Weekend Seminar: Citizenship
Montpelier Weekend Seminars are a unique professional development opportunity for social studies teachers and other civic educators. Participants in a Montpelier Weekend Seminar will live and study on the grounds of James Madison's Montpelier, one of the central sites of the American constitutional founding. Participants will receive a collection of primary documents in advance of the seminar, specific to the content of each program, which will be the basis of most discussions. These include writings by James Madison, sections of the Federalist Papers, selections from Antifederalist writers, and other fundamental documents. Each seminar includes an intensive session on ways of reading a document of political or constitutional theory, and will conclude with the lecture "American Citizenship as Constitutional Citizenship: The Exemplar of James Madison."
Teachers will also become acquainted with the curriculum We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution, which is widely used across the nation and is compatible with state and national standards. All participants will receive a complete classroom set of the We the People textbooks, appropriate to the grade level they teach. A classroom set includes 30 student texts and one teacher's guide.
This particular seminar will explore citizenship and questions that include the following: What does it mean to be a citizen of a constitutionally founded nation? Among its other innovations, American constitutionalism has redefined the concept of citizenship and political community—how does the Constitution help us define what it means to be an American? How has our understanding of what is a citizen of the American constitutional order evolved (or devolved)?