I have studied and taught the political thought of the American founding, the history of American constitutional law, and the development of American political culture for over fifteen years. I earned a B.A in political science from the University of Northern Iowa in 1991. In 1997 I earned my Ph.D. in political science at Northern Illinois University, where my fields of study included American political thought and the history of political philosophy. While at NIU I also taught one of the early offerings of the innovative freshman course "Democracy in America," which introduces students to American government through the study of the speeches and writings of American statesmen, jurists, and political activists. After completing my Ph.D., I was from 1998 to 2002 an assistant professor of political science at Concord College in West Virginia, where I taught courses in American constitutional law and American political thought. Since 2002 I have been teaching American national government, American constitutional law, and political philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where I am currently an associate professor.

Over the last several years I have participated as a presenter for a number of Teaching American History grant programs. For the American Institute for History Education (AIHE), I have made presentations on the rise of the right of privacy in American constitutional law, the role of controversies about the morality of rock and pop music in contemporary America's "culture wars," and American constitutional thought during the colonial period. In addition, I have made presentations on the political thought of the American founding, the principles of the American constitution, and recent developments in constitutional law for TAH programs in Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and West Virginia. I am honored and pleased to work with the American Institute for History Education. AIHE's mission, which is also the mission of the Teaching American History grant program, is to enhance the quality of instruction in traditional American history, that is, the study of the prominent ideas, institutions, events, leaders, thinkers, and controversies that have shaped America's ongoing experiment in self-government. That mission is absolutely vital to the future of our country, for only through such education can we hope to foster reflective and responsible citizens who will be able to apply American principles and the lessons of American history to the challenges that our nation will confront in the years to come. To this important mission AIHE brings an inspiring level of professionalism and excellence, both in its staff and in the scholars it recruits to deliver history content to teachers. It is gratifying and exciting to be part of such a team working in the pursuit of such important goals.

I am the co-editor, with Steve Bullock, of Founding Principles of the United States (Wadsworth, 2005), a two-volume collection of primary source documents, with accompanying commentary, tracing the development of seven fundamental principles of American government from the founding to the present: equality, virtue, religion, education, republican government, limited government, and economic liberty. This collection includes discussion questions for students at the end of each chapter and is suitable for use in high school or introductory college courses. I also edited Magnanimity and Statesmanship (Lexington Books, 2008), which includes studies of the character and political leadership of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In addition, I am the author of three studies of political philosophy: All Shook Up: Music, Passion and Politics (Spence Publishing, 2001), The Right Darwin: Evolution, Religion, and the Future of Democracy (Spence Publishing, 2006), and The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity (Baylor University Press, 2008). I am currently working on a book on the political thought of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Moreover, my articles have appeared in The Review of Politics, Perspectives on Political Science, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, and First Things. My scholarship has been supported by the Earhart Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation. In 2005-2006 I was a William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life in Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

It's that time again! The fifth annual Meeting of the Minds will be held once again in Historic Philadelphia at the Holiday Inn, Olde City. Each year the American Institute for History Education hosts this gathering to benefit TAH Project Directors from across the country. The Meeting of the Minds is always a great opportunity for novice and veteran project directors alike to come together to share ideas and experiences.

Beginning with a "Meet and Greet" on September 22nd the conference will span 3 days and provide attendees with the opportunity to plan, enhance and fine tune their grant in the areas of content, pedagogy, administration. Participants will experience two days of dynamic presentations by AIHE staff, veteran Project Directors, and one of AIHE's favorite friends, Dr. Dennis Denenberg. All Project Directors are sure to walk away with the knowledge and resources needed to optimize the professional development experience for their teachers.

AIHE plans to culminate the conference by taking advantage of the rich history and heritage of the Philadelphia area and offering two tours on September 24th. Project Directors will choose between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mount Pleasant Estate Tour or they can choose to take a revolutionary walk through history on the Walking Tour of Historic Philadelphia. Both tours will be capped by dinner at the famous Union League of Philadelphia with a brief tour of the building where guests will see an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and a piece of the shirt Lincoln wore on the night he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. From start to finish, Meeting of the Minds 2010 promises to be a memorable experience!

Teachers from the American Pride Liberty Fellowship Share Their Experiences

LaDonne Oaldon
Sunrise Elementary School
Orlando, FL

I learned so much by being a part of the 3-year American Pride Fellowship. I recommend the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) for any teacher wishing to broaden their knowledge of American history. The workshops not only give you historical background, but also focus on teaching strategies we can use in the classroom to implement our new knowledge. The speakers are outstanding history professors from all over the United States. The CICERO: History Beyond the Textbook website that AIHE teachers have access to is full of resources including PowerPoint presentations that can be used with students in the classroom. The culmination of the trip was our field-study to Philadelphia, Gettysburg, and Washington, D.C. The experience was so awesome! I had never been to Philadelphia before so seeing Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and even eating at City Tavern was a real treat. Ken Gavin, our guide throughout our trip, was outstanding! He was so knowledgeable about Gettysburg. We experienced the battlefield and the civilian effects of the battle on the town. In Washington, D.C. we toured the Spy Museum, went to the Newseum, Mount Vernon, saw the Memorials by night, went to the Capitol and stopped by the White House. At the Spy Museum and Mount Vernon we had a special lesson prepared by the staff. The food was outstanding on the trip as were the hotels. The American Pride Fellowship exceeded my expectations.

- ladonne.oaldon@ocps.net

Catherine Dixon
Avalon Middle School
Orlando, FL

I've experienced the most incredible three years of learning during the grant period. I really appreciate The American Institute for History Education's (AIHE) effort in presenting the seminars and the fantastic college professors who were a part of it. We got college-level training without the price tag. I loved the resources and have actually put them to work in my class; specifically the information on the Revolutionary War and the lesson on Heroes. It was very interesting to see the level of interest that was sparked in the girls during the Revolutionary unit and to see their curiosity peaked with the stories I told them (yes, I actually wrote them down). It helped to bring that period alive and help them see the participants as "real" people not just names on a page.

I'm most proud of The American Heroes lesson by Dr. Denenberg, which was really well received and I was amazed that so many of my students actually named one of their parents as their "hero". My only regret is that I didn't have the time to let each parent know what their child had to say about them.

Ken Gavin was the tour guide for my group on our culminating event for the grant and he was fantastic. His knowledge level is amazing. I really enjoyed the field-study trip that was planned.

- catherine.dixon@ocps.net

Jamie Durham
Apopka High School
Apopka, FL

- jamie.durham@ocps.net

My experience as a fellow in the American Pride Liberty Fellowship for the American Institute for History Education was very beneficial not only to me, but also to my students. I teach all levels of American history students including AP. The amount of information I have been exposed to and access to CICERO: History Beyond the Textbook have been infused into my teaching. In addition, the collegial atmosphere shared with the facilitators and participants along with the culminating study trip have supercharged my love for teaching American history.

Founding Principles of the United States, Volume 1

Steven Bullowck(Author), Carson Holloway(Author)

See how the United States evolved into the nation it is today with THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF THE UNITED STATES, VOLUME I! This primary source reader provides a unique interpretation of the ideological foundations of the United States through the exploration of seven themes: equality of opportunity; virtue; religion; education; republican government; limited government; and economic liberalism. Studying is made easy with clarifying commentary that introduces each section and ensures that you comprehend the material.

Founding Principles of the United States, Volume 2

Steven Bullowck(Author), Carson Holloway(Author)

See how the United States evolved into the nation it is today with THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF THE UNITED STATES, VOLUME 2! This primary source reader provides a unique interpretation of the ideological foundations of the United States through the exploration of seven themes: equality of opportunity; virtue; religion; education; republican government; limited government; and economic liberalism. Studying is made easy with clarifying commentary that introduces each section and ensures that you comprehend the material.

To order volume I and II of Founding Principles of the United States, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

Imagine descending 300 feet below the earth's surface to explore abandoned tunnels of rock and coal while learning about life and hard coal times in the Shifting Shanty. The Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour in Scranton, Pennsylvania offers a first-hand look at the largest vein of anthracite coal in the world. The tour begins with a slow descent into the earth in a mine car as you enter the old Slope #190. Watch the sky slowly disappear. Soon you've reached "the foot". Then explore 300 feet beneath the earth through an anthracite coal mine originally opened in 1860. Accompany a miner in the winding underground gangways and rock tunnel past three different veins of hard coal, past the mule boy and the nipper, past the monkey vein and the dead chute. Listen as he explains the fascinating methods used, and the heroic efforts involved, in deep mining's history.

The Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour is open from April 1 through November 30. The box office opens at 10:00 AM and tours are scheduled on demand between the hours of 11:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. It takes 28 people to fill a car. While waiting for your tour you can watch our introductory video about mining in our theater that is located in the interpretive center where the tickets for the tour are sold.

While you're waiting for your tour to begin, you'll most certainly want to check out our unusual gift shop offering an assortment of hard to find souvenirs and gift items.

Of course, there are anthracite coal souvenirs in a variety of sizes, but also coal artifacts glazed anthracite coal shaped to everything from an owl to pen sets to a miner's figure. If you're a collector, you'll want one of these rare and attractive items.

There's also jewelry made of coal; earrings, bracelets, rings and pendants. We are an exclusive supplier of "coal trees", but you can also find birthstones, and shell trees on a coal base.

Rock enthusiasts will find a treasure trove; from geodes with pewter mine scenes to amethyst with pewter figurines. We carry over 50 varieties of rocks and minerals, including all sizes of fossils, trilobites and jasper arrowheads. There are collector sets of Rocks and Minerals of the U.S. (with pamphlet) and Gems and Minerals of the Bible. We even have Totem Power Stones and worry stones.

We also carry a range of books, pamphlets, cassettes and videotapes relating to miners and the history of mining as well as miner's "scrip", the company-issued money that so many men broke their backs for. There are also children's miner helmets (with light) and railroad lanterns.

Reservations for twenty or more can be made by calling (1-800-238-7245); special group rates are available for groups of twenty or more.  For all others the tours run in between the hours of 11:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.   Please arrive no later than 2:45 to be scheduled for the final tour of the day that leaves at 3:00 P.M. each day. For more details, go to www.lackawannacounty.org/attractions_coal.asp

To see a video of a coalmine tour, click on this link: TeacherTube Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour

With the passing of Senator Robert C. Byrd, it is time to reflect on what a great benefit the Teaching American History (TAH) grant has been to schools and students throughout the nation. American history is not a core-content subject tested under the No Child Left Behind law. That alone shows us that American history is not as highly valued in American culture as the other core-content subjects that are mandatorily tested. The amount of state and federal resources sprinkled into American history education pales in contrast to what is poured into the study of other core subjects.

American history is just not appreciated and prized by our national and state governments, or with our culture in general. If it were, state and federal governments would work hard to make sure our children had a quality exposure to our American heritage and traditions, including a fair examination of times when America might not have lived up to our cherished ideals. Instead, both state and federal governments continue to push the study of American history to the periphery. Tragically, our children know less and less of who they are as Americans and why this nation even exists, why it prospers so abundantly and why it provided a beacon of hope for people around the world throughout its history. Many of our students remain culturally and historically illiterate because of our national neglect, and they are denied access to those philosophical, political and social conversations that span the ages.

The ancient Roman statesman Cicero noted that "to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child." We as educators must ask ourselves: Are we consigning this generation of students to lives of perpetual adolescence, mired under the weight of the latest trend, or what some ephemeral celebrity has recently espoused in the tabloids or on a blog? Fortunately, many of the teachers who have participated in the TAH grant will answer that question with a resounding, "NO!" Here in these grants, we find those necessary teachers with the initiative to study substantive historical content and learn how to bring that rich material to the classroom.

Some Shocking Statistics

Nevertheless, and despite the efforts of many of those dedicated teachers, we do see a major problem today with the amount of content knowledge and understanding students retain about our collective traditions and national heritage. On the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) studies, for example, only 2% of fourth graders, 1% of eighth graders, and 1% of twelfth graders scored at advanced, or a superior performance, in history for their grade level. Sadly, only 18% of fourth graders, 16% of eighth graders and a mere 13% of twelfth graders score proficient or better, which ". . . represents solid academic performance. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter."

Shockingly, only 70% of fourth graders, 65% of eighth graders, and a meager 47% of twelfth graders can score at a basic level (partial mastery) or better. This means that 30% of fourth graders, 35% of eighth graders and 53% of high school seniors cannot even score at partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental or foundational for an adequate mastery of their grade level. A majority of students (53%) graduated in 2006, eligible to vote, without an even rudimentary understanding of their American history. Hopefully, on the 2010 NAEP tests a majority of new voters will, at least, score above a mere basic level.

On the Bright Side

One bright spot American history educators can point to in recent years is the consistent successes found with students of teachers who have participated in the TAH grants. The TAH grant endeavors to increase teacher-content knowledge of American history. That increase in teacher-content knowledge causes increases in student achievement. The U.S. Department of Education clearly states that the TAH program is "designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of and appreciation for traditional U.S. history." Judgments regarding the success of the TAH program should be based on those two objectives. The grant, furthermore, calls for "developing, implementing, documenting, evaluating, and disseminating innovative, cohesive models of professional development. By helping teachers to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of traditional American history as a separate subject within the core curriculum, these programs are intended to improve instruction and raise student achievement." If programs in the TAH grants are increasing teacher historical content knowledge and student achievement, they should be duplicated across the nation. If the TAH grant is not raising teachers' content knowledge and student achievement, however, the program should be labeled a waste of taxpayers' money and immediately be discontinued.

What's Going Wrong?

Here, with large-scale dissemination, is where the TAH grant may have failed. No one will identify what specific programs and methods are working in the grants, what type need a tweak here or there, what programs have utterly failed, or what type of programs have served the parochial interests of some of the grant partners and participants.

Furthermore, we must explain why teachers who have spent four to five years in college education schools need to further study history content in order to raise student achievement. This is patently unfair to both the teachers and their prospective students. Why after spending tens of thousands of dollars to become teachers do they need intense professional development programs in substantive content to increase their students' classroom achievement?

In a recent Organization of American Historians, H-TAH list serve post, a Missouri State University professor, who was advertising the sale of online graduate history classes to TAH grants, reported that previous students (teachers) in his program had improved their content knowledge of American history from about the 50th to the 65th percentile in a nationally normed test. He further reported that the graduate students' students pre- and post-testing showed the teachers' students increased their content knowledge by about 5% against a control group. An increase in both teacher content knowledge and in student achievement clearly points to success. Nonetheless, these statistics seem to beg more questions than they answer. In what local colleges were these teachers trained to merely score in the 50th percentile?

The second question would be why any school district ever used a local education college that had produced such dismal results, as opposed to an institution that had reported positive results such as Missouri State had? Unfortunately, many school districts use the same local universities and education schools that have produced undertrained teachers for most of their ongoing district professional development programs. Districts should look elsewhere to provide their teachers with high-quality professional development. Reports like this should accent the dire need for a continued and even expanded Teaching American History grant.

In TAH grants administered by the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) in 2008, pre-tests of roughly 800 social studies teachers across the United States confirm the dismal findings in the Missouri State programs. On 30,000 responses to nationally normed questions on the topics that they teach, administered by an independent evaluator and submitted to the U.S. DOE, teachers who had majored in history scored only 59%. Those who minored in history scored 53%. Those who had NO history background scored 58%. Teachers in all three AIHE categories failed in tests on the topics that they teach to children. Again, these results beg the question, where did these teachers go to school locally to produce such unsettling results, and why would districts turn back to these local institutions for further professional development?

Successful Results at AIHE

Fortunately, the AIHE teachers in TAH grants increased their content knowledge, respectfully, to passing grades. After participating for a year in AIHE professional development programs, teachers with majors in history increased their scores 36% to a score of 80%. Teachers with minors in history increased 52% to score 81%, and teachers with no college history background increased their scores 43% to a respectable score of 84%, outscoring both those who had majored and those who had minored in history. At this time, it is unclear why those without any college background in history scored higher, but we can say unequivocally that teachers in the AIHE-run grants significantly increased their content knowledge, a paramount goal of the TAH grant.

The weak, initial results in all of the assessments demonstrate that most history teachers are not receiving adequate content preparation in college, nor have they had any substantive exposure to the actual history content they are teaching. Even teachers who majored in history did not normally take classes aligned with state curricula, so there is no real guarantee that even a history major will adequately prepare teachers for teaching the specific topics their state statutes require.

In many colleges there is little or no coordination between the education department and the history department. In one example, a teacher had a concentration in the field of "The History of Radical Pacifism," yet she had no exposure to a simple survey course in American history. Another American history teacher had only three American history courses U.S. History to 1865 survey, U.S. Cultural History, and Women in American History to prepare him to teach the state-required U.S. II (1865 to the present) course at the high-school level. How can university education and history departments ignore what new teachers need to teach in their own states' middle school or high school classes?

Despite this shortcoming, there are teachers with vast amounts of knowledge in their content areas. Nonetheless, evidence clearly shows these teachers are a distinct minority. Most teachers have not been adequately prepared.

Making a Difference

Of course in our research we want to accent the hope for a better future in history education. Other independent evaluations have shown that AIHE-conducted TAH grants have saliently met the TAH objective of increasing teachers' content knowledge in history. In 2008 evaluations of more than 850 teachers across 22 projects in 10 states revealed that those teachers in AIHE-conducted TAH grants scored 29% higher than a comparison group of teachers on history content test items. The test items included nationally validated history test questions. Ironically, the AIHE group of teachers started 5% below the control group, due to AIHE's policy of helping districts recruit those teachers most in need of professional development. On average, individual AIHE teachers increased their content knowledge by 36%, with teachers from one rural district increasing their scores by a whopping 130%! On content tests that included items of both nationally validated questions and content-specific test items, the AIHE teachers increased by 40% on average, after AIHE training and field-studies.

In 2009, 600 AIHE/TAH American history teachers from 22 districts across 10 states increased their content knowledge of American history by 31%. Teachers went from a failing grade of 58% to a more respectful score of 76%. The greatest gains came from questions generated by historians at AIHE colloquia, ranging from the American Revolution to the current era. Scores of these questions rose from 55% on pre-tests to 75% on post-tests a 36% increase. On nationally validated test questions such as those from SAT, NAEP, and the AP exam, ISI, and the N.Y. Regents, scores rose from 59% to 73% a 24% gain!

The chart below shows a breakdown for the 2009 AIHE/TAH results and success in increasing teachers' content knowledge.

2009 Teachers Content Knowledge Results for AIHE/TAH Grants

Over and over, teachers at AIHE-conducted TAH grants have dramatically increased their content knowledge in American history. These evaluation results are public records and can be obtained from the Department of Education through a Freedom of Information Act request, or by going to www.AIHE.info to find the names of project directors and making direct requests.

In conclusion, I believe all of us who have focused our lives on the promotion of substantive history education owe Senator Byrd a tremendous debt of gratitude. American history might still be on the periphery of the core-content curriculum, but through Senator Byrd's tireless efforts, it has not yet been pushed over the precipice into the realm of supplementary subjects such as art, music, home economics and physical education. Hopefully, a successor to Senator Byrd will rise and take the mantle of champion of American history in the Senate. Moreover, maybe our future champion can bring history education to its proper place as an equal core-content subject, so our students can learn of their nation's past and the heroic stories of their forefathers and foremothers who preceded them in the epic story that is America. Who will stand up and fill that role as champion?

Archaeologists at James Madison's Montpelier in Orange, Virginia, announced an ambitious three-year excavation program that will investigate the slaves who lived on the estate during Madison's time. The undertaking will be funded by a newly awarded $250,000 "We the People" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goal of the "We the People" initiative is to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture.

The archaeological fieldwork will excavate the home sites of three groups of slaves: house slaves, who worked directly under the Madisons in the mansion and who lived close by in the South Yard; stable and garden slaves, who lived and worked slightly farther away in the Stable Quarter; and field slaves, who lived away from the mansion in the Home Quarter near the agricultural fields. The archaeology team began work this season, and will continue through the fall of 2012. The excavations will permit a comprehensive analysis of the material culture of these three classes of slaves, and yield new insights into the lives of each, the relationships among them, and their relationship to the Madisons.

"This new excavation program will give us a comprehensive understanding of the entire slave population of nearly 100 who once lived here serving James and Dolley Madison and the Montpelier plantation," said Dr. Matthew Reeves, Montpelier director of archaeology. "Few plantations have pristine archaeological remains of an entire slave population like Montpelier, and this creates a remarkable opportunity to gain insight into the complex workings of the whole plantation. We are interested in learning more about these individuals by studying the archaeological remains of their homes and possessions. It will also give us a deeper understanding of James and Dolley Madison, one of the defining couples of the American founding and early republic. We want the public to come visit every summer and fall during the dig "season" to see what we are discovering, and learn along with us."

Courtesy of The Montpelier Foundation

This archaeological excavation is one part of a larger comprehensive effort to investigate the daily lives of the many enslaved individuals who, for generations, made their homes at Montpelier. The South Yard, Stable Quarter, and Home Quarter will join several other Montpelier sites as places that teach visitors about the history and contributions of African Americans. The restoration of the mansion fully restored the entire cellar where slaves lived and worked; the Slave Cemetery is preserved; the Gilmore Cabin, where emancipated Montpelier slave George Gilmore lived; and Montpelier Train Depot, which witnessed segregation during the "Jim Crow" era.

Visitors can see the excavation through October, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. They can also visit the Archaeology Lab seven days a week. Members of the public can participate in the dig through Montpelier's excavation programs. For more information, visit www.montpelier.org/archaeologyprograms.

Montpelier is open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., April through October, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., October through March.

This project is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is also being provided by The Perry Foundation, Inc., the National Trust Historic Sites Fund, and several generous individuals; additional funds are still being sought to fully match the NEH grant.

Montpelier is the lifelong home of James Madison, Father of the Constitution, architect of the Bill of Rights, and president of the United States. Now that the home's recent $25 million architectural restoration is complete, visitors can see the progress of "Rediscovering James and Dolley Madison ... through the Presidential Detective Story" with daily guided tours. They can also participate in hands-on activities, and archaeology; leisurely stroll the garden and forests; take in the galleries and many other attractions on the estate's 2,650 acres. Montpelier is a National Trust Historic Site, administered by The Montpelier Foundation. To learn more, visit www.montpelier.org.

In the first study that combines an in-depth examination of Madison's National Gazette essays of 1791-92 with a study of The Federalist, Dr. Colleen Sheehan's James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government traces the evolution of Madison's conception of the politics of communication and public opinion throughout the Founding period, demonstrating how "the sovereign public" would form and rule in America. Contrary to those scholars who claim that Madison dispensed with the need to form an active and virtuous citizenry, Dr. Sheehan argues that Madison's vision for the new nation was informed by the idea of republican self-government, whose manifestation he sought to bring about in the spirit and way of life of the American people. Madison's story is "the story of an idea" the idea of America.

To order a copy of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

For almost four decades I have had one of the greatest jobs around that of a history professor. But I didn't plan it this way. My parents had only three careers in mind for their eldest son the ministry, medicine, and the law. I was not particularly spiritual, and I was a terrible student in the sciences. That left the law.

I benefited from a fine liberal arts education at St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) in the 1960s. That was where I fell in love with history. But I still carried my parents' dreams and remained focused on a career as a lawyer. Within two weeks of beginning classes at the University of Minnesota Law School, however, I knew I was in the wrong place. My professors and fellow law students were mainly interested in the precedents spawned by legal disputes. I, however, wanted to dig deeper into the individual stories of tort victims and criminal defendants figuring into these cases. Despite this difference in orientation, I stuck it out as a "One L" for a year.

Fortunately, Minnesota in the late '60s boasted one of the best American Studies programs in the country. The Minnesota program welcomed me as a fugitive from law school and became my educational home for the next five years. I took courses in history, political science, literature, philosophy and the fine arts. But my concentration was in U.S. constitutional history, working under a truly outstanding teacher/scholar, the late Professor Paul L. Murphy. Paul was a mentor who led by example, not by stern direction. His tutelage was perfect for me. He believed in studying cases and constitutional doctrine in excruciating detail. The practice was for each student in one of his seminars to pick a case and learn as much about it from a variety of sources and perspectives as time permitted. The goal was to come up with a novel interpretive point of view on the case. I doubt that I made any truly original contributions to the legal literature on my cases — Luther v. Borden (1849), Lochner v. New York (1905), or Dennis v. U.S. (1951) — but Paul's approach seemed eminently sensible then, and it still informs my historical orientation.

I left Minnesota in 1973 for a position in the American Studies Department at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY). I finished my Ph.D. the following spring and remained at Skidmore until 1976. From 1976 to 1988, I taught in the History Department at Clemson University (Clemson, SC). Since 1988 I have been a member of the History Department at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in Cedar Falls. In addition to my teaching at UNI, during my first 15 years in Cedar Falls I served as Head of the History Department, and I recently spent 18 months as Interim Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

At UNI and my previous institutions I have offered scores of different classes. My favorite courses have focused upon constitutional history and recent U.S. history. In addition, for the last half dozen years I have taught core curriculum classes on critical thinking in the social sciences. In all my courses I attempt to address historical subject matter through evidence-based stories. I encourage my students in their assignments to do the same.

In my research and writing, I have also sought to explore specific constitutional and legal issues through a focus on events and personal narratives. Some of my books include: Insuring Against Disaster: The Nuclear Industry on Trial (Mercer University Press, 1986); The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s (University Press of Kansas, 1997); Griswold v. Connecticut: Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy (University Press of Kansas, 2005); and, with Robert Green Jr., Affirmative Action: A Historical Guide to Controversial Issues in America (Greenwood Press, 2009). Please see related story further down. In addition, I edited a two-volume encyclopedia, Historic U.S. Court Cases (Routledge, 2001), which contains more than 200 essays written by leading scholars on important American legal disputes.

I was recommended to the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) by Dr. Tom Connors, a colleague at UNI. Tom has served AIHE as a presenter on many occasions and has spoken glowingly of his experiences. So, when invited by the organization to participate in a colloquium this summer under the aegis of the Central Indiana Liberty Fellowship, I readily accepted. During my two days in Indiana in June, I delivered four presentations — two on the Cold War, one on the Presidential election of 2000, and one on the last 35 years of nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. The approximately 20 Indiana social studies teachers in the colloquium were attentive, asked informed questions, and were seldom shy about responding to my open-ended queries.

My co-presenters in Indiana were experienced AIHE folks: Dr. Fran Macko and Dr. Kevin T. Brady. Dr. Macko is a retired teacher, with extensive experience in New York and New Jersey; she has made scores of AIHE presentations. And Dr. Brady, of course, is the founder and president of AIHE; he has seen it all, and he has a wealth of experiences to share. Although I was billed as a "content presenter," I tried to offer some thoughts in each presentation as to how the material I discussed could be employed in history or social studies classrooms. In addition to delivering their own excellent presentations, Dr. Macko and Dr. Brady were supportive of my efforts to engage the teachers in discussions. The three of us also had ample opportunities to bond over meals — the highlight being a surprisingly good dinner in the basement of a former Carnegie Library. From a logistical standpoint, my visit could not have gone better. Without a single misstep, the AIHE staff made my motel reservations, provided driving instructions, furnished technical support for my presentations, and processed the pre- and post-event paperwork.

In sum: my short time in Central Indiana was professionally stimulating and personally pleasurable. It convinced me that AIHE, by partnering with selected school districts, provides an ideal framework to advance history and social studies teaching in the country's K-12 schools.

Teachers from the Fountains of Freedom Liberty Fellowship Share Their Experiences

Cheryl Harkins
Robert E. Willis Elementary School
Bradenton, FL

Ben Franklin, a founding father, age 81, sits in Convention Hall in Philadelphia. He knows that the work that he is doing is unique and historic, while at the same time he is setting the new country for much future fighting. Perhaps he even foresaw the Civil War during that hot summer. That was news to me. I really never understood the connection of the American Revolution and the Civil War, until I started working with the American Institute for History Education's (AIHE) Fountains of Freedom Liberty Fellowship. What a fascinating experience! Each colloquium brings together a strategist, for embedding the lessons; a media literacy specialist, visual literacy and Internet literacy; and finally the historian, whose doctoral expertise is in the area he or she teaches. These groups of three people are fabulous. Education is wasted on the young! No student could appreciate how privileged I feel to be part of the best professional development offered. AIHE has totally spoiled me for any future professional development I may choose to take.

- harkinsc@manateeschools.net

Richard Mason
Blackburn Elementary School
Palmetto, FL

The opportunity to participate in the Fountains of Freedom Liberty Fellowship, offered jointly through the Manatee County, Florida School District and the American Institute for History Education, has been one of the most enriching learning experiences of my career. I have always been a history enthusiast, and I have always been disappointed by the traditional treatment of history in the elementary classroom. My father often repeated the quote "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it!" to me as I was growing up. However, the burning question on my mind has always been, how can people learn from history if they find it so boring?

The resources and scholarship that have been afforded through my participation in the Fountains of Freedom Liberty Fellowship have helped me to develop an answer. History is definitely not boring! History is alive with stories and lessons that we as teachers need to find and bring to life. Beginning in January of this year, I have had the pleasure of learning the stories behind the stories and methods to bring history alive and make it as interesting to my students as it is to me! We have had the pleasure of diving deeper into the actual events that led up to the American colonies developing a spirit of independence and self-government and finally taking the necessary steps to ensure their break from the British Empire. At the same time, we were learning several different methods to incorporate in our own classrooms, as well as being given access to one of the most amazing technology tools available in .

Our culminating event was a trip to America's oldest city, St. Augustine. This field-study trip was an absolutely amazing learning adventure, where participants were introduced to various aspects of the city and life in various periods from the late 16th century through the late 19th century, as the city evolved from a Spanish military outpost to a winter resort for some of America's wealthiest citizens. I look forward to continuing my learning adventure for the next few years and continuing to learn methods to infuse history's rich story into my classroom!

- masonr@manateeschools.net

When artist Gutzon Borglum began carving Mount Rushmore National Memorial in 1927, he was aware of the lasting legacy of his vision.

Mount Rushmore technical ropes team members test the scanning tripod that will be used to scan the sculpture.

The National Park Service has been entrusted with this special place and for the preservation of an American icon. Even though granite erodes only one inch every 10,000 years, the natural cracks in the rock provide opportunities for water infiltration and possible damage due to natural freeze-thaw cycles. The highest measures in preservation and security are taken to ensure no natural or human-generated damage happens to the memorial. Documentation and preservation of the sculpture are integral in keeping Borglum's dream alive.

One of the newest preservation projects at the memorial involves groundbreaking technology. In May staff from Mount Rushmore worked closely with highly skilled digital preservation specialists from Historic Scotland and the Kacyra Family Foundation based out of California. Using the latest digital laser scanning equipment, the preservation team captured millions of detailed data points of the sculpture.

Several separate laser scans taken at different locations throughout the memorial are combined to create the highly accurate rendering of the Thomas Jefferson sculpture at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Where the National Park Service once relied upon hand-drawn blueprints and photographs to document cultural resources, parks are now able to use technology to capture digital records of our nation's treasures. Another exciting application of the data will be in the form of interpretive programming for the public. Once the data is processed into a usable format, the park will be able to create 3D interactive programs, for both onsite visitors and web site programming. One day visitors may be able to go online and manipulate the sculpture to get a bird's eye view. They will be able to virtually walk into the Hall of Records, a place that is not accessible to the public, and see the original red paint markings on the wall. They will even be able to get so close to the inside of the presidents' eyes, they can see the drill marks on the eye shafts.

Mount Rushmore is proud to be a part of this next generation of preservation technology that will offer unlimited opportunities for visitor programming. Nothing compares to experiencing the sculpture in person, but through technology, visitors will be able to see areas of the faces only seen by the original workers themselves. For more information on this project and the history of the memorial, please see the park's web site at www.nps.gov/moru.

"Special consideration" or "reverse discrimination"? Affirmative Action (Historical Guides to Controversial Issues in America) by Dr. John W. Johnson and Dr. Robert P. Green Jr. traces the genesis and development of affirmative action and the continuing controversy that constitutes the story of racial and gender preferences. It pays attention to the individuals, the events, and the ideas that spawned federal and selected state affirmative action policies — and the resistance to those policies. Perhaps most important, it probes the key legal challenges to affirmative action in the nation's courts.

The controversy over affirmative action in America has been marked by a persistent tension between its advocates, who emphasize the necessity of overcoming historical patterns of racial and gender injustice, and its critics, who insist on the integrity of color and gender blindness. In the wake of related U.S. Supreme Court decisions of 2007, Affirmative Action brings the story of one of the most embattled public policy issues of the last half century up to date, demonstrating that social justice cannot simply be legislated into existence, nor can voices on either side of the debate be ignored.

To order a copy of Affirmative Action (Historical Guides to Controversial Issues in America), visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

Let's face it. I was no great shakes in high school. No one familiar with me back then would have detected college material. I cut up in class, left homework assignments uncompleted. It was blind luck that I even graduated. After winning early release my sole ambition was to land a job in the local plastic plant. Several classmates had fulfilling careers working there. Looking back, I doubt it was for me, however. But I didn't have to make that choice. The Eisenhower recession of 1960 made it for me. The plastic plant wasn't hiring. It was laying people off. The only job I could find that summer was the makeshift work I had been doing packing grocery bags for tips at the Fort Meade, Maryland, commissary. Since I no longer had to drag myself to class every morning, my carousing spilled over to the workweek. For my father, career soldier that he was, it was the last straw. Either join the army or move out. I enlisted for three years, most of them spent in Cold War Germany finding myself. In hindsight, that recession was a lucky historical break. It set me on an unexpected pathway toward a life in history.

Here is a quick checklist of what happened next. Discharge from the service in 1963; followed by four years at the University of Maryland in College Park (where I discovered I like reading and writing history); and then a fellowship to Yale at a time when American campuses were ablaze with let's-change-the-world idealism. I found myself swept into the force field of the great Southern historian, C. Vann Woodward, whose graceful prose and ethical intelligence had helped guide a generation of Southern intellectuals out of the moral thicket of Jim Crow segregation. I wanted to write history like he did: pulling meaning from the past while remaining engaged with the present. Many of Vann Woodward's Ph.D students have since written history from this bifocal vantage. Some of them have done so brilliantly. I count my accidental delivery into this milieu as another example of how history broke in my favor. At a time when many members of my age cohort were clarifying what it meant to be a citizen, I was rubbing shoulders with young colleagues trying to figure out how civic values should inform the writing of professional history.

And then there was the historical good fortune of landing a teaching job at Tulane University in New Orleans. You'd be hard put to come up with a better place to alight if being blindsided by history is your idea of professional development. History has happened to me twice since relocating to these latitudes. The first time was when the Nouvelle Nazi and former Klansman, David Duke, won election from my district to the state legislature. Obviously, I couldn't sit this one out. When Duke ran for U.S. Senate, and then the Governor's mansion, I helped form and lead a political action committee that unmasked the phoniness of his claims that he had turned over a new leaf and was now a born-again conservative Republican. That political experience wrested me not only from history but from my field at least for the time being. I was working on a political history of Reconstruction when the Duke phenomenon burst around me like some IED on the road to Baghdad. The Reconstruction project was a natural career progression from my first book, New Masters, a study of economic carpetbaggers during the Civil War and Reconstruction. But through a chain of events too complex to narrate here, I temporarily set aside the 19th century in order to write about a child survivor of the Warsaw ghetto who had rattled Duke in several well-publicized encounters. Troubled Memory, the title of the book that materialized, eventually evolved into a Jewish family saga that stretched from prewar and wartime Poland into postwar Germany before ending in David Duke's Louisiana. Finally, history waylaid the historian for a second time when Katrina barreled ashore. Before I knew it I was under contract to write a full-dress history of New Orleans. But this is also a serendipity too complicated to unpack here. And there's no need to. By now you've probably already realized I'm the kind of historian who rarely blinks when history lands on my doorstep.

Because of the project we are collectively involved in — the study, writing and teaching of history, not just in the university but at the grassroots of elementary and secondary education — I never thought twice when the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) invited me to participate in one of its workshops for schoolteachers. Teaching history matters. It especially matters at that developmental stage when young minds, often for the first time, start ruminating on the historical lessons of active citizenship. I wish I could say I still believe in George Santayana's adage that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. My experience is that we seldom learn anything from the past until we confront it personally. But when that happens, when history blindsides us one and all, which it assuredly will, if it has not done so already, it sure helps to have been instructed ahead of time in how to think about the past and consult it for guidance. This is why what we do as teachers of history will always remain worthwhile. And this is why AIHE should be commended for creating collaborative learning experiences between historian and teachers of history that its workshops make possible.

The American Institute for History Education is pleased to once again offer high-quality professional development for teachers of Advanced Placement courses with summer workshops. The workshops will specialize in the social studies subjects, and it is intended to benefit both novice and experienced AP teachers.

The AP summer workshops will be held during the week of July 25-30, at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich Twp, New Jersey. Lodging arrangements provided nearby at the Holiday Inn in Bridgeport, NJ.

AIHE's Social Studies Advanced Placement Summer Workshops have been endorsed by the Middle States Regional Office of the College Board.

Online and mail-in registrations are now being accepted. To register online, go to www.aihe.info/apworkshops.

Final Registration Deadline July 2

This compelling work tells the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, a Holocaust survivor who transformed the horrors of her childhood into a passionate mission to defeat the political menace of reputed neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Through Levy's tale, Lawrence Powell connects the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they built in the United States and shows how their experiences as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness.

To order a copy of Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

Opened in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February 2001, The National Civil War Museum is a nonprofit educational institution dedicated solely to the American Civil War. It is the largest Civil War museum that addresses the war from both the Northern and Southern perspective, and from both a military and civilian perspective. The museum protects some of the nation's treasures, including General Robert E. Lee's personal Bible, and more than 24,000 artifacts, documents and photos, worth an estimated $20 million.

Meet Mr. Lincoln

The National Civil War Museum recently opened a permanent addition to its galleries. A technologically advanced interactive exhibit developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, "Meet Mr. Lincoln" allows visitors to interface with Abraham Lincoln in real time in addition to other related personalities. Using touch-screen technology, visitors can choose from eight categories on Lincoln's life from which to ask questions, such as his childhood and early years, his war strategy, his presidency and his view on women's roles during the Civil War. Each category lists a series of questions on each topic, totaling more than 225 questions. Questions are geared toward younger visitors and adults alike.

In addition to a virtual interview with Lincoln, key related personalities provide a unique perspective such as Elizabeth Keckly, Mary Todd Lincoln's personal seamstress and confidante; and even John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin. Visitors may also pose questions to Mary Todd Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and General Ulysses S. Grant.

For more information, please call 866.BLU.GRAY or 717.260.1861, or visit the museum's web site at www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org.

I see myself as a high school social studies teacher who works in a university teacher education program. The last time I had my own high school classroom was in 1993, but twice a week I visit secondary schools where I observe student teachers and beginning teachers, teach demonstration lessons, and help develop curriculum. This is the most rewarding part of my day. Working with members of the Hofstra New Teachers Network I helped develop National Council for the Social Studies award-winning curriculum guides on the Great Irish Famine and New York State's complex relationship with slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

A benefit of working at a university is you have more time to write. Currently I have a regular column on The Huffington Post on educational issues, and I am the editor of Social Science Docket, a joint publication of the New Jersey and New York Councils for the Social Studies. I am constantly working with teachers in the field to develop curriculum ideas into articles. I have been fortunate to publish three books: Social Studies for Secondary Schools (Routledge), Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach (LEA), and New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth (SUNY).

I received certification as an undergraduate at the City College of New York during the turbulent '60s, and I have always viewed my teaching as a form of political action. My goal is to influence young people, not to agree with me, but to see themselves as active citizens of a democratic society who will play a role in shaping its future. As a high school teacher I organized student issues forums and made it possible for students to participate in political demonstrations. My economics students testified at New York City budget hearings, and I had participation in government classes to organize debates, write editorials for local newspapers, and march against apartheid and racist violence in the United States and in favor of reproductive freedom and condom availability in schools.

My doctorate in history (1982) is from Rutgers University where I specialized in late 19thand early 20thcentury social and labor history. My dissertation was on the development of class-consciousness by bituminous coal miners. I have done presentations for the American Institute for History Education and Teaching American History grant programs on 20th century social movements in the United States, the New Deal and the debate over the responsibility of government, the Irish experience in the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and Northern involvement in slavery and the slave trade.

For the past ten years my biggest research and curriculum interest was New York's complicity with and resistance to slavery. Both New York and New Jersey were slave states well into the 19thcentury. In fact, New Jersey may have been the last state in the Union where slavery was declared illegal. In the first half of the 19th century, major New York-based corporations including the predecessors of Citibank, ATT, Con Edison, Pennsylvania Railroad, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and the American Sugar Company were traded in slaves or slaves produced commodities or were built with profits from these ventures.

At the same time as they were complicit with slavery, New York and New Jersey were also important locales for abolitionist resistance. Quakers in southern New Jersey were among the first to speak out against slavery and played important roles on the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad through New Jersey helped to bring two of the nation's most prominent black abolitionists, Henry Highland Garnet and Samuel Ringgold Ward, to freedom. One of my favorite lessons on slavery is a debate over how we should remember New Jersey's Colonel Tye. Tye was a leading guerrilla fighter during the War for Independence. He is rarely taught about because to secure his freedom he fought for the British.

I am currently writing a new book for Routledge tentatively called Teaching Global History. The anticipated publication date is summer 2011. It is based on a social studies approach to global history. A social studies approach starts with student questions about why the world is the way it is today. It organizes the curriculum, units, and individual lessons in order to go back and forth across time, to examine case studies from the past, to help us gain insights into the human condition, and to think about our questions about the present. A goal for teachers is to have secondary school students to start discovering connections between people, places, events, and inventions. Knowledge is so often compartmentalized, especially in a topic as broad as global history. Discovering connections, and I mean discovering them not being told about them, is part of the excitement of the game.

The American Institute for History Education is pleased to once again offer high-quality professional development for teachers of Advanced Placement courses with summer workshops. The workshops will specialize in the social studies subjects, and it is intended to benefit both novice and experienced AP teachers.

"AIHE is offering both honors and AP teachers a unique opportunity to better prepare their students for the AP test," said Nick DiGregory, AIHE's Coordinator for Professional Development Services and the Summer Workshops Coordinator. "By attending an AIHE summer workshop, AP teachers will be given the latest updates from the College Board as it pertains to their subject matter and the AP test. Teachers will get rich content information as well as the latest strategies for teaching an AP course."

The AP summer workshops will be held during the week of July 26-30, at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich Twp, New Jersey. Lodging arrangements provided nearby at the Holiday Inn, Bridgeport, NJ.

The following AP courses are available as workshops:

• United States History
• European History
• World History
• Psychology
• United States Government

All teachers will receive a certificate for 30 hours of College Board-approved instruction. In addition, New Jersey teachers will receive 30 professional development hours from the American Institute for History Education as a state-approved vendor.

All instructors are certified by the College Board and also serve as readers for the AP test in the subject area.

Registration

Online and mail-in registrations are now being accepted. To register online, go to www.aihe.info/apworkshops.

Final Registration Deadline July 2

Cannons on the stone terrace.

Fort Ticonderoga, originally Fort Carillon, was built by the French military between 1755 and 1759. One in a series of forts the French built to control North America; it is a classic 'star' design by Canada's Governor Vaudreuil. The site looks over Lake Champlain at a point where it narrows and the shore of Vermont is a mere musket shot away. It is at this point, too, that the waters from Lake George enter Lake Champlain via the La Chute River. Control of this strategic narrows meant control of the north-south "highway" and the French and British forces fought for dominance over it for many years in the French and Indian War.

At the outset of the American Revolution a small company of British soldiers still manned the fort. On May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, and the Green Mountain Boys crossed Lake Champlain from Vermont and at dawn surprised and captured the sleeping garrison. This became the first victory of the Revolutionary War. From then until July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga served as an important staging area for the American Army while invading Canada and holding the territory against the British forces.

Students engage in musket practice.

Fort Ticonderoga begins its 102nd season of preservation, education and fun on May 20. This is America's fort; the site that determined the boundaries of this great country during two early wars. It has been a vacation staple for many generations with guests coming from around the world to enjoy its history. Many of them are reliving their own visit with their children and grandchildren!

The fort is much more than a restored military fortress. Your visit will include rich and varied offerings including costumed interpreters, 30-minute guided tours, a world class museum, daily musket demonstrations, and self-guided tours of the fort. Come away with a deeper understanding of American history from the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War periods of the 18th century.

Fort Ticonderoga welcomes student field trips throughout its open season. Among the offerings for students is "America's First Victory" an award-winning school program for students in grades 3-6 based on the historic capture of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, and the Green Mountain Boys. Students also become members of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, stationed at Ticonderoga from July 1776 to February 1777, and are drilled on the fort's parade ground by a sergeant of the regiment. Students practice team-work and decision-making skills throughout the program. Please call Nancy LaVallie, group tour coordinator, at (518) 585-2821, or go to www.FortTiconderoga.org for more information.

Blending historical narrative with ideas for engaging young people as historians and thinkers, Dr. Alan J. Singer introduces readers to the truth about the history of slavery in New York State, and, by extension, about race in American society. Dr. Singer's perspective as a historian and a former secondary school social studies teacher offers a wealth of new information about the past and introduces people and events that have been erased from history.
New York, both the city and the state, were centers of the abolitionist struggle to finally end human bondage; however, at the same time, enslaved Africans built the infrastructure of the colonial city. The author shows teachers how to develop ways to teach about this very difficult topic. He shows them how to deal with racial preconceptions and tensions in the classroom and calls upon teachers and students to become historical activists, conduct research, write reports, and present their findings to the public.

"Slavery helped forge America's political economy, culture, and race relations. In clear, thoughtful, and accessible language, Alan Singer has helped us better understand and teach the peculiar institution.' This excellent guide is not just for teachers or New Yorkers, it is for all of us." William H. Watkins, author of The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865-1954.

To order a copy of New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

Dr. Kevin T. Brady (left) and EUROCLIO project manager Jonathan Even-Zohar.

Dr. Kevin T. Brady, president of the American Institute for History Education (AIHE), traveled last month to Nijmegen, the Netherlands, to speak at a professional development conference hosted by EUROCLIO, the European Association of History Educators.

The conference, entitled "A Bridge Too Far? Teaching Common European History, Themes, Perspectives and Levels," allowed historians and educators from the European Union to discuss various topics, including World War II. Dr. Brady spoke on teaching about World War II from an American perspective, and he also introduced AIHE to the audience.

The 21st International Congress of Historical
Sciences will meet in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
on August 22-28. The meeting will provide an ideal
venue for the global community of historians to
debate, exchange ideas and share reports that
reflect historical research in action.

For more information visit www.ichs2010.org.

"It was wonderful speaking with teachers from Germany, Holland, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, England, and Ireland," Dr. Brady said. "All of them are so committed to teaching history. I found it to be very inspiring."

The 17th annual conference included guest presenters, a field study in local schools and guided tours of Nijmegen museums and historic districts.

AIHE recently became partners with EUROCLIO, an intercultural organization established in 1993 to promote and support the development of history education. Plans are under way to incorporate EUROCLIO professors into AIHE's monthly Talking History program.

"I really believe American history teachers and European teachers have a lot to learn from one another," Dr. Brady said. "Without examining American history in the context of what was going on in the rest of the world, our students get a very incomplete view of historical events."

To view a photo gallery of Dr. Brady's trip and a video of his presentation, go to pr.aihe.info.

I know from personal experience how valuable a good history teacher can be. Despite having grown up as an avid reader of a juvenile biography series about famous Americans everybody from Ethan Allen to Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth my high school history teachers somehow managed to make the study of history seem like an exceedingly boring exercise. Fortunately, I had to take history classes when I went to college at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), and my instructors there reawakened my interest in learning about history. They made the study of the past seem like perhaps the most rewarding enterprise a person could undertake. I quickly switched my major from Accounting to History.

As a graduate student at Duke University, I became particularly interested in the study of the U.S. South. I also was introduced to the methodology of oral history, which could be used to recapture the stories of those Americans on the "bottom of society" who typically did not leave written records behind. My dissertation, and my first book, looked at one of these groups: the poor whites of the antebellum South. Though my subjects in that study were obviously not available to interview, I scoured a variety of records in an effort to reconstruct the lives of a group of people who had received relatively little attention from historians. Among the materials I used was a rare piece of evidence, an autobiography of a poor white laborer. I later found out that a high school history teacher in North Carolina, Scott Culclasure, had also discovered the document. We eventually published the story and a series of essays about this unique window into the antebellum South in the book, The Confessions of Edward Isham.

After graduate school, I returned to my undergraduate alma mater and took a job as director of USM's oral history center. For the next ten years, I traveled around Mississippi conducting interviews with people from all walks of life about almost every conceivable topic concerning the history of the state in the 20thcentury. One of the most important stories, of course, was the Civil Rights Movement. Utilizing both oral histories and a variety of archival records, I wrote a book about one aspect of the Mississippi movement, the effort by black Mississippians to end the state's system of Jim Crow schools and the prolonged attempt by white Mississippians to hang on to this part of their segregated world.

I now teach at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and I am currently completing a biography of one of 20thcentury Mississippi's most important politicians: William Winter. His political career began in the 1940s, and he was among a small group of white politicians who urged a moderate response to the demands of the black Civil Rights Movement at a time when most Mississippi leaders called for a policy of massive resistance to racial change. Winter somehow managed to survive politically in Mississippi, serving in a number of offices before being elected governor in 1979. In that capacity, he secured passage of a massive Education Reform Act, a law that seriously addressed the many shortcomings of Mississippi's public schools.

I have been a big supporter of the Teaching American History (TAH) grant program for many years. Soon after Congress funded the program, I served as co-project director on a TAH grant received by the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Public Schools system. Working with my friend and former USM colleague, Mary Beth Farrell, we organized a series of colloquia and summer institutes for forty Mississippi history teachers from Hattiesburg and several other school districts. We were able to bring in noted historians, such as Leon Litwack and Mary Beth Norton. We also organized trips to the Vicksburg National Battlefield and a civil rights bus tour around the South, among other excursions. I got to see firsthand how these experiences had a positive impact on the teachers who participated in the grant program.

In recent years, I have participated in several colloquia sponsored by the American Institute for History Education (AIHE). I have made presentations in Iowa, in North Carolina, and for the last three years, in Miami, Florida. I have talked not only about the history of the U.S. South but also about other topics, including the West, imperialism, and the industrial revolution. One of the most rewarding aspects of being a presenter at the AIHE Liberty Fellowships is encountering engaged teachers at every locale, people who, like me, are interested in the lifelong journey of learning about the American past and taking that enthusiasm back to their classrooms.

Aerial view of Fort Sumter.

After a half-century of growing sectionalism in the United States, civil war erupted in Charleston Harbor at Fort Sumter. Lasting from 1861 to 1865, the Civil War remains the bloodiest and most destructive conflict ever witnessed on American soil.

As the country expanded westward, escalating crises over property rights, human rights, states' rights and constitutional rights divided the North and South. Underlying all the economic, social and political rhetoric was the volatile question of slavery, a hotly debated issue during the 1860 presidential election. Nominated by the Republican Party, candidate Abraham Lincoln ran on a platform that opposed the expansion of slavery into Western territories. The platform won little support from Southern slaveholders and politicians. On December 20, 1860, in response to Lincoln's election, South Carolina delegates voted unanimously to secede from the United States.

When South Carolina seceded, there were four federal installations around Charleston Harbor manned by the Union Army: Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, Fort Johnson, and Fort Sumter. The only post garrisoned by more than a nominal number of soldiers was Fort Moultrie, where Major Robert Anderson commanded two companies, 85 men, of the First U.S. Artillery. Fearing that his small garrison would be overwhelmed by local militia, Anderson moved his men to Fort Sumter on December 26. Surrounded by water and three tiers tall, Fort Sumter promised to be a more defensible position.

While Anderson and his men hastened to secure their safety, tensions between North and South intensified. Six more Southern states seceded by February 1861, joining with South Carolina to form the Confederacy. Confederate troops began arriving in Charleston Harbor, focusing on Fort Sumter as the point of contention. Early in March, Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard took command of Confederate troops in Charleston and accelerated efforts to fortify the harbor.

Fort Moultrie

When word spread that President Lincoln would try to supply Anderson's men, the Confederate government ordered Beauregard to demand the fort's evacuation. Anderson refused the demand. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Captain George S. James, commanding Fort Johnson's east mortar battery, ordered the firing of a signal shell. Other Confederate batteries opened fire and, at 7 a.m., Anderson's men started to return fire. Both sides exchanged fire for 34 hours. Finally, on the afternoon of April 13, Union troops surrendered Fort Sumter.

Union soldiers and sailors struggled to regain control of the fort over the next four years. Firmly positioned inside, Confederate defenders held off Union attacks until February 17, 1865, when Charleston was evacuated. Heavily bombarded during these Union attacks, Fort Sumter was a heap of brick rubble by the end of the Civil War. The historic ruins that remain today demonstrate the devastating effects of warfare, as well as the determined tenacity of those who fought to defend it.

Fort Sumter National Monument tells not only the story of the first shots of the Civil War, but also the longer military history of the fort. Open daily year-round, Fort Sumter is accessible only by boat. Ferries operated by a National Park Service concessionaire depart from Liberty Square in Charleston or Patriot's Point in Mount Pleasant. The ferry schedules vary by season, and can be found at www.spiritlinecruises.com.

At the fort, rangers give regularly scheduled history talks. A museum inside Fort Sumter also covers its history. At Liberty Square in Charleston, one of the ferry departure points, exhibits in the Visitor Education Center explain the growing sectional strife in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Across the harbor from Fort Sumter stands Fort Moultrie, also administered by the National Park Service. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fort Moultrie interprets 171 years of coastal defense in the United States.

For information about Fort Sumter National Monument, please call (843) 883-3123 or visit www.nps.gov/fosu.

Race has shaped public education in the Magnolia State, from Reconstruction through the Carter administration. For The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, Dr. Charles C. Bolton mines newspaper accounts, interviews, journals, archival records, legal and financial documents, and other sources to uncover the complex story of one of Mississippi's most significant and vexing issues.

This history closely examines specific events the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 1966 protests and counter-demonstrations in Grenada, and the efforts of particular organizations and carefully considers the broader picture.

Despite a "separate but equal" doctrine established in the late 19thcentury, the state's racially divided school systems quickly developed vast differences in terms of financing, academic resources, teacher salaries, and quality of education. As one of the nation's poorest states, Mississippi could not afford to finance one school system adequately, much less two. For much of the 20thcentury, whites fought hard to preserve the dual school system, in which the maintenance of one-race schools became the most important measure of educational quality. Blacks fought equally hard to end segregated schooling, realizing that their schools would remain underfunded and understaffed as long as they remained segregated.

Charles C. Bolton is professor and head of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi and co-editor of With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education.

To order a copy of The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

From the Teaching column of the March 2010 issue
of Perspectives on History by Dr. Ralph Young,
Associate History Professor at Temple University

In September 2002 I began teaching at Temple University a new history course Dissent in America that I had developed. My thesis was that dissent is central to American history, that the nation, indeed, was founded on dissent. In the 17th century, religious dissenters such as the Puritans and the Quakers established colonies in order to practice what they believed was true religion. In the 18th century, political dissenters protested against what they perceived as the tyrannical policies of the crown and in doing so fomented a revolution that established a new nation. But no sooner was the United States founded than individuals began denouncing unfair taxation, restrictions on voting rights, the continuation of slavery, and the cruel treatment of Native Americans. Throughout the 19th century, workers demanded the right to organize, women demanded the right to vote, and reformers demanded that the government step in and regulate the exploitive practices of industrialists, while in the 20th century, women gained the suffrage and civil rights protesters brought down Jim Crow. And every war in American history has had its protesters, including the Civil War (on both sides) and even the "Good War" (the Second World War).

The course was a small seminar with 20 students and it seemed from the start that the students were keen to learn about the history of dissent and investigate how it influenced the evolution of American society. Perhaps college students are simply natural-born dissenters; after all, many of them are still suffering the tribulations of adolescence and experimenting with establishing their own personal identity. During the first week, as I lectured on the European roots of dissent and the colonial period, I was very pleased how quickly students saw the connections between the past and the present. They pointed out how the arguments of a 17th-century dissenter like Roger Williams were still applicable today in the heated debates over separation of church and state or how the protests against the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the 18th century were echoed by those who protested against the Patriot Act in the 21st century. The discussions often turned out to be quite exciting. One Wednesday, for instance, while discussing the impact of the Transcendentalist movement I called attention to Margaret Fuller's comment that in every man there is the feminine principle and in every woman the masculine. Somehow this struck a chord and we got into an animated discussion about gender issues and many of the students offered first-rate penetrating insights. Best of all, not only did every one of the 20 students contribute to the discussion (even those who were usually reticent), but without realizing it, we also went well beyond the appointed hour for the class. I had not experienced anything quite like it before.

That was the beginning. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from that point on, the students stayed for 30, 60, sometimes even 90 minutes after class, discussing present-day examples of whatever topic we had been examining in class. After a couple of weeks I suggested that if they agreed we could open up the Friday post-class discussion and invite anyone who was interested to come and join us in discussing the historical background of contemporary issues. And I suggested that we call them "teach-ins" (as a child of the 1960s, I couldn't help it). The students loved the idea. One said she'd make and distribute flyers, others volunteered to research a subject and do a presentation on it. And so they took off. From October to December 2002 we had 10 Friday-afternoon teach-ins, led by the students, on such subjects as examining the backgrounds of each member of the president's Cabinet, a comparison of the Iraq War Resolution (which Congress had just then passed) with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the Patriot Act, why American policy toward Iraq was different from the policy toward Korea, an analysis of U.S. Army recruitment ads, the School of the Americas, and such larger issues as the meaning of patriotism. All of these topics were suggested by the students themselves.

Before the end of the semester the students voted unanimously to continue the teach-ins in the new semester even though the Dissent in America course would be over. And so they continued. And they continued to grow. As more and more students as well as other Temple University faculty learned of the teach-ins, it was not uncommon for an instructor to bring his/her entire class to one of the events. Many professors contacted me to offer their skills and expertise to lead a teach-in. Even scholars from other institutions expressed their willingness to come to Temple to lead a teach-in. Nearly every history professor at Temple (as well as many from other departments) either led a teach-in, or connected it in some way to one of the courses they were teaching at the time. A professor from Temple's School of Communications and Theater regularly brought in her teaching assistants with cameras, sound equipment, and lighting in order to stream the teach-ins on the Internet. Because of these webcasts, we received live e-mail questions from people in other locations on campus, in other states, and even, occasionally, in places as far away as Europe and Australia.

Each teach-in usually began with a 3045 minute presentation of the historical background of a contemporary issue and then the presenter led a discussion among the students. What seemed to work best, we discovered, is dialogue rather than a traditional question-and-answer period. Some of the best discussions have developed when a presenter, in response to a question, did not immediately answer it, but first threw it back to see if anyone else wished to respond. Dialogue gets students more actively involved in the learning process than the standard Q & A ritual.

Perhaps one of the most astonishing things about the teach-ins is that they are entirely voluntary. Even though they grew out of my first Dissent in America class, they are not attached to any class and no student is graded for attending or participating. Some professors have, it is true, offered their students extra credit for attending, but this is the exception rather than the rule. In many ways the teach-ins complement the regular history curriculum at Temple. Frequently, students e-mail me a few days after one of my colleagues has made a presentation and ask me what courses that professor teaches because they want to enroll in one of his or her courses the next semester. So in a curious way, some of the teach-ins act like a sample, or a preview, of the history department's course offerings. There are also times when a teach-in deals with a subject that connects to a variety of courses, for example a teach-in on the assassination of El Salvador's Archbishop Romero attracted students taking courses on American foreign policy as well as those in the Latin American studies program and the political science department.

When it is taken into consideration that the teach-ins are noncredit, ungraded, fun events that take place on a Friday afternoon from 3:30 to 5:00, at a time when most college students are eager to "chill" and begin their weekend, it is a remarkable testimony to the intellectual curiosity of those who choose to attend. The sense of satisfaction that I feel in the presence of these students is incalculable. This is, after all, why we teach.

All in all, the teach-in experience has been valuable, not only for me, or for the students, but also for Temple's history program in general. They highlighted how important historical literacy is for all citizens. If we hope to understand the world we live in and respond to the challenges our society faces, it is imperative to cultivate a mind that thinks historically. In doing so, we achieve a deeper sense of ourselves as a nation, a people, and as individuals. It is the path to self-knowledge.

To order a copy of Dissent in America, The Voices That Shaped a Nation, visit the AIHE Bookstore at
www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

Dr. Kevin T. Brady, president of the American Institute for History Education (AIHE), will travel to Nijmegen, the Netherlands, at the end of March to speak at a professional development conference hosted by EUROCLIO, the European Association of History Educators.

The conference, entitled "A Bridge Too Far? Teaching Common European History, Themes, Perspectives and Levels," is a week-long event (March 22-28) where historians and educators from the European Union discuss various topics, including World War II as a shared European narrative. Dr. Brady will speak on World War II from an American perspective while also introducing AIHE to the European representatives in attendance.

AIHE recently became partners with EUROCLIO, an intercultural organization established in 1993 to promote and support the development of history education. Plans are under way to incorporate EUROCLIO professors into AIHE's Talking History program. Dr. Brady is thrilled to be participating in the conference, and he realizes the possibilities of the new venture.

"The partnerships formed with EUROCLIO will promote history education on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean," Dr. Brady said. "Students on both continents will benefit by gaining a better view of the world from multiple perspectives."

The 17th annual conference includes guest presenters, field study in local schools and guided tours of Nijmegen museums and historic districts. Dr. Brady is particularly interested in the trip to the National Liberation Museum, 1944-1945, in Groesbeek where Museum Director Wiel Lenders will discuss how museums address World War II.

"It will be intriguing," Dr. Brady said, "to see European historians' and educators' views of World War II in comparison to the American perspective taught in our classrooms."

The April issue of The AIHE Gazette will feature a report and pictures from the EUROCLIO conference.

My interest in history emerged out of the educational reforms of the 1970s. As a young high school English teacher interested in a "relevant" classroom, I began assigning literature by so-called minorities: women, immigrants, black and Native American writers. I soon realized how little I knew of the literature or history of these groups. This absence in my own learning led me to graduate school in American Studies and eventually to women's history. My interdisciplinary doctorate in Women's Studies from the University of Iowa was among the first in the nation. Scholarly interest in women's history has grown exponentially in the last thirty years. Now, as I present women's history topics at the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) Liberty Fellowships, I am delighted to find a growing enthusiasm for the history of women among K-12 teachers.

I began presenting for AIHE just last year. The Borrego Springs, CA, and Middletown, NJ, teachers initiated me. In the fall of 2009 I had the pleasure of presenting in Wenatchee, WA. All these teachers had a curiosity and passion about history that I found gratifying; they re-ignited my own interest. So far, my talks have focused on the fifty years around 1900, and the social and women's history of those changing times. The topics included: The Progressives and Their Networks, which delves into lesser-known Progressives like Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois; Everyday Life in America, 1890-1920, an examination of changes in food and transportation; Women in World War I; Women during the 1920s; and the 20th Century Women's Suffrage Movement and particularly, Alice Paul. Last year I recorded a video presentation on Alice Paul that appears on the AIHE web site. This month I will offer a "Talking History" presentation about her. The name Alice Paul is probably unfamiliar to many of you. Here's some information to whet your appetite:

Few would have predicted in 1913 that a young New Jersey Quaker with a doctoral degree would galvanize the 60-year-old struggle for woman suffrage and propel it within seven years to a successful conclusion. Yet from the March 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC, which trumped Woodrow Wilson's inauguration to her 1917 imprisonment and forced competency examination where the fate of the suffrage movement arguably hung in the balance, Paul changed the course of woman suffrage. She would go on to author the Equal Rights Amendment and worked for its passage until her death in 1977.

While in Britain doing graduate work, Paul encountered the militant English suffrage movement led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. Captivated by the splendor and passion of the Pankhursts' demonstrations, Paul was transformed into a suffrage activist; she threw herself into promotion, protests and hunger strikes with an abandon that surprised most of her friends and family.

Returning to America, Paul injected a sorely needed burst of energy into the U.S. woman suffrage movement. She stepped onto the scene in 1913, organizing a magnificent parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on the eve of Wilson's inauguration. She is best known today for the months-long picketing campaign that brought her into a symbolic duel with President Wilson. Seven years after she entered the suffrage movement, American women won the right to vote with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Because her strategy and tactics were unusually assertive for the time and often highly controversial, Alice Paul's work for suffrage was either unknown or considered on the radical fringe for half a century. Since 1980, the historical judgment of her efforts has grown more favorable.

My March 23 Talking History presentation will focus on the suffrage work of Alice Paul and her followers. I am engaged in writing her biography, a project I inherited from Amelia Fry, who completed a lengthy oral history with Paul in the early 1970s. My own interest in Alice Paul was piqued around 1980; as a graduate student, I discovered the appalling dearth of information available about this suffrage leader and ERA author. In the mid-1980s, I joined the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation campaign to purchase her estate and donate her papers to the pre-eminent library for women's history: the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. Memorabilia in the estate were donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

Join me in Talking History on March 23 (7:30 p.m. EDT) to learn more about Alice Paul.

The National Women's History Museum (NWHM) affirms the value of knowing women's history, illuminates the role of women in transforming society and encourages all people, women and men, to participate in democratic dialogue about our future. Women's history is America's history. By sharing this information with girls, boys, women and men, there will be greater respect for the roles women have played and the basis for a stronger partnership between women and men moving forward.

Women's history is largely missing from the textbooks used in classrooms today. Only 1 out of 10 historical figures in history textbooks is a woman. Women's stories are also missing from our national story — only 5% of the statues in our national parks are of women leaders.

NWHM was launched in 1996 and has pursued a permanent home on or near the National Mall in Washington, DC. Legislation passed the House of Representatives in October 2009 to allow NWHM to purchase property next to the National Mall and is currently awaiting passage in the Senate. NWHM will purchase the site at 12th Street and Independence Avenue SW, across from the Mall, at fair market value. The bill states that "the shovel must be in the ground" within five years from the time it is signed by the President and if it is not used as a National Women's History Museum over the next 99 years, the site reverts back to federal government ownership.

NWHM's goal is to become a center for activities focused on women's issues by having museum exhibits, a resource center for study as well as a conference center that can be used for events. Members of the NWHM Coalition, composed of 38 women's service and professional organizations, have expressed interest in using office space that may be available.

NWHM targets having a 200,000+ square foot museum comparable to other museums on the Mall. The size of the museum will be determined after the bill passes and a due diligence study is completed.

While looking for a physical location, NWHM launched a web site with a CyberMuseum and other educational resources to distribute information. In an effort to disseminate the amazing stories and achievements of women, NWHM has created eighteen cyberexhibits on a wide range of topics from Chinese American Women, to Women in the Progressive Era, to Female Olympians and NWHM will be launching several more exhibits this year.

NWHM's web site also features 11 lesson plans that are tailored to the cyberexhibits for educators, parents, and students. These lesson plans, as well as the cyberexhibits, are free. In addition, NWHM also offers more than 200 biographies on notable women in categories such as the Abolition Movement, the colonial period and science.

To view the CyberMuseum, visit www.nwhm.org.

In Becoming American Under Fire, Christian G. Samito provides a rich account of how African-American and Irish-American soldiers influenced the modern vision of national citizenship that developed during the Civil War era. By bearing arms for the Union, African Americans and Irish Americans exhibited their loyalty to the United States and their capacity to act as citizens; they strengthened their American identity in the process. Members of both groups also helped to redefine the legal meaning and political practices of American citizenship.

For African-American soldiers, proving manhood in combat was only one aspect to their quest for acceptance as citizens. As Dr. Samito reveals, by participating in courts-martial and protesting against unequal treatment, African Americans gained access to legal and political processes from which they had previously been excluded. The experience of African Americans in the military helped shape a postwar political movement that successfully called for rights and protections regardless of race.

For Irish Americans, soldiering in the Civil War was part of a larger affirmation of republican government, and it forged a bond between their American citizenship and their Irish nationalism. The wartime experiences of Irish Americans helped bring about recognition of their full citizenship through naturalization and also caused the United States to pressure Britain to abandon its centuries-old policy of refusing to recognize the naturalization of British subjects abroad.

As Dr. Samito makes clear, the experiences of African Americans and Irish Americans differed substantially and at times both groups even found themselves violently opposed but they had in common that they aspired to full citizenship and inclusion in the American polity. Both communities were key participants in the fight to expand the definition of citizenship that became enshrined in constitutional amendments and legislation that changed the nation.

To order a copy of Becoming American Under Fire, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

I consider myself a scholar, teacher, and active member of the history community (as well, of course, as a wife, mother, grandmother, and gardener). When work done while still a graduate student is counted, I have been teaching for over forty years. Included in the mix have been workshops for teachers for programs by the Rutgers Institute for High School Teachers, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and several Teaching American History grant programs including the American Institute for History Education (AIHE).

While I like teaching, I really like teaching teachers. This can be a challenge. I have spoken to groups that range from those who have never taken a history course, to those with Ph.D.s; all social studies faculty to a much wider mix; elementary to high school; just beginning to retired. Although busy and worried about other things in their lives, teachers always have questions showing interest, curiosity, and involvement in the topic and issues. In the process, teaching and learning become a joint enterprise and fun.

Originally I went to graduate school to learn more history, but have since realized that one of the pleasures of being a historian is that I never will run out of things to learn. I received my Ph.D. (and met my husband) at the University of Wisconsin. I have taught at Marquette, Rutgers, and for the last seventeen years Seton Hall University (where I also served for six years as chair of the History Department). Most often I teach courses on Early American history, and New Jersey history, the two areas usually the center of the workshops in which I have participated. Those for AIHE have been on the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, often with a New Jersey focus. New Jersey played a central role in the American Revolution, it certainly was in the war longer than anywhere else. I find this period endlessly fascinating, with lots of issues to ponder and discuss.

In addition to teaching I have been actively involved in the history community. While at one point I was elected to the American Historical Commission's Teaching Division, most of my activities have been closer to home. I am a member of the New Jersey Historical Commission, and the State Historical Records Advisory Board, serve on the board of the New Jersey Council for History Education, and chair of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance. This year for the third time New Jersey History Day will hold its northern regional contest at Seton Hall. Being involved in the public aspect of history is enormously important it serves both as a way of spreading knowledge of history, and making sure its study continues. One cannot assume this will happen, making sure it does is a constant struggle, especially in a time and age when there is an effort to more narrowly focus education on reading, and science.

I started this by saying I was a scholar, and while I love teaching and think it is important to push for the study of history, I also like to "hide" in libraries and archives, reading sources and looking for items that will help explain the past. My research has produced a number of articles and chapters in books, and I have also been involved in several large projects. This includes the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, edited with Marc Mappen (2004), Mapping New Jersey edited with Peter Wacker Mike Siegel cartographer (2009), and, about to appear, the second edition of A New Jersey Anthology (2010). The first was a massive project that took nine years, and about 800 authors; the second is a historical atlas that, among many other tasks, sent me on a wild and exciting search for historical maps of the state. The result is a book full of information and some maps that are just plain beautiful to look at. The last is meant to serve as a text for college courses in New Jersey History, and a general audience interested in the state. All three are available from Rutgers University Press (and the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com).

What next? Well life is always changing. I expect to retire from full time teaching, but hope to continue with an occasional course, as well as workshops for teachers. I am already at work, with Richard Veit, on editing a one-volume history of New Jersey. And I hope to go back to a project on New Jersey in the American Revolution, put on hold to do the atlas. Mostly I would like to go hide in libraries and archives, read all the sources I can, and try to tease out of them some explanation of the sides residents of the state took when they were caught in the middle of that war over two hundred years ago.

To order a copy of the Encyclopedia of New Jersey or Mapping New Jersey, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

-Maxine.Lurie@shu.edu

The U.S. Department of Education's 2010 Teaching American History grants are now open.

The American Institute for History Education (AIHE) can assist your school district in the grant-writing process to obtain these awards at NO COST to your district.

AIHE can write your entire TAH grant or provide consultation and technical assistance as a partner on your grant.

Please call 856-241-1990 or visit www.teachingamericanhistorygrant.com.

My Friend Benjamin Franklin
by Laureen M. Brady
This fully illustrated, full-color book will help your students to explore the wit, wisdom and leadership of Benjamin Franklin. Written through the eyes of Dr. Benjamin Rush, a close friend of Franklin's, this fourth-grade reader looks back at the accomplishments made by one of America's Founding Fathers. Students will learn about Franklin the inventor, writer, scientist, politician, and diplomat. Also includes a glossary of key terms used in the book.

My Friend Benjamin Franklin Teacher Edition
by Laureen M. Brady
The companion piece to My Friend Benjamin Franklin, this teacher edition incorporates language arts skills with a focus on history content. It includes the same content and illustrations as the student book, plus everything to assist a teacher in lesson plans, including a Franklin biography. There are teacher notes and reaction questions, sections that prompt students to analyze the full-color illustrations, and worksheets for the students.

Documents for Democracy - Volume I
Compiled by Veronica Burchard
The first installment in this three-volume set focuses on primary sources from the 17th and 18th centuries. The book will help elementary students to develop their literacy skills as they learn about these important documents that helped to shape America. Documents for Democracy is illustrated throughout with 28 four-color, original drawings. This first volume features excerpts from John Winthrop's City Upon a Hill sermon, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble to the Constitution.

Documents for Democracy - Volume I
Teacher Edition
Compiled by Veronica Burchard
This teacher guide, a companion piece to the student version, includes notes, supplementary background information, vocabulary terms and other teaching aides. There are also discussion questions, teaching suggestions and handouts for student activities.

Time Flies I: The Mayflower Compact
by C.C. Kerney
This illustrated, historical novel, first in a series that explores the founding documents upon which the United States is built, weaves an exciting story line as young readers are taken on a trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Plymouth colony. Along with Myles Standish and other historical figures on the Mayflower are the principal characters, a set of time- and space-traveling twins from another galaxy. Their mission is to photograph the Mayflower Compact for their planet. Middle school students are sure to be entertained and educated as the twins' journey is filled with twists and turns.

Time Flies I: The Mayflower Compact
Teacher Edition
by C.C. Kerney
The teacher edition for Time Flies I: The Mayflower Compact incorporates language arts and literacy skills with a focus on history content. It includes the same content and illustrations as the student book, plus there are teacher notes and comments, along with suggested activities for the students.

Along with these new releases and other books, the AIHE Bookstore offers music CDs by American Stories Through Song, the Libby Prison Minstrels, and Chuck Anderson.

Visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Books or AIHE Music.

At a distance of more than 200 years, it is sometimes difficult for present-day Americans to see their nation as anything but an international power. Yet, the beginnings of the United States occurred during one of the most desperate wars in our country's history.

Two lone cannons guard the ridge known as Bemis Heights.

Saratoga National Historical Park in Stillwater, New York, recalls those times when the might of Great Britain was unleashed on thirteen rebellious colonies. These colonies were brazen enough to resist attempts at control by Britain, and then commit treason by open, armed revolt. Most startling of all, they proclaimed themselves independent states in 1776.

Although enshrined in popular memory as the birth of the United States, 1776 proved to be filled with military disasters for the rebelling Americans. An invasion of Canada had been repulsed; a scratch-built American fleet on Lake Champlain destroyed and what is now the City of New York was lost. The rebel armies were plagued by desertion, lack of supplies and roundly beaten in the field. Despite this, the American forces managed just barely to survive. The campaign of 1777 would decide if the United States would survive, or be brought to heel as colonies.

The Saratoga Campaign was a plan created by British General John Burgoyne to invade from Canada with two armies. These armies would follow important waterways (the Mohawk River and Lake Champlain/Lake George/Hudson River) and meet at Albany, New York. Once united, they would operate in conjunction with the main British army based in New York City.

Burgoyne commanded the larger, more important column through Lake Champlain. Despite initial successes, Burgoyne's army discovered the harsh realities of the countryside. Bad roads, intentionally damaged by retreating Americans, slowed Burgoyne's advance to a crawl. Supplies were rapidly consumed and valuable time was lost. About 1,000 troops were lost in battle when they were sent into Vermont for needed supplies. Despite it all Burgoyne continued forward. However, two battles fought here at Saratoga NHP not only defeated his military goal, but resulted in an American victory that turned the tide of America's Revolution and assured independence for the United States.

Saratoga National Historical Park tells the story of those battles that took place on September 19 and October 7 in 1777. Visitors to the park can drive or bike through peaceful woods and fields by a nine-mile self-guided tour road from April through November. The park Visitor Center, open daily year-around from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., is a great place to start with a twenty-minute orientation film, fiber optic map and small museum.

This one-room farmhouse served as a mid-level headquarters building.

Saratoga National Historical Park is an outstanding place to enjoy the outdoors. Hiking trails are available year round; when conditions permit cross country skiing and snowshoeing are as well. Bicycling is a fine way to experience the tour road.

Besides the battlefield, Saratoga National Historical Park operates the Schuyler House, about seven miles north. This house was the country estate of Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler. Tours of the home are offered during the summer months.

Up the hill from the Schuyler House stands the Saratoga Monument. Erected in the 19th century and renovated in 2002, Saratoga Monument offers spectacular views of the surrounding region.

For information about Saratoga National Historical Park please call (518) 664-9821, ext. 224 or visit www.nps.com/sara.

The Civil Rights Movement is now remembered as a long-lost era, which came to an end along with the idealism of the 1960s. In Dark Days, Bright Nights, acclaimed scholar Dr. Peniel E. Joseph puts this pat assessment to the test, showing the 60s particularly the tumultuous period after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to be the catalyst of a movement that culminated in the inauguration of Barack Obama.

In Dark Days, Bright Nights, Dr. Joseph argues that the 1965 Voting Rights Act burst a dam holding back radical democratic impulses. This political explosion initially took the form of the Black Power Movement, conventionally adjudged a failure. Dr. Joseph resurrects the movement to elucidate its unfairly forgotten achievements. Told through the lives of activists, intellectuals, and artists, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur, and Barack Obama, Dark Days, Bright Nights will make coherent a fraught half-century of struggle, reassessing its impact on American democracy and the larger world.

To order a copy of Dark Days, Bright Nights, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

I love American history because I can never master it. The more I learn, the more I realize what remains to be learned. If I tried to read every history book in a good library, by the time I finished, as many new books would have been added as those I'd read. Regardless, we can teach effectively with what we do know, but it pays dividends to continue to build our history knowledge base. Why? Knowledge invigorates our lessons and strengthens our classroom performance. We never know when what we know will give us the answer to a student's thoughtful question (or challenge), or lead to a teaching moment.

We are the last history teachers many of our students will ever have. How, then, do we organize our classes to give our students the skills they need to understand their world? How do we give them the ability to read newspaper articles, editorials, and op-ed pieces with critical eyes, and the noses to smell a politician's baloney or an advertisement's inflated claim?

History is a great place to start. It's about people often very ordinary people the challenges they face, and how they meet them. Studying our past enables us to better understand the present and, perhaps, helps us to face the future with confidence. In President Obama's "surge" speech at West Point, he referred to America's imperialist past (Guantanamo), used the three words that America will fight to defend ("vital national interests"), and evoked a past president in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. An informed citizen will follow these references in analyzing the speech.

I entered teaching as a second career. I incorporated in my classrooms my experience in a marvelous graduate history program, my business and military experience, and college and community service. I challenged my students to think, and they learned that they could. I teach teachers by asking many of the same questions. I teach with methods I used as models that teachers might adapt to their classes.

As a new teacher I attended every professional development seminar I could. I always learned new things I hadn't known, and picked up tips on how to teach these ideas, either from the presenters, or from talking shop with other teachers. I met the people from the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) while a fellow in the Paterson, NJ, Alexander Hamilton Liberty Fellowship. The professional quality of the program impressed me. When I retired, I asked Dr. Kevin T. Brady, president of AIHE, if I could become part of the organization. AIHE attracts outstanding history professionals to conduct its programs. I love to work with them, learn from them, and refer to their key points in my presentations.

My book, Railroads in the Civil War: the Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001) evolved from my business background, specifically my admiration for the management skill with which Northern railroad men organized and executed the 11th and 12th Corps movement. My research gave me an excellent grounding in early American economic development, a subject I love to teach. Outsourcing, downsizing, the relentless quest for improved productivity are nothing new: it started with the spinning jenny! Students who understand the industrial revolution should not fear the economic future.

I love many subjects in American history. Teaching high school history allowed me to teach all of them. Slavery is an understudied area, but very important for our understanding of how this nation evolved. I also like to teach the causes of the American Revolution, the Bill of Rights, the Civil War and other American wars, and civil rights. AIHE has asked me to present these subjects.

My current book project has reached the editing/rewriting phase. A hometown doctor, Raymond Banta, commanded a U.S. Army Portable Surgical Hospital, one of ten sent to World War II China specifically to treat Chinese soldiers (the Chinese army had no medical capability). This Bellevue-trained surgeon found himself halfway around the world treating malnourished Chinese boys possessed of every nutritional disorder, public health disease, and tropical disease imaginable. The Chinese soldier-patients so impressed the Americans with their courage and stoicism that they worked hard to do everything they could for them, and they found a common ground of suffering and healing in spite of cultural differences.

As indicated, history is about ordinary people facing challenges and meeting them. The doctors letters led me to leave the comfortable life of a hometown businessman to the intense, intellectually stimulating world of the graduate student. When I completed my dissertation and got a teaching job, I sold my business. The rest, as they say, is history.

John Clark wrote his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University under the supervision of James M. McPherson. He taught U.S. and world history at the Garrett Morgan Academy for Transportation and Technology, an innovative academy of the Paterson, NJ, Public Schools.

To order a copy of Railroads in the Civil War: the Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat, visit the AIHE Bookstore at www.aihe-bookstore.com and click on the link for AIHE Professors' Books.

- jeclark62@optimum.net

Across the country, in the middle of busy city squares and hidden on quiet streets, there are nearly 200 statues erected in memory of Abraham Lincoln. No other American has ever been so widely commemorated.

A few years ago, anticipating the 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, Jim Percoco, a history teacher with a passion for both Lincoln and public sculpture, set off to see what he might learn about some of these monuments what they meant when they were unveiled, and what they mean to us today. The result is Summers with Lincoln, a captivating book that chronicles four summers on the road looking for Lincoln stories in statues of marble and bronze.

Of all the monuments, Percoco selects seven emblematic ones. He begins and ends the journey in Washington, D.C., starting with Thomas Ball's Emancipation Group, erected east of the Capitol in 1876 with private funds from African Americans and dedicated by Frederick Douglass. Here, Percoco and his multi-ethnic band of teenage historians explore the impact of this Freedman's Monument showing Lincoln and a kneeling freed bondsperson. What does the statue say about race and freedom to todays Americans? What did Ball and his sponsors want it to say?

At each stop, Percoco chronicles the history of each monument, spotlighting its artistic, social, political, and cultural origins. His descriptions of works so often seen as clichs tease fresh meaning from mute stone and cold metal — raising provocative questions not just about who Lincoln might have been, but also about what we've wanted him to be in the monuments we've built.

James A. Percoco is an award-winning history teacher at West Springfield High School, in Springfield, Virginia, and is History Educator-in-Residence at the American University. He is a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission's Advisory Board.

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