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Local history teachers ‘learning to be historians’

The “Linking American History: Past to Present” is spending its second summer session teaching teachers how to be historians.

According to Linking Director Robynn L. Holland of the Henry County School System, the program’s second year will be focusing on learning how to use primary resources - like those at the Georgia Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) Southeast Regional Archives, and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library — to teach American History. The program, funded entirely by a $984,115 Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education, generally focuses on increasing teacher's knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the period from 1945 to present.

“We are learning how to be the historians, learning history first hand,” said Holland. “We then want to teach our students how to be historians as well.”

“The task this summer is to enable the teacher/students to define topics and find sources to write real history,” said Dr. Eugene Hatfield, the program’s lead historian and chair of the Social Sciences Department at Clayton State University. “It is a remarkable opportunity for these teachers to work with archivists and historians to learn the tools of writing history.”

In October 2003, Clayton State, three metro Atlanta School Systems (Henry, Fayette and Cobb), the Georgia Archives, NARA, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Georgia Council for the Humanities and the Georgia Department of education teamed up to create the three-year Linking American History: Past to Present. The Henry County Board of Education, the official grant recipient and lead system, joins with the Fayette and Cobb County schools in supplying the student/teachers for the program. Clayton State, the two archives, the Carter Library, the Council for Humanities and the Georgia Department of Education act as partners to the three school systems in the program.

Linking’s teacher/students - who are divided into three groups; high school, middle school, and elementary school — have spent the past couple of weeks rotating between sessions at NARA, the Georgia Archives and the Carter Library. The final session will take place at the NARA Archives Thursday, June 23, and will include presentations on “Teaching with Documents” from NARA experts from other parts of the country - Lisa Gezelter from NARA’s Pacific Region, and Dorothy Dougherty from NARA’s Northeast Region.

The first meeting of the second year of Linking took place in the Harry S. Downs Center for Continuing Education at Clayton State June 13 and featured William B. Obrochta, director of Education for the Virginia Historical Society, speaking on “Teaching with Primary Source Documents.”

“My job is to help teachers how to understand how to use these documents and to help them engage their students,” he said. “We want them to think like historians and to analyze materials.

“I’m trying to give both teachers and students that sense of discovery.”

For further information, contact Holland at Robynn.Holland@henry.k12.ga.us or Hatfield at genehatfield@clayton.edu.

Clayton State University, located in Morrow, is a state university of the University System of Georgia and serves the metro Atlanta region.