July 1 marks the official start of our National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) new year, and brings with it new faces, new voices, and new initiatives! We welcome Anton Schulzki (CO) as our new 2021-2022 NCSS President, and we also welcome our newest NCSS Board of Directors members: Meridith Breen (VA), Kimberly Huffman (OH), Joe Schmidt (ME), and Carla Powell (LA). I’m very excited to work with our very talented and dedicated Board this year!

Summer also gives us a period of relaxation, rejuvenation … and professional learning at NCSS! Treat yourself to uninterrupted learning at our upcoming Summer Leadership Institute: Think Global, Act Local!, in your favorite sunny or shaded spot with a tall glass of lemonade. You certainly deserve it after this long pandemic year. 

If you’re an NCSS leader, you have already received an invitation in your inbox to attend the special two-day event focusing on community-based efforts to help grow and engage your council. And if you’re an NCSS member or non-member, there’s still time to sign-up for this free event to hear how you can participate in your community to help move our profession forward in the fall and connect with your local NCSS leaders! Prepare to hear from President Schulzki and yours truly on initiatives to support leadership groups and engagement for the year. Plus, Shawn Healy, iCivics’ Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy, will share with us best practices to conduct grassroots advocacy in your state and community.  

If you’re looking to dig into inquiry this summer, we are proud to co-host the 7th Annual Inquiry Design Model Institute once again with C3 Teachers. This popular program will help you craft compelling questions and structure really solid curriculum inquiries in your social studies classroom. 

And if you’re an elementary social studies teacher, it’s your turn in the sun! We are focusing on topics such as ways to help your students who may be just learning to read or struggling to engage with their classmates in our two-day Elementary Inquiry Summer Institute co-hosted by NCSS and InquireED. We will also address ways to generate questions and planning inquiries, create student-facilitating investigations, and design and implement informed action projects.

I could go on about our summer professional learning, but I guess you want to rest a bit. That’s fair. Instead, I’ll give a big thanks to all of you who attended the NCSS Summer Pop UP! Event and returned your surveys. Your participation and feedback already have us thinking about future events. Who knows what may Pop UP! again? …

Of course, the summer wouldn’t be complete without the official announcement of our NCSS Annual Conference. This year as we gather in Minneapolis, we look forward to our first face-to-face meeting in two years! We can’t wait to see you and hope that you will join us in person in the city that is arguably and quickly becoming the epicenter of the current social justice movement. You will hear first-hand accounts of what it was like to cover the George Floyd story from two leading Minneapolis reporters. Plus, we are weeks away from starting to announce a spectacular line-up of speakers that will be updated here regularly.

Enjoy your summer of learning!