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What
is Teaching American History?
Part master class in history, part pedagogical workshop, and part collaborative planning opportunity, ASHP's Teaching American History programs allow teachers to step back from their daily schedules to consider broad historical questions, share teaching practices, and create and refine materials and activities for classroom use.
Working with scholars and history educators, participants explore such topics as "Was the Constitution a democratic document?" and "'Local people' in the national history of the civil rights movement" while also delving into primary documents and objects that make these abstract questions come alive. Partner organizations including the Brooklyn
Museum, Brooklyn
Historical Society, Paley Center for Media, and Queens College CUNY Division of Education help participants to consider how to develop effective and varied pedagogical strategies for teaching U.S. history.
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What
Will Participants Do?
These Teaching American History programs ask participants to be both learners and teachers, with the goal of improving the intellectual and pedagogical quality of history teaching in New York City’s public schools.
During the school year, participants are released from school for day-long Retreats led by guest historians and ASHP staff. In addition to discussing historical ideas and primary source documents, teachers work with ASHP staff and colleagues to assess what makes an effective history lesson and use those insights to create better lessons. Teachers receive primary document, book, and video resources. Prior to each retreat, participants are expected to read an article relating to the day’s historical themes.
Additional retreats and summer institutes provide opportunities for teachers to create, share, test, and revise classroom materials. At the completion of the three-year program, finished classroom materials will be collected to create a resource packet for distribution and for posting on a specially created website.
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