[WSCSS] New Workshop for Social Studies & History Teachers!

[Gary and Robyn Cressman]

THE INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING AT BARD COLLEGE

 
Announces
 
 
New Workshop for Social Studies & History Teachers!
 
 
 
Thinking Historically through Writing
 
July 8-13, 2007
 
 
            Considering the vast differences between those who attended high
school in 
            1917 and the near-universal enrollments of today, the stability
of students¹ 
            ignorance is amazing. The whole world has turned on its head,
but one thing 
            has stayed the same: Kids don¹t know history.
                                    ­Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and
Other Unnatural Acts, 2001
 
* * *
 
What does it mean to ³know history²? In the classroom, history teachers work
with a mix of methods and techniques for giving students basic historical
information‹the sequence of historical periods, dates of important events,
key figures in social, political, and cultural movements. But it is often
more difficult to impart an understanding of how the past is constructed
from these materials. Yet, just as the excitement of studying science comes
from conducting experiments, from learning how scientists make discoveries
and verify data, so too, the pleasure of studying history comes from
learning how historians think about the past. This means learning how to
read and interrogate documentary, archival, and physical evidence of the
past and to write historical narrative.
 
Thinking Historically through Writing explores a variety of approaches for
showing students how to ³do history.²  Using ³case studies² drawn from
European as well as U.S. history, the workshop focuses on the elements of
writing historical narrative: selecting materials, weighing evidence, making
use of primary sources‹both written and visual‹developing a chronology.
 
Working with a variety of documentary as well as literary texts, workshop
participants explore ³writing to read² strategies for analyzing historical
sources, for noticing how historians interpret evidence and construct
stories based on those interpretations. Writing allows the student to
discover a world very different from the present and to appreciate
different‹and often conflicting‹interpretations of key moments in the past.
Participants also pay attention to writing that appears in textbooks, to
developing good questions, and to creating writing assignments for inside
and outside the classroom.

For more information, please contact Teresa Vilardi, Director, Institute for
Writing & Thinking, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 at (845)
758-7432 or vilardi at bard.edu

jsmith at bard.edu. You can also register online at writingandthinking.org.