gave minorities (including women) a chance to contribute in a noticeable way to American society. It was not an easy tran…
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Since before the American Revolution, it has been common knowledge in Western Massachusetts that there lies a tension between the wealthy centers of farming and trade along the Connecticut River and the steep, rocky, and isolated "Hilltowns." Yet these small towns, like communities everywhere, have sometimes played outsized roles at key turning points of our nation's history.
Over the winter of 2…
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Emerging America embraces social media as a means to fulfill our mission to provide high-quality professional development to K-12 teachers on History, primary sources, and the Common Core State Standards. Quality professional development is more than just attending workshops and seminars. It requires a sustained process of learning and developing ideas about how our work impacts students. Socia…
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"Civility in politics is a contradiction in terms," declared a historian colleague with a chuckle when I suggested the topic for a possible lecture series. Still, like most Americans, I find the current national political discourse worrisome. My history educator's mind makes me wonder, "Has it always been this way?" Well… of course, there were the Revolutionary War, Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Re…