PROPOSED AGENDA

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• MyImpactChallenge & Civics Summer Showcase

• Possible Legislative Initiatives: SEALS of Civic Readiness; Local Approaches to Media Literacy Requirement

• Academic Service Learning Directory 2.0: Tour and Feedback

• Member & Other Announcements

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MyImpact Challenge is a civic engagement contest hosted by the Bill of Rights Institute. The goal is simple: foster a robust understanding of citizenship and get students active in their communities!

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Student service projects can win up to $10,000, with $40,000 in total prizes available to students and teachers. Every project that meets the entry guidelines will be rewarded with a digital Civic Achievement badge. 

MyImpact Challenge, the Bill of Rights Institute’s (BRI) national civic engagement contest, is coming to Utah! The BRI is awarding up to $40,000 in prizes for students and teachers—including a $10,000 grand prize for the top student project!

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Even better, through an exciting collaboration with the Utah Civic Learning Collaborative (UCLC), Utah Valley University’s Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative, and Youthlinc, Utah will get its own MyImpact Challenge contest (including $5,000 in additional prizes) and civics fair in partnership with the Bill of Rights Institute! Please register at left for the Utah Summer Showcase and Civics Fair. This event is open to Utah students, educators, nonprofit partners, parents, and educational leaders.

Dr.  Joseph Fornieri, professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, will lead a dynamic week-long seminar dedicated to the life, leadership, and legacy of the abolitionist and civil rights crusader Frederick Douglass. We will trace Douglass’s evolving thought from antebellum Garrisonian abolitionist to political abolitionist during the Civil war to Civil Rights leader during and after Reconstruction.

Conversations will focus on a close reading of the substance and style of the primary sources of Douglass’s greatest speeches and writings including Narrative of the Life of a Slave, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? 

Pre-modern people’s experiences were just as tied to their myriad identities as ours are.  One cannot examine medieval people merely as a man or a woman, a noble or a peasant, Christian or Jewish.  Each of us occupies multiple identities at once, and the intersection of these identities shapes our opportunities, power/agency or lack thereof, and beliefs.

This workshop will examine categories of identity, including philosophical discussions about Nature, as well as Roman, Germanic, and customary law codes, religious ideas about race and ethnicity, socially constructed ideas about gender roles, and economic dynamics surrounding class and status.  We will also investigate the effects the Crusades and the Black Death had on these categories, and how Renaissance Humanism changed (or did not change) these values. Readings will include Aristotle, legal texts, Arthurian legends, Chaucer, and religious texts.

National Council for the Social Studies, in partnership with the Kaur Foundation, proudly presents its annual Virtual Summer Conference! 

Our first Virtual Summer Conference features speakers and session strands focusing on the four principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). Join us for two days of thought leadership, content background, and instructional support to fully engage JEDI throughout social studies learning and teaching.

Designed for teachers within their five years of teaching, this program will provide six days of interactive and engaging sessions of classroom content topics and applications. Selected teachers will explore various topics of U.S. History such as Valley Forge, the Whiskey Rebellion, American Innovation, Captains of Industry/Robber Barons, Watergate, 9/11, and many more as they connect to the Constitution. Throughout the institute, participants will work in cohorts including 4 teachers and a veteran mentor teacher that has been exceptional in the classroom as well as making contributions to the profession outside of the classroom.

This workshop will offer participants resources to help develop new pedagogical skills for teaching challenging topics in the classroom. Professors from the Departments of English and History and the Marriott Library will offer historical context and new strategies for addressing difficult, sometimes contentious, texts and topics in the K-12 classroom, including LGBTQ+ representation and religious, ethnic, and racial diversity.

PLEASE NOTE: Teachers who took this course in summer 2022 are ineligible to register.

​This workshop explores the historical content necessary for understanding the U.S. Constitution in our current moment of tumult and uncertainty. Participants will emerge from the workshop with a deeper understanding of the historic development of modern constitutional thought. The following five topics, which will be covered from a historical and contemporary vantage point, will be addressed in the workshop: 1) sedition and seditious conspiracy; 2) the legal philosophy of “originalism”; 3) federal courts and the politics of “court packing”; 4) the nature and importance of academic freedom and free speech; and 5) the push for a new constitutional convention. Through a mix of lectures, hands-on activities, and time devoted to developing lesson and unit plans, participants will be better prepared to teach U.S. constitutional history in these politically charged times.