Gilder Lehrman Summer Series: The American Revolution

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked participants to write up their reflections, which we will be publishing over the coming months.

What do you get when you gather together thirty elementary and middle school history teachers and land them in New York during the hottest month of the year?  No, this is not the beginning of a parable on the excesses of history nerds, but rather the beginnings of a very successful seminar held by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.  Proving to be a hearty group of sojourners, I and 27 other history teachers from across the United States, in addition to two park rangers, gathered in Manhattan during the first week of July to attend a one-week in-depth all expense paid seminar on the American Revolution.  The Gilder Lehrman Institute uses its considerable resources to promote the study and love of American History in schools across the country; which includes casting a nationwide net to attract school teachers to an intensive week of further study, walking tours of historic sites, and working with primary documents, all under the tutelage of a highly qualified professor and seminar coordinator. The only qualification I needed to convey was a deep love of teaching American History. For this teacher; it was a dream come true.

Educators instinctively know that good teaching gets better through sharing and discussion. History teachers tend to be darn near obsessive-compulsive about the subject because social studies curriculum is frequently torpedoed and regulated to lesser status in this age of standardized testing. It is rare that teachers can meet in informal settings with other educators, and practically non-existent to be able to confer with educators from other states. I mined dozens of new ideas from colleagues, teaching essentially the same curriculum, but with astonishingly different perspectives. How do I, a teacher from Colorado, put a price on my now enhanced quality of teaching after studying with a ranger from the Yorktown Battlefield, and with yet another teacher who works near the invasion point of the British in 1776?

The professor, Andrew Robertson, was very impressive. I was not interested in flying across the country (paid or not) to attend a seminar where only common information would be shared, or where I was required to sit and listen as the teacher prattled on. Quite the contrary— the professor immediately created a welcome forum for argument, discussion and analysis. The information was fresh and edgy, the conversation easily flowed between the professor and the participants, and in turn, frequently reversed from participant to teacher— effectively creating a substantive roundtable discussion. My knowledge of that time period was raised immeasurably. More importantly, a new dynamic was introduced into my teaching. I could now visualize where the students I teach now will effectively be when they enter college. A legitimate link in my mind was created, and a new sense of importance was established pertaining to the critical job we teachers do in the younger grades. As a fifth grade teacher, I will occasionally view the first scribbles of a kindergartener and be filled with a sense of awe when I realize how much students learn in the few shorts years from those scribbles to the stories they write for me in the intermediate elementary grades. And now, I can reflect on how much the students I have today will grow academically, and developmentally, in the coming years to be available for learning at the lofty levels at which Professor Robertson teaches. It’s a wondrous thing to think about.

Moreover, Professor Robertson turned out to be quite the textbook urban warrior—frequently leading the group, with our intrepid Gilder Lehrman education coordinator Carla Nordstrom, on splendid walking tours of historic sites in New York City. Forever gone are my implacable memories of a standard July 4th fireworks celebration. That ante was raised considerably, and forever, as we all followed our leaders, on July 4th , to numerous Revolutionary War sites in Manhattan. There was the church where George Washington prayed right after becoming the nation’s first president. Next, the burial ground of Alexander Hamilton. Battery Park, where the first ships of the British invasion fleet were spotted coming over the horizon. And in no particular order; the Battle of Brooklyn site, trampling over the original location of Fort Washington, and finishing with lunch in the very building that General Washington bid farewell to his troops at the end of the war.

However, some of the best surprises occurred toward the end of our week together. Gathering at the New-York Historical Society, we were given a “one-on-one” audience with several original source documents from Gilder Lehrman’s extensive collection of original documents. I stood 3-inches from an original copy of Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre broadside. Only a few copies still exist today. It was thrilling to be able to inspect an original printing and view the brushstrokes of original coloring added to the document. It was a very powerful experience. We also viewed letters from General Henry Knox, an original anti-Whig political cartoon… among many others. Now come on…am I going to be able to add real excitement to classroom projects and lectures after viewing these original documents? Absolutely!

To conclude, participant teachers were required to produce two classroom lessons based on original source material documents. All the final projects (a total of sixty) were compiled, bound and presented to us on the final day, ensuring that the majority of information we learned, the sites we viewed, the documents we studied, and the techniques we shared, would follow each of us home and into our classrooms starting this fall. A hot July in New York was a welcome experience.