TAH > Writing History

Writing History > Seminars

Writing History, a Teaching American History grant awarded to The New Bedford Public Schools, in partnership with Bristol Community College, will begin work on its second year of programming in September of 2008. Writing History works with elementary, middle and high school teachers of American history and emphasizes the importance of writing in the classroom. Working with the Buzzards Bay Writing Project and various historians, Writing History will integrate professional development in historical content and writing through a series of seminars accented by lectures by prominent historians. Participants will earn PDPs, graduate credit and also develop techniques to improve student writing. As usual, all program costs are covered by the grant including books and tuition.

This project integrates standards-based historical content with research-based strategies aimed at building students abilities to both develop and demonstrate their historical thinking through writing and recognize the identity of key writing and key historical skills.

The seminars run on a trimester schedule and are set to begin the week of September 15th 2008. Both the introductory and advanced seminars will meet for 10 weeks at Bristol Community College. Participants must complete both the introductory and advanced seminar in order to be eligible to earn graduate credit through the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

We are working on this project with teachers from nearly twenty area districts and vocational schools and we look forward to working with all of you. If you have any questions about Writing History or the Teaching American History Projects please feel free to contact us at the Teaching American History office.

Historian Lectures

Each trimester “Writing History” will present two lectures by and discussions with historians whose published work deals with the project’s theme of “Work and Home”. Attendance at the lectures is required of all seminar registrants. Among the scholars who have agreed to participate in Writing History are: Jefferson Cowie (Cornell), Dorothy Sue Cable (Rutgers), Paul Buhle (Brown), Peter Kolchin (Delaware), Alice Kessler-Harris (Columbia)

Elementary Level Introductory Seminar

This seminar looks at pre-colonial and colonial America through the lens of “Work and Home”, focusing on the labor involved in coming to the New World, the social structure of the native peoples in pre-Columbian America, settlement patterns, forced and free labor in the American colonies, and the drive to transform New World resources into a national economy.

Secondary Level Introductory Seminar

This seminar offers a review of the sweep of American history from the period of the country’s founding to the present, through the lens of “Work and Home.” Not only has the specific labor people do changed dramatically over the course of history, but the conception of what we mean by ‘work’ has changed as well, and with the definitions of ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘labor.’ This seminar reviews the essential elements of these changes in an attempt to integrate fundamental concepts of economics and technological growth into a vision of our nation’s past.

Elementary Level Advanced Seminar

This seminar delves more deeply into a few of the topics opened in the introductory seminar. By examining maritime economies, women’s work and labor sources in greater depth, participants will gain a better sense of how economic and technological considerations affect how Europeans became Americans in the New World.

Secondary Level Advanced Seminar

This seminar delves more deeply into a few of the topics opened in the introductory seminar. By examining slavery, gender and the American Dream in greater depth, participants will gain a better sense of how economic and technological consideration affect how American have lived across the two-plus centuries of our nation’s history.

Elementary and Secondary Guide Book Workshop

Educators who complete both the introductory and advanced workshop series and earned graduate credit are eligible to participate in workshops designed to produce guidebooks for integrating more frequent and rigorous writing into American history classrooms. These guidebooks will be published and distributed to teachers in the area and throughout the state.

September 2008 Seminar Schedule

The Introductory & Advanced Seminars will be meeting from 3:30pm -6:30pm on the following dates:

Elementary Introductory & Advanced Seminars	Secondary Introductory & Advanced Seminars
Tuesdays	Thursdays
September 16th	September 18th
September 23rd	September 25th
September 30th	October 2nd
October 7th	October 9th
October 14th	October 16th
October 21st	October 23rd
October 28th	October 30th
November 4th	November 6th
November 18th	November 13th
December 2nd	December 4th
*Please note that the Elementary Seminars will not meet 11/11 or 11/25	*Please note that Secondary Seminars will not meet on 11/20 or 11/27