By Kathleen Barker, Education Dept.

Summer has officially turned to fall, which means it’s time once again for leaf peeping, pumpkin carving, and National History Day! Since the Society became the official co-sponsor of Massachusetts History Day earlier this year, I’ve learned a lot about making websites, judging performances for historical accuracy, and spotting student-created content in exhibitions mounted on replicas of everything from the Taj Mahal to the R.M.S. Titanic.  I have also discovered that National History Day is a fabulous way to engage students in the process of doing history. For example, creating an NHD project requires that students work individually or in a group to select a topic related to the annual theme; conduct primary and secondary research at libraries, archives, and museums; think critically about sources and draw conclusions about the importance of their topic; and present their research through an exhibit, website, performance, documentary, or research paper.  Best of all, students who produce history day projects develop all sorts of reading, writing, thinking, and presentation skills that they can apply to other courses in other disciplines.  History Day is about so much more than history!

I was fortunate enough to attend a four-day NHD training session earlier this month. In addition to meeting competition coordinators from all over the world, I also attended a great session that explored the finer points of this year’s theme: Turning Points in American History. So, you might ask, how should we define a broad idea like “turning point?”  More than an important event from the past, a turning point is an idea, event, or action that led to some sort of cultural, political, social, or economic change. It could be anything from the changes in Secret Service protocol after President Kennedy’s assassination to the creation of state arts patronage that resulted from the Russian Revolution.  Of course, there are plenty of potential turning points in our own backyard. If you’d like to tackle a project that involves Massachusetts or New England history, explore the Society’s collections or contact the library staff (library@masshist.org; 617-646-0532) and start to plan a visit to the Library. For more information about participating in Massachusetts History Day, visit the MHD website. Good luck!

By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

In the spring of 1775, the towns of Lexington and Concord became targets, scenes, and symbols of actions that would ignite a war culminating in the birth of a new country. What happened to inhabitants of towns like these that were literally and figuratively “on the road to revolution” where local concerns and larger outside forces intersected? This July and August the Society offered two week-long workshops designed to help K-12 educators answer this question. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, our workshop, “At the Crossroads of Revolution: Lexington and Concord in 1775,” brought 80 teachers from 33 states (and the United Kingdom) to Massachusetts for an in-depth exploration of documents, artifacts, and landscapes associated with the beginning of the American Revolution.  

Each week’s program began on Sunday evening at the historic Hartwell Tavern, where participants experienced Battle Road Heroes, a living history program that introduced the dramatic stories of people who lived along the crossroads of the Battle Road in April of 1775. The following day, Robert Gross, Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut, led participants in an examination of life on the eve of the Revolution. He discussed what people were talking about; what they worried about; who the leaders were in the communities of Concord and Lexington and how they shaped public opinion; the sources of news and the places where people gathered to share it. Participants then had the opportunity to explore the Concord Museum, which holds an outstanding collection of artifacts related to life in Concord at the beginning of the American Revolution.

On Tuesdays we took to the streets of Boston with Bill Fowler, Distinguished Professor of History at Northeastern University and former director of the MHS. Building on the local concerns identified the previous day, participants considered how events in Boston were intertwined with those in Lexington and Concord. Our tour of the landscapes of revolutionary Boston included the Old State House, Boston Common, Old South Meeting House, Faneuil Hall, and Old North Church, where lanterns signaled British troop movements on the night of April 18, 1775. Our day concluded with a visit to the MHS where participants had the opportunity to meet and mingle with staff members while viewing original documents from the Society’s amazing collections.  

By Wednesday participants were ready to take a closer look at the first day of the revolution. We toured many different sites, including Lexington Green, Paul Revere’s capture site, and the North Bridge in Concord, as we focused on the actual events of April 19, 1775. Participants walked parts of the original Battle Road, now part of Minute Man National Historical Park, exploring eyewitness accounts recorded by minutemen British soldiers, and local inhabitants at various locales in order to uncover how the first few hours of the revolution unfolded. We also considered multiple perspectives through a visit to Munroe Tavern, part of the Lexington Historical Society. On the afternoon of April 19, 1775, the tavern served as the headquarters for Brigadier General Earl Percy and his one thousand reinforcements, as well as a field hospital for wounded British regulars, and interpreters within the tavern tell the story of the British retreat to Boston.

Activities on Thursday highlighted in the roles that ordinary people played in shaping extraordinary events, and the power that people had to effect change through the choices that they made. Historians Mary Fuhrer and Joanne Myers introduced the participants to documentary sources – local records – than can be used to research the lives of people living in Lexington in 1775. Through a series of hands-on research activities and a short writing workshop, participants chose a historical character from Lexington and examined their “choices at the crossroads.” Meanwhile, environmental historian Brian Donahue, author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord, immersed the teachers in the colonial landscape guiding them through a section of the farming fields and providing them with tools for “reading” and understanding the “land of the embattled farmers”. Our examination of the mixed husbandry land use of Concord’s small farms provided a way of understanding interrelated strands of environmental, economic and social history, and offered a unique perspective on the daily concerns and choices, and the long-term plans and patterns that were a crucial part of family and community life in Lexington and Concord.

Our setting for the final day of the workshop was the grounds of the Old Manse, a National Historic Landmark overlooking the Concord River. Here, MHS Director of Education Jayne Gordon led the teachers in a discussion the ways in which nineteenth- century Concord authors used Concord’s revolutionary legacy in their own efforts to end intellectual and cultural dependence on the Old World. After an intense week, the program officially ended with a leisurely stroll through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Alcotts are buried. We completed our workshop with a quiet, casual contemplation of the different kinds of independence that each author pursued at his/her own “crossroads.”

Here at the MHS, we are grateful to our wonderful partners for making this a fantastic experience for all who participated. We are also delighted to know that participants enjoyed their time in Massachusetts. As one teacher explained in her final evaluation, this was an “absolutely fabulous workshop of great value to me and my students. In the words of my students it was: ‘freakin’ awesome!’”.

By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

Summer is an exciting season for the MHS education department. Over the next three months, hundreds of teachers from nearly 40 states and the United Kingdom will visit the Society to take part in workshops on topics including the American Revolution, anti-slavery and abolition efforts, 19th-century immigration, and American imperialism. Many of these programs also include excursions to local landmarks like Faneuil Hall in the heart of Boston or the Old North Bridge in Concord. One particular workshop, however, will take participants to a stunning seaside setting: the new Thomas Jefferson Memorial Center at Coolidge Point in Manchester, Massachusetts.

In this workshop, participants will explore the challenges faced by the new nation in the years after the American Revolution. They will examine five sets of documents selected from the Society’s collections that shed light on key issues, including the rights and responsibilities of a new government, the needs of a diverse citizenry, slavery, women’s roles, and America’s relationship with the world. For example, using sources such as Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence and the correspondence generated by St. George Tucker’s Queries on Slavery in Massachusetts, teachers can analyze the ways in which America’s founding mothers and fathers attempted to negotiate the complex issue of slavery and its place in the new republic.

A $50 registration fee covers three lunches, one dinner, and all snacks. All materials, instruction, and admissions are included. Participants will receive 30 Professional Development Points, as well as the opportunity to earn graduate credit at Framingham State University. For more information, please contact the education department at education@masshist.org or (617) 646-0557.

By Kathleen Barker

Are you (or do you know) a K-12 educator in search of a fun and rewarding summer opportunity? The MHS is offering at least three fellowships to public and/or parochial schoolteachers and library media specialists during the summer of 2011. The fellowships carry a stipend of $4,000 for four weeks of on-site research at the MHS. Applications are welcome from any K-12 teacher or library media specialist who has a serious interest in using the collections at the MHS to prepare primary-source-based curricula, supported by documents and visual aids, in the fields of American history, world history, or English/language arts. For more information about teacher fellowship, including application guidelines, visit our Swensrud Teacher Fellowship webpage, or contact Kathleen Barker, Education Coordinator, at kbaker@masshist.org or 617-646-0557.

Since 2001, the MHS has offered more than 50 fellowships to teachers representing school districts throughout Massachusetts and New England. These talented men and women have created projects on dozens of fascinating topics, including “Eighteenth-Century Broadsides,” “Massachusetts Soldiers and the Civil War Experience,” and “The Good Government Association and Political Reform in Early-Twentieth-Century Boston.” Look here to view examples of curriculum projects created by former teacher fellows.

By Kathleen Barker

What can poems tell us about Bostonians and their ideas about liberty, responsibility, and rebellion, prior to the American Revolution? How was the American Revolution invoked in poems to critique the Civil War? Join us on August 10 and 11, 2010, as we explore these (and many other) fascinating questions related to the persuasive power of poetry! This workshop, designed for 5^th-8^th grade teachers, will examine the work of local eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets while offering tools for using poems in the classroom.

Workshop sessions will take place across Boston and Cambridge at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Paul Revere House, Old North Church, Old South Meeting House, and Longfellow National Historic Site. Registration for this two-day workshop is $60, which includes course readings and lunches (both days). Participants can earn 12 professional development points by attending the course and creating a singe lesson plan. One graduate credit is available for an additional fee. Registration forms are due by June 30, 2010.

For more information, including a schedule of the workshop events, or to download the registration form, please visit our online calendar: http://www.masshist.org/events/more_info.cfm?eventID=518.