K-8 Teachers Who Teach Colonial America: Join Me at Princeton This Summer

Nassau Hall, Princeton University, 1760

You may recall a few weeks ago I announced that I will be teaching a Gilder-Lehrman Teacher’s Seminar this summer on “The Thirteen Colonies.”  The seminar will run from July 27 to August 2, 2013 on the campus of Princeton of University.  My seminar is open to K-8 teachers only.  

We are currently in the planning stages, but I am getting excited about leading this seminar.  We are working on a full-day field trip to Philadelphia, an early evening walking tour of historic Princeton and Princeton University, and, of course morning lectures and discussions, and afternoon work with one of Gilder-Lehrman’s “master” secondary teachers who will be joining us for the week. All these details will be finalized soon.  I hope you will apply and consider joining us for what promises to be a very educational and historical week in the heart of the colonial mid-Atlantic.

Here is a description of the seminar:

This seminar will examine the founding, settlement, and development of the thirteen British colonies from 1607 to 1763. Rather than thinking about colonial America as a necessary forerunner to the American Revolution or the birth of the United States, we will make an effort to understand British colonial life on its own terms. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and other activities will we examine how the colonies developed from remote seventeenth-century English outposts  to well-connected eighteenth-century provinces of the British Empire. In the process we will critique the so-called “Whig” interpretation of the colonies and think together about how this particular period in the American past provides a laboratory for teaching historical-thinking skills in the K–8 classroom.

Learn more about the seminar here.  Applications are now open.  I hope to see some of you at Princeton University this summer! 

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