DVUSD
– What did you do on your summer vacation?
Fifteen
teachers from the Deer Valley Unified School District
were sent to 14 different seminars around the country
and one in the United Kingdom as part of the Teaching
American History program.
Debbie
Peters, curriculum instruction specialist at DVUSD and
director of the program, paid for through a federal grant,
was sent to Brown University to study the era of George
Washington.
As
part of the project, teachers were assigned to create
two lessons using the primary sources to which they were
given access. Peters went to the John Carter Brown Library,
where she was able to handle several artifacts that belonged
to President Washington.
“It
was thrilling to have that kind of experience,” Peters
said. “We got to handle the real things, not copies.”
She
described perusing Washington’s personal journal, which
covered the last years of his life up to a few days before
his death on Dec. 14, 1799.
“It
showed everyday things, such as what he had done that
day or what he had sold.”
Peters
noted the Revolutionary War era is becoming a more popular
subject, and she is using some of the information learned
at the seminar to do an analysis of how women’s rights
changed during the colonial period.
“Initially,
women were going to be able to vote, but that changed,”
she said.
All
of the participating teachers studied under respected
historians at the top universities, such as Stanford,
University of Virginia, New York University, Cambridge,
Yale, Columbia and The National Constitution Center.
