Extra: The letter was made famous by Ken Burns’ popular documentary The Civil War. Listen to Ken Burns give background on Ballou and read the letter on YouTube after the jump.

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Learn more at the NCSS website, including how to sign up, or follow along after the jump for a longer description of the worshop:

Socratic seminars are teacher-led classroom discussions that promote higher-level thinking, more careful reading of texts, and increased skills of classroom and civil discussion. They are appropriate for any social studies disciplines and are successful with students from elementary through high school. The workshop will combine the learning of skills necessary to use seminars in your classroom with a focus on significant documents from US History. Teachers of any social studies discipline, however, are welcomed and encouraged to enroll in the workshop.

The Socratic seminar training workshops are, by their very nature, highly participatory and interactive. Each day begins with a seminar in which all participate. The texts for these “adult” seminars are drawn from founding and other important documents in US history and government. By participating in actual seminars, participants are able to experience what their students might experience and learn the process “by doing.” The other hallmark of seminar trainings is the repetition of “micro-seminars” in the afternoons. These are seminars on smaller texts that are lead by the participants in small groups. Conducted in a “jigsaw” manner, each participant leads a seminar after having time to prepare to do so with fellow participants. The “hands and minds on” aspect of this is extremely powerful as participants do the actual work of preparing for and leading seminars. The remaining elements of a seminar training revolve around making participant and leading behaviors explicit, identifying the elements of good seminar texts, exploring issues related to assessment of seminars, and determining the best ways to implement seminars in the participants’ home setting.

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Looking for some stories of inspiring teachers? We suggest Mary Antin’s remembrance of her school days after arriving in America from Russia or Langston Hughes’ story of an art teacher who helps her talented pupil fight racial discrimination. What are some of your favorite stories about teachers?

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• Instructional practice guides that provide concrete examples of what the Standards look like in daily planning and practice; these tools can be used for self-reflection, peer-to-peer feedback, or coaching
• Ten new Close Reading Sample Lessons, including many non-fiction texts
• Two new and ready-to-use Professional Development Modules: Using the ELA/Literacy Publishers’ Criteria to Better Understand the Standards and Introducing the Common Core to Parents and Community Members
• Essential actions and tools for CCSS implementation at the school or district level; for school leaders, from department heads and coaches to principals and district administrators

Even better, everything at Achieve the Core is free and open source. We think the tools for the ELA/Literacy standards would work great with texts from WSPWH! Check it out. 

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Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a post-Civil War holiday. It was first instituted by the Grand Army of the Republic, on May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, hamlet, and churchyard in the land.” If the Fourth of July renews the memory of the birth of the nation, Decoration Day renews the memory of those who gave their lives that that nation might live. Or again, in Lincoln’s words, “That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom.”

After World War I, Memorial Day was expanded to commemorate the lives of all those who have died in service to our country. In the past decade, hundreds have been added to the roster of those whose lives and service we are summoned today to remember.

But how should we the living best honor these lives and those memories? In what manner and spirit should we remember? Why Memorial Day today? Our ebook, “The Meaning of Memorial Day,” explores these questions with selections from American authors and statesmen, including Herman Melville, Ernie Pyle, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James. 

The post Teaching Memorial Day appeared first on What So Proudly We Hail.

Whittier (1807–92) was an American poet and ardent abolitionist. Raised in a devout Quaker family in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Whittier published his first poem in 1826 in William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, the Newburyport Free Press, and quickly established himself in abolitionist circles. Though he published his first collection of short stories in 1831, it was not until his first volume of poetry, Snow-Bound, appeared in 1866 that Whittier achieved widespread fame. After the Civil War, Whittier moved away from social advocacy and his later poetry focused on nature, religion, and rural life. 

How does Whittier describe the scene and national mood? What was the vow of Washington, and why did “freedom’s great experiment” succeed? How does the poet deal with the Civil War in relation to Washington’s vow? Why is Washington’s name “our Union-bond” and why should we “take on our lips the old Centennial vow”?

The sword was sheathed: in April’s sun
Lay green the fields by Freedom won;
And severed sections, weary of debates,
Joined hands at last and were United States.

O City sitting by the Sea!
How proud the day that dawned on thee,
When the new era, long desired, began,
And, in its need, the hour had found the man!

One thought the cannon salvos spoke,
The resonant bell-tower’s vibrant stroke,
The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls,
And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul’s!

How felt the land in every part
The strong throb of a nation’s heart,
As its great leader gave, with reverent awe,
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law!

That pledge the heavens above him heard,
That vow the sleep of centuries stirred;
In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent
Their gaze on Freedom’s great experiment.

Could it succeed? Of honor sold
And hopes deceived all history told.
Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past,
Was the long dream of ages true at last?

Thank God! the people’s choice was just,
The one man equal to his trust,
Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good,
Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude!

His rule of justice, order, peace,
Made possible the world’s release;
Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust,
And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just;

That Freedom generous is, but strong
In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies,
And lawless license masking in her guise.

Land of his love! with one glad voice
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;
A century’s suns o’er thee have risen and set,
And, God be praised, we are one nation yet.

And still we trust the years to be
Shall prove his hope was destiny,
Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.

Lo! where with patient toil he nursed
And trained the new-set plant at first,
The widening branches of a stately tree
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.

And in its broad and sheltering shade,
Sitting with none to make afraid,
Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.

Our first and best!—his ashes lie
Beneath his own Virginian sky.
Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,
The storm that swept above thy sacred grave.

For, ever in the awful strife
And dark hours of the nation’s life,
Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,
Their father’s voice his erring children heard.

The change for which he prayed and sought
In that sharp agony was wrought;
No partial interest draws its alien line
’Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine!

One people now, all doubt beyond,
His name shall be our Union-bond;
We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.
Take on our lips the old Centennial vow.

For rule and trust must needs be ours;
Chooser and chosen both are powers
Equal in service as in rights; the claim
Of Duty rests on each and all the same.

Then let the sovereign millions, where
Our banner floats in sun and air,
From the warm palm-lands to Alaska’s cold,
Repeat with us the pledge a century old!

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