Federal money keeps flowing into Greensboro. A couple of days after the City of Greensboro scores a $1 million EPA grant to restore contaminated commerical areas (score another one for Bush’s environmental record), Guilford County Schools scores a million to help teachers uh, teach history:
The training will focus on colonial America, the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, said curriculum facilitator Jonathan McRae, who wrote the school district’s grant application with Morris Johnson and Emily Scott.
Guilford was one of two North Carolina school districts awarded a grant, and one of 121 grant winners nationwide, McRae said.
….Each year, 30 teachers — 10 apiece from fifth, eighth and 10th grades — will attend sessions during the school year led by local college professors and museum curators. In the summer, the teachers will take a 10-day trip for workshops hosted by Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City.
McRae said every Guilford high and middle school will have at least one teacher in the grant program. Almost half of the county’s more than 60 elementary schools will also have a teacher participate.
“We have a great mix of new teachers and veteran teachers,” McRae said. “The eventual outcome is teachers will build lesson plans and resources to share with other teachers … so that every school can benefit from the program.”
Grant money pays for the workshops, travel and materials the teachers can take back to their schools.
Nice work if you can get it; then again, maybe I’m just jealous. Another way to help teachers get kids interested in colonial history is to show them this episode of The Andy Griffith Show.
