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Teachers Summer Institute

The Richards Center is a nationally recognized leader for innovative and scholarly teacher education.  The Center sponsors summer teachers’ institutes on themes relating to the freedom struggle, spanning from slavery to Civil Rights.

Past Teachers' Institutes

2009 Teachers Institute

2009- The Richards Center, in partnership with the Rosa Parks Civil Rights Museum, sponsored its ninth annual teachers institute “The Long March To Montgomery: Slavery and Freedom in the Alabama Black Belt” in Montgomery, Alabama. Teachers from across the country joined scholars, directors, artists, and activists to gain a greater appreciation of the impact the events and people of Montgomery, Alabama, had on the freedom struggle in the nation and around the world. Site visits included touring the First Davis White House, Old Alabama Town, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and Tuskegee Institute. One of the highlights of the week was an appearance by Paul Stephenson who, having been inspired by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, led the bus boycott in 1963 in Bristol, England. Prior to joining the group in Montgomery, the Queen of England bestowed upon him the Order of the British Empire, one of the most prized distinctions awarded in England by the Queen.  The teachers also presented site updates and activity debriefing.

 

 

 

2008 Teachers Institute

2008- The Richards Center, William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, and Tulane University sponsored the eighth annual teachers institute at Tulane University. The institute featured historian Sylviane Diouf speaking on the Clotilda, the last slave ship to arrive in the United States in 1861, poetry readings by Kofi Anyidoho and Nikky Finney, and an appearance by Ruby Bridges, the first African American to desegregate New Orleans schools. The institute included a tour of Evergreen Plantation, the most intact plantation complex in the South, an excursion through the French Quarter, and an all day event in the 9th Ward featuring the Mardi Gras Indians.

 

 

 

2007 Teachers Institute

2007- The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, McMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, hosted the seventh annual teachers institute. Highlights included a discussion with Dr. Robert P. Forbes, Greg Belanger, Hon. Keith L.T. Wright, and Dr. Karen Jackson Weaver, on the historical circumstances and commemorative activity on both sides of the Atlantic related to the 1807 British and 1808 US Acts abolishing the slave trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers on tour at Mount Vernon during the 2006 Summer Teacher's Institute.

2006- Penn State and the Richards Center hosted the sixth annual teachers institute, "The Untold Story of Slavery in Our Nation's Capital.” The institute featured Prof. Sylvia Frey from Tulane University discussing African American religious experience in early America and Prof. William Blair addressing the legacy of George Washington and Robert Lee as slave owners. The institute included a tour of Arlington Cemetery and Mount Vernon.

 

 

 

2004- The Richards Center was the proud sponsor of a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks in American History Workshop for Schoolteachers.  The program, "Slavery and Freedom in Charleston and the Low Country" brought eighty-six teachers from two dozen states to historic Charleston for two one-week workshops. Richards Center faculty associates and visiting scholars from the College of Charleston and the University of Virginia worked with public historians to help the teachers translate tours of historical sites into classroom activities. Visits to Drayton Hall Plantation, the Sea Islands, and Fort Sumter made for a memorable experience that will influence history education in secondary schools around the country for years to come.

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