Songs are like time capsules, filled with messages from a moment in history. They’re also fun to sing, making them an appealing and effective tool for the classroom. The Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh (www.pitt.edu/~amerimus), in partnership with the Society for American Music (www.american-music.org), is pleased to be offering a five-week summer institute for K-12 teachers. ”Voices Across Time: Teaching American History Through Song” will be held from June 24 to July 26, 2013 at the University of Pittsburgh. This Institute, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will allow 25 secondary school teachers and three graduate students in education, to explore topics in American history through the lens of music. A few of the comments from teachers who have attended previous Voices Across Time institutes:
“I don’t think there is a day that goes by when I don’t think of the five weeks [when] we shared a wonderful experience at the University of Pittsburgh. I know that working with all of you has made me a better teacher.”
“Voices Across Time demonstrated the appeal and power of interdisciplinary learning. The extensive curriculum developed by the Center for American Music is easily implemented at any level, with rich bibliographies to encourage further research.
“It was a wonderful experience.”
Each week during the Institute we will focus on a broad topic in American history, utilizing popular songs as primary source documents. Lectures and discussions led by historians and musicologists will help participants strengthen their knowledge of particular historical topics and develop insights into the dynamic interaction of popular music and society. Carefully selected field trips (including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland) along with historical live performances (by Alan Jabbour and David and Ginger Hildebrand) will offer uniquely engaging evocations of an historical context.
Accepted participants will receive a $3900 stipend to cover travel and housing.
We encourage participation especially from middle- and high-school teachers of social studies or related disciplines, including history, geography, and language arts; other grade levels and disciplines will also be considered, and music teachers are welcome. Additional information, along with application materials, is available athttp://www.library.pitt.edu/
This five-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for School Teachers, directed by Dr. Gerard M. Koot, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, will investigate how a region of northwest Europe, centered on the North Sea, acquired the characteristics that historians have labeled modern. We will study how the economy of the Dutch Republic rose to preeminence in the new European world economy of the seventeenth century, how Britain acquired this supremacy in the eighteenth century, and how it transformed itself to become an industrial nation.
The Choices 2012 Summer Leadership Institute provides teachers with an opportunity to examine the concept of human rights and the challenges of enforcing human rights at an international level. Using the Choices curriculum unit, Competing Visions of Human Rights: Challenges for U.S. Policy, participants will learn from leading scholars in the fields of international law and foreign policy, explore effective instructional strategies for engaging students in the topic, and share best practices with other dedicated and innovative teachers. Time is also allocated to discuss and plan new ways to conduct educational outreach, which is a requirement of the Leadership Institute.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is pleased to announce the Barringer Fellowship for Teachers of American History, which is designed to provide individual teachers an opportunity to research and study at Monticello and the Jefferson Library in Charlottesville, Virginia. The two-week fellowship will allow teachers to work on Jefferson-specific projects such as lesson plans, curricular units, resource packets, or syllabus outlines that will enhance their classroom teaching and contribute to the cannon of teacher resources available online at 
