Historic Children’s Voices K-12 Teacher Institute

American Antiquarian Society 185 Salisbury Street Worcester, MA 01609 United States In August 2027, the American Antiquarian Society will host its third Historic Children's Voices K-12 Teacher Institute. Designed for educators in social studies and language arts, the five-day institute includes hands-on workshops using AAS’s collection of early American books for children, as well as its fascinating collection of children’s own writings from the colonial period through the 19th century. Looking at books children read, coupled with their own written words, offers an unusually intimate and immediate connection to literacy goals and practices of the past. Participants will explore diaries and letters in which children record the details of their daily lives, as well as stories and poems that display their imaginative engagement with the world around them. The large amateur newspaper collection—most printed on home parlor presses—reveals young people’s sophisticated understanding of media norms and social and political concerns of their times. The institute corresponds with AAS’s Historic Children’s Voices website, which makes these unique child-authored materials easily accessible in classrooms everywhere. These little-studied, now easily available materials delight and inspire teachers and the young people in their classrooms, and support their thinking about the value of children’s perspectives and the empowering of children’s voices in the past and today. The workshop format fosters engagement with primary sources in original and digitized form. The week will be structured to consider the value of these materials for meeting current history and language arts curricular objectives and pedagogical best practices, with particular attention given to diversity, equity, and inclusion; social and emotional learning; and experiential learning. Institute participants will create curricular materials for use in their own classrooms and to share on the Historic Children’s Voices website for use by teachers nationwide. The lead instructor is Karen Sánchez-Eppler, L. Stanton Williams '41 Professor of American Studies and English, Amherst College. The teacher facilitator is Allison Bass-Ricco, Teacher and Dean of Curriculum and Faculty Development, Cheshire Academy, CT. Participating teachers will receive a stipend of $500 and a travel allowance of $1,000. Lodging and some meals will be provided. A complete application consists of the following items: The Online Application Form Once you have filled out the AAS online application form, you will be directed to provide attachments for your résumé or brief biography and application essay. A Résumé or Brief Biography Please include a résumé (up to 2 pages) or brief biography detailing your educational qualifications and professional experience. The application essay should be no more than two double-spaced pages. It should address your reasons for applying; your interest in the subject to be studied; the qualifications and experiences that equip you to do the work of the institute and to make a contribution to a learning community; what you want to accomplish by participating; and the relation of the project to your professional responsibilities. Online applications are due March 15, 2027. Notifications will go out by April 9, 2027. Twenty-four applicants will be selected. Accepted applications will have until April 23, 2027, to accept or decline the offer. For further information, please contact Nan Wolverton, Vice President for Academic & Public Programs, at nwolverton [at] mwa.org (nwolverton[at]mwa[dot]org) or (508) 471-2119. Karen Sánchez-Eppler is L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College, and was the 2020 Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society. Sánchez-Eppler is the author of Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body (1993) and Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (2005). She is co-editor with Cristanne Miller of The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson (2022). She is one of the founding coeditors of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth and past president of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Sánchez-Eppler was elected to AAS membership in October 2005. Allison Bass-Riccio is a teacher and Dean of Curriculum and Faculty Development at Cheshire Academy, Cheshire, Connecticut.