Teaching the American Revolution in Monroe, Louisiana

I am in Monroe, Louisiana today co-conducting a “Teaching American History” seminar with elementary and middle-school teachers from Monroe, Louisiana and the surrounding rural school districts. I am working with John McNamara of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School in New Jersey. I spent the morning lecturing on the “Origins of the American Revolution” and John, a master teacher and fine historian in his own right, is currently lecturing on how to teach the Revolution.

The teachers here seem to be starving for content and pedagogical training. As part of the training I put together a few web resources that might be useful in teaching the Revolution.

Here is the list:

•African Americans and the American Revolution
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/title.html
•Lesson Plans from the Massachusetts Historical Society
http://www.masshist.org/revolution/
•John Adams-Abigail Adams Correspondence
http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/letter/
•American Revolution Document Library (Ashland College)
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?category=1
•Gilder-Lehrman Historical Document Collection
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/
•Gilder-Lehrman Podcasts on Founding Era
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historians/podcasts/
•Library of Congress: American Memory (Maps and Charts of Revolutionary Era)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/armhtml/armhome.html
•Library of Congress: American Memory (Documents from Continental Congress)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/continental/
•Library of Congress: Religion and the American Founding
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/
•Colonial Williamsburg Lesson Plans on American Revolution
http://www.history.org/history/teaching/classroom_plans.cfm

Thanks to John Kemp of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities who runs the grant and for the local school district here for hosting us.