From a President Lincoln's Cottage email:

"This FREE event invites educators to explore Lincoln's country home and workplace where he spent one quarter of his presidency and thought through his ideas on the Civil War and emancipation and to discover the array of hands-on, engaging programs the Civil War Washington Museum Consortium has to offer for students in Kindergarten through Twelfth grade!"

This institute will help teachers take advantage of the instructional power of primary sources. Though many teachers are familiar with the importance of primary sources, they are not sure how to use them in the classroom, how to develop inquiry-based lessons, or how to help students use them in projects. In this workshop, Library of Congress specialists will introduce participants to the unique characteristics of primary sources, while helping explore some of the millions of digitized primary sources available on the Library's website. Participants will look at ways to introduce students to primary sources and how to incorporate them in inquiry-based classroom activities.

This institute will examine documents that trace the diverse and complex roles played by women throughout the history of the United States. Participants will meet with women's history specialists at the Library of Congress and examine original historical materials from the Library's collections. Library staff will also guide participants in finding and using materials related to women's history on the Library of Congress website, as well as exploring different ways to integrate those materials into the classroom.

Teachers who have attended the Library of Congress's previous summer institutes, or who have served as American Memory Fellows, now have the opportunity to build on their skills with this advanced institute. Participants will work closely with Library specialists to improve their skills in searching the Library's website, to learn more about using collections at the Library, and to develop inquiry-based primary source teaching materials for use in their own classrooms. In addition to attending training sessions with Library specialists, participants will undertake intensive individual research in the Library's collections to discover primary source documents that support their teaching goals. By the conclusion of the institute, each participant will have created the initial stages of a lesson plan or other primary-source-based learning experience that they can take with them and integrate into their teaching. For previous summer institute participants or American Memory Fellows only.

By preparing and performing historical speeches, interpreting letters, and "reading" artifacts, images, and places, participants in this seminar will develop teaching techniques that strengthen reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. They will work with teachers from across the country to develop web resources to support themselves and others in teaching the Civil War.

Over the course of five mornings, participants will travel to three historic sites in Washington's historic neighborhoods. In the afternoons, they will participate in interpretations of important speeches and letters, learning tools that lead to rigorous visual and experiential learning.

During the school year, participants will receive priority access to field trips at each of the three historic sites; updated online study guides and lesson plans from each of the three Civil War Consortium historic sites; access to additional free professional development and arts and cultural opportunities in and around DC; a network of supportive teachers and scholars to reinforce learning; and the chance to become a paid Lincoln Teacher Fellow Consortium faculty fellow in future summers.

This program is designed for teachers in the DC Metropolitan area, and also welcomes teachers interested in Civil War Washington history from around the country.

The Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars are designed to strengthen participants' commitment to high quality history teaching. Public, parochial, independent school teachers, and National Park Service rangers are eligible. These week-long seminars provide intellectual stimulation and a collaborative context for developing practical resources and strategies to take back to the classroom.

The seminar will explore the separation of powers as it applies to the allocation of responsibility between Congress and the president concerning national security and foreign policy powers. Presidents and legislators have been warring over the question since the earliest days of the republic. The nation's political experience suggests that there are sound arguments to be made on both sides. It also suggests that the issues are unlikely to be finally resolved anytime soon. As participants in this seminar shall see, the debate between President Bush and Congress concerning the war in Iraq is but a modern re-setting of an argument that prompted a spirited exchange on the war powers between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in 1793. Indeed, it may be argued that there is very little to this debate that was not more or less fully anticipated by those two worthies four years after the Constitution was ratified. Through a series of focused historical readings, the seminar will begin by examining the foundations of the Framers' thought and some of the controversies that exhibit the founding principles at work during the early days of the Republic. Participants will go on from there to examine selected executive-congressional debates as they arose during later military conflicts, especially the Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the current conflict in the Mideast. The seminar will meet formally for three 90-minute sessions on four days of each week. Each of these sessions will be devoted to a particular set of readings and each of the participants will have a one-on-one session with Professor Uhlmann to discuss the best ways in which the lessons of the seminar might be converted to his or her particular classroom environment. Because the seminar takes place in Washington and devotes a great deal of time to the Founders' thoughts, it would be remiss if it did not take advantage of the knowledge of Pamela Scott, a noted Washington architectural historian, who will share ways in which the art and architecture of Washington reflects the principles of the American regime. The greater part of one day during each week, she will lead specially arranged tours, including Mount Vernon.

This workshop guides educators through a curriculum planning process—pre-, during, and post-visit—designed to maximize interdisciplinary learning experiences for students using the art museum/gallery field trip as a resource. Participants will discuss and develop effective motivational- and critical-thinking teaching techniques to prepare students for a unique learning experience with original works of art. The program seeks to provide a useful framework for designing interdisciplinary art lessons linked to viewing original works of art in a gallery/museum setting.