During this workshop, participants will consider three major topics. First, they will examine Dickinson the writer. Emily Dickinson is now considered one of the greatest poets in the English language, yet her work was not known outside of a small circle of family and friends until after her death. Because Dickinson herself gave few explicit clues about her attitude toward publication, scholars debate reasons that she did not share her poetry with a wider audience. Ongoing discussion about the authenticity of Dickinson's manuscripts versus the printed poems, which were edited by others, lies at the heart of that debate. Second, they will consider Dickinson, a woman in 19th-century America. Because Dickinson's poems resonate in style and content with the 21st-century reader, her work is often described as "ahead of its time." Critics are often tempted to read her work out of its historical context, to focus on its universal connections to the exclusion of its 19th-century origins. Yet, as recent scholarship asserts, Dickinson's poetry is inseparable from the times in which it was written. Several new essay collections about the poet are devoted to questions of Dickinson's experience of the Civil War, her political opinions, her response to religious movements, and her interest in and connections to her literary contemporaries. Finally, participants will consdier Dickinson, resident of rural New England. Dickinson ended a poem with "I see New Englandly." Dickinson's ancestors settled in western New England in the 1600s. Her world was defined by its character and landscape, and the imagery and diction of her poetry reveal her deep connections to place. This aspect of Dickinson's poetry has long attracted the attention of readers and scholars, yet it has sometimes limited their appreciation for her artistic achievements, marking her as a quaint New England poetess. By modeling different approaches to inquiry-based and object-based learning, the workshop will equip educators with new pedagogical tools and will help them address national standards in English and social studies. They will explore their own interests in Dickinson's life and work through a series of meetings with mentor teachers that will culminate in an outline for a new or revised curriculum unit or a plan for new classroom resources.

This workshop provides a varied program of lectures, demonstrations, analysis of documents, independent research, and group work that introduces teachers to the holdings and organization of the National Archives. Participants will learn how to do research in historical records, create classroom material from records, and present documents in ways that sharpen students' skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities. Each participant selects and prepares to research a specific topic, searches the topic in the records of the National Archives, and develops a teaching unit that can be presented in his or her own classroom.

This institute is five days long, with follow-ups in the fall and spring semesters. It focuses on improving student learning through reading, writing, and thinking in history-social science. In addition to helping teachers with strategies for history reading and writing, this institute will strengthen and assist teachers with language arts instruction. This institute is also instrumental in deepening teachers' content knowledge as UC Berkeley professors in both world and American history collaborate with teachers in lesson development.

From the Goucher College website:

"What are the important reading strategies for the secondary social studies classroom? What are the important organization literacy patterns that can help unlock the social studies? What impact do they have on planning, delivery, and assessment of social studies content? This practical, hands-on course will focus on strategies and approaches that help students with non-fiction reading in the social studies. You will examine eight organizational patterns, including description, cause and effect, compare and contrast and problem solution, which help provide structure for informational text used in social studies. Additionally, we will examine and apply how to use anticipation guides, the role of prediction and related strategies, and how to evaluate and assess outcomes. Finally, all skills will be applied in 'how to do historical investigations.'"

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website:

"The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in cooperation with Arizona State University, will present this forum, designed for secondary, pre-service, and community college educators. The forum will explore the content, methodologies, and rationales for teaching the history of the Holocaust; increases teachers' knowledge of the Holocaust; and examines contemporary issues associated with this history."

From the National Humanities Center website:

"This seminar will approach American history after World War II as a history of social movements. The first session will explore the black freedom movement with an eye to new scholarly interpretations of a 'long civil rights movement' reaching back to the New Deal and beyond the 1970s and including the North and West as well as the South. The second session will examine the women's movement and the conservative movement for insight into the relationships among various movements. It will conclude with a discussion of how viewing the era from 1945 to 1990 as an era of social movements can bring new coherence to the recent past."