November, 2009
Celebrate We Shall Remain for Native American Heritage Month 2009
 November
is Native American Heritage Month! What better way to celebrate
it than to learn something about the history and cultures
of some of the first Americans? This
month EDSITEment revisits the rich multimedia resources
gathered together in the recent five-part
PBS series We Shall Remain, funded in part by
the National Endowment for the Humanities, and suggests how
to use these in the U.S. History curriculum. Read
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Homer’s Civil War Veteran: Battlefield to Wheat Field
 How
did Civil War soldiers and their torn country return to peace
after four years of fighting? What memories and emotions did
they carry with them as they returned to civilian jobs? Just
in time for Veterans Day, Homer’s
Civil War Veteran: Battlefield to Wheat Field offers a
powerful meditation on America's sacrifices and our potential
for recovery. In this lesson students study the symbolism
in Winslow Homer's painting The Veteran in a New Field
alongside a photograph made of a Civil War battlefield . After
reading James Wren's Diary entry, students continue their
exploration of the post-war period by writing about and role-playing
a returning veteran. Read
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Colonizing the Bay
As the Puritans approached
their destination of Massachusetts Bay in 1631, John Winthrop
delivered his sermon “Model of Christian Charity." It
is a powerful speech outlining some key tenets of Puritan
belief, as well as Winthrop’s ideas of what the Puritans needed
to do to build a successful community in the land they were
entering. The speech, often referred to by its resonate phrase“City
upon a Hill, " spells out Winthrop's vision of the society
his group hoped to create and how they must act if they were
to succeed in the eyes of God. The sermon sought to inspire
and to motivate the Puritans by pointing out the distance
between an ideal community and their real-world situation.
It is a speech that has echoed down the corridors of American
political oratory. Read
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