K-8 Educators Offered Unique NEH Summer Institute Program on The Making of America

The Making of America: Colonial Era to Reconstruction is a virtual, weeklong 2021 NEH Summer Institute that offers K–8 educators the opportunity to explore the people, ideas, and events that made America into a cultural, social, and political reality. This institute will be purposefully broad to address the needs of K–8 educators. Teachers will learn about indigenous peoples and colonial societies, the American Revolution and the US Constitution, slavery and early US political and economic systems, and the causes and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Throughout the week, teachers will learn about this content through a variety of online learning activities. The activities will combine rich content with teaching strategies based on the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Teaching Literacy through History (TLTH) pedagogy that will help participants become more effective American history educators.

Participating teachers will be eligible for a stipend of up to $1,300.

Denver Brunsman, an associate professor and associate (vice) chair in the History Department at the George Washington University who writes on the politics and social history of the American Revolution, early American republic, and British Atlantic world serves as the director of the program. Mary Huffman, the 2015 National History Teacher of the Year and a Gilder Lehrman Institute master teacher, will lead sessions on the TLTH pedagogical framework. The institute will also welcome an impressive array of guest instructors and speakers.

To learn more about this NEH Summer Institute for K–8 Educators and to register for this stipended program, click here.

The Making of America: Colonial Era to Reconstruction has been made possible in party by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Summer Seminars and Institutes for K-12 Educators. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this webpage and program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.