The Library of Congress is now accepting applications for its 2009 Spring Break and Summer Teacher Institutes in Washington, D.C. The institutes will provide educators with the opportunity to work with the staff and facilities of the Library to discover primary sources on specific topics, and to explore ways to effectively integrate those sources into classroom teaching.
Participants in the Library’s Teacher Institutes will:

• Discover Library of Congress primary source materials
•  Develop strategies for using primary source digital content in teaching
• Engage in inquiry learning in hands-on workshops
• Learn from Library of Congress subject matter experts and education specialists
•  Network with other teachers from across the country to share ideas and experiences
• Leave with a plan for creating a primary source-based lesson or activity to be used with their students.

This year the Library will host two institutes in Spring 2009. Both will focus on Abraham Lincoln.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.

The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. The Office of the Librarian is tasked to set policy and to direct and support programs and activities to accomplish the Library's mission.

teacherinstitute@loc.gov

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 weeklong seminars provide intellectual stimulation and a collaborative context for developing practical resources and strategies to take back to the classroom.

Seminars offer:

• Room and board
• Books and teaching resources
• Stipends of $400 (international seminar stipend of $500)

Seminars are limited to 30 participants by competitive application. Preference is given to new applicants.

Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public. It helps create history-centered schools, organizes seminars and programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, sponsors lectures by eminent historians, and administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state through its partnership with Preserve America. The Institute also awards the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes, and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection.

E-mail seminars@gilderlehrman.org or call 646-366-9666.

Want to learn more about teaching primary documents in U.S. history classes?

Want to explore thematic connections between American literature and U.S. history?

Want to bring art into your history or literature lessons?

Register for live, online resource workshops from the National Humanities Center.

The Center's online resource workshops give high school teachers of U.S. history and American literature a deeper understanding of their subject matter. They introduce teachers to fresh texts and critical perspectives and help teachers integrate them into their lessons. Led by distinguished scholars and running sixty to ninety minutes, they are conducted through lecture and discussion using conferencing software.

A resource workshop identifies central themes within a topic and explores ways to teach them through the close analysis of primary texts, including works of art, and the use of discussion questions. Texts are drawn from anthologies in the Center's Toolbox Library. To participate, all you need is a computer with an internet connection, a speaker, and a microphone.

Enrollment in each workshop is limited to eighteen participants.

Ten to thirty-five pages of reading
$35 registration fee

The National Humanities Center is the only major independent American institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities. Privately incorporated and governed by a distinguished board of trustees from academic, professional, and public life, the Center was planned under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and began operation in 1978. It provides a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts, drawing attention to the enduring value of ancient and modern history, language and literature, ethical and moral reflection, artistic and cultural traditions, and critical thought in every area of humanistic investigation. By encouraging excellence in scholarship, the Center seeks to insure the continuing strength of the liberal arts and to affirm the importance of the humanities in American life.

Richard R. Schramm, Vice President for Education Programs, rschramm@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

• How did World War I affect politics in the United States?
• Why did the prestige and power of American business dramatically increase in the 1920s?
• What explains the remarkable cultural ferment of this period?
• What place did religious and spiritual values assume in the United States during the Twenties?

"Becoming Modern: America, 1918-1929" will explore these and other questions through history, literature, and art. Under the direction of leading scholars, participants will examine such issues as immigration, prohibition, radicalism, changing moral standards, and evolution to discover how the forces of modernity and traditionalism made the Twenties both liberating and repressive.
Dates and Location: "Becoming Modern: America, 1918–1929" will be held from June 21 to July 3, 2009, at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Eligibility: The institute is open to high school teachers of history, literature, and art.
Format: In seminar sessions, participants and faculty will discuss the texts of the institute syllabus. In addition, participants will work with the faculty and Center staff to select texts and develop discussion questions for an online toolbox based on the content of the institute. The toolbox collaboration will not involve work on a computer. To see toolboxes that emerged from previous summer institutes, please visit the Center's Toolbox Library.
Stipends and Travel: Participants will receive a stipend of $1,000. The National Humanities Center will cover the cost of travel and provide lodging.
Texts: Participants will receive the seminar texts, some of which will be online, at least six weeks before the program.
Meals: The Center will provide snacks and lunch every day.

The National Humanities Center is the only major independent American institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities. Privately incorporated and governed by a distinguished board of trustees from academic, professional, and public life, the Center was planned under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and began operation in 1978. It provides a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts, drawing attention to the enduring value of ancient and modern history, language and literature, ethical and moral reflection, artistic and cultural traditions, and critical thought in every area of humanistic investigation. By encouraging excellence in scholarship, the Center seeks to insure the continuing strength of the liberal arts and to affirm the importance of the humanities in American life.

Richard R. Schramm, Vice President for Education Programs, rschramm@nationalhumanitiescenter.org; Michelle Walton-Shaw, Coordinator of Education Programs, mshaw@nationalhumanitiescenter.org; toll free number: 1-877-271-7444