Wilson Library to host teaching institute

The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum today announced it will host a one-week institute for Virginia history teachers from Monday, July 11, until Friday, July 15.

The summer institute is the second of three annual week-long sessions in a professional development curriculum entitled “American History in International Context” that the Presidential Library is holding in conjunction with Bedford County Public Schools. Dr. Lawrence Goodheart, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, and Dr. Edward T. O’Donnell, Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, will speak at the Institute. Teachers from Alleghany, Bath, Bedford, Craig, Giles, Highland, and Pulaski County Public Schools are participating.

On Monday, the teachers will begin their week-long program of presentations, discussions, and workshops. Besides presentations by Dr. Goodheart and Dr. O’Donnell, there will be workshops led by Dalton Ford of Waynesboro Public Schools, Sandra Trenholm, Director of Collections at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York, local historian Lucinda Cooke, and Susan Lendermon of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library. Teachers will attend sessions about research techniques, teaching with primary sources and material culture, and using technology to meet Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL’s). On Friday, the participants will give presentations on lesson plan projects they prepared throughout the week on topics related to the institute.

The program is designed to improve the teachers’ knowledge and appreciation of American history by focusing on significant connections in America’s past and introducing them to available resources and new pedagogical practices. During this second year, the teachers are examining international issues and trends that shaped 19th-century American history and the development of the United States as a world power.

The program is made possible by a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Bedford County Public Schools received the grant in partnership with the Presidential Library and Alleghany, Bath, Craig, Giles, Highland, and Pulaski County Public Schools.

The teachers participated in one-day preparatory sessions at the Presidential Library last fall and this spring. Later this month, the teachers will continue the program through a historic site visit to Gettysburg. They will return to the Presidential Library for one-day sessions this fall and next spring, and participate in a final summer institute in 2012.