September 11: Teaching Contemporary History

September 11: Teaching Contemporary History

On Wednesday, August 3 and Thursday, August 4, 2011, the National Museum of American History, National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Pentagon Memorial Fund, and the Flight 93 National Memorial will offer a free online conference, September 11: Teaching Contemporary History, for K-12 teachers. Designed to provide educators with resources and strategies for discussing the September 11 attacks at the 10th anniversary, the conference will include roundtable discussions with content experts and six workshop sessions. These sessions and the conference website highlight resources available at each organization, provide background information on September 11, and encourage conversations on how to document, preserve, and interpret recent history and current events.

To register for this free online conference, please visit:http://smithsonianconference.org/september11/register/

Program Outline:
August 3
10:00 am Roundtable: The Past, Present, and Future of September 11, 75 minutes
Participants:
Sharon Leon, Director of Public Projects at the George Mason Center for History and New Media
James Gardner, Senior Scholar in the Office of the Director, National Museum of American History
James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me
Joan Brodsky Schur, educator
11:30 am Story of the Memorial (National September 11 Memorial & Museum), 50 minutes
1:00 pm Introduction to Resources from the Pentagon Memorial, 50 minutes
2:15 pm Writing the First Draft of History, 50 minutes
August 4
10:00 am Roundtable: Conducting Difficult Conversations with Young People, 75 minutes
11:30 am Small Children, Tough Topics: A Literature-Based Strategy, 30 minutes
1:00 pm Memorial as Storyteller, 50 minutes
2:15 pm The Curator’s Challenge, 50 minutes

To read conference session descriptions, please visit http://smithsonianconference.org/september11/

Please contact thinkfinity@si.edu with questions.

This conference is generously funded by the Verizon Foundation, in collaboration with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Pentagon Memorial Fund, and the National Park Service’s Flight 93 National Memorial. The program is produced by Learning Times.