2009 VASS Conference - Calls for Proposals Due October 6th!

Mark your calendars! The 2009 Vermont Alliance for the Social Studies Annual Conference will be held on Friday, December 4th at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in Burlington, Vermont. VASS is currently accepting calls for proposals for conference presentations, but not for much longer...they are due October 6th!

To submit your proposal online, go to http://creator.zoho.com/sigridlumbra/copy-1-of-registration-form/, or to receive an application via email contact Sigrid Lumbra.

Students Praise Obama in Song: Civics Lesson or Indoctrination?

From the Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2009

A video of New Jersey elementary schoolchildren singing a song praising President Obama has sparked an uproar in conservative circles, with critics charging indoctrination – an echo of similar charges earlier this month when Mr. Obama spoke to schoolchildren in a nationally broadcast address.

In the song, originally written by a second-grade teacher and her class in recognition of Black History Month in February, students rap and pay tribute to Obama’s accomplishments.

The video has stirred up the conservative blogosphere, and people across the political spectrum agree that the song may be an error of judgment on the teacher’s part. But more broadly, it raises questions about the place of politics in the classroom and how schools and teachers can discuss Obama’s presidency – and perhaps recognize its historic nature – in appropriate ways.

“The biggest thing that worries me is that we’ll make our schools into politics-free zones where you can’t talk about anything that might offend anyone,” says Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information & Research on Civil Learning & Engagement at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

Already, notes Professor Levine, far fewer kids take courses devoted to current events than did several decades ago. “I think we’ve squeezed most of the controversy out, which is bad for kids’ civic development.”

Click here to read the rest of the article, or click here to watch the video.

• Is this a "teachable moment" in social studies? If so, what is the lesson?

World Digital Library Now Online

The World Digital Library has made available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

Use the timeline at the bottom to search documents from around the world in similar time periods.

Shipwrecks! Live Webcast

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM) is expanding their popular Shipwrecks! program with a live webcast of the shipwrecked schooner Sarah Ellen on November 5, 2009 at 10:00am (EST). This FREE hour-long broadcast will take you deep under the cold dark waters of Lake Champlain where you'll hear the tragic story of the schooner's sinking in the winter of 1860. Then meet their nautical archaeologists who will tell of her underwater discovery in 1989. You will also see footage captured by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), over 300 feet below the surface. And, since this will be broadcast live, they'll be able to take your questions via email!

How does the webcast work? Simply visit their website (http://www.lcmm.org/) shortly before 10:00am on November 5th where you'll find a link to register for the program and watch the hour-long broadcast that begins at 10am. A high-speed Internet connection is necessary.

Going to miss the live broadcast? Don't worry, they'll be posting the recorded program on their website shortly after the initial broadcast.

For more information, contact LCMM at (802) 475-2022; info@lcmm.org

Conference at Calvin's

On October 23rd the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic site will hold a conference, "The Citizen in the Community: Roles, Responsibility, and Action." The conference includes a program, materials, an exploration of the site, and lunch at the historic Wilder House. Other highlights include:

• The keynote address will be by Secretary of State Deb Markowitz: "Citizenship in Vermont: Lessons Across Time." Secretary Markowitz will discuss her findings about how student experiences can influence future civic involvement.
• Bill Jenney, Site Director of the site, will introduce the influences of this community on the development of the young Calvin Coolidge.
• VPR commentator Cyndy Bittinger will describe her research on the history of African Americans in Vermont.
• Participants will have the opportunity to explore primary resources such as letters, town reports, diaries, and account books.

For more information email education@calvin-coolidge.org, or call 802.672.3289.

C-SPAN's Student Cam National Video Competition

C-SPAN's "StudentCam" is a national video documentary competition. This year C-SPAN asks students to create a 5 to 8 minute video documentary that addresses an issue of national significance. Students must present more than one point of view and include C-SPAN video in their documentary.

Students for this year’s competition will have the opportunity to produce a documentary on either of the following topics:
A) One of the country’s greatest strengths;
-OR-
B) A challenge the country is facing.

The competition’s deadline is January 20, 2010. C-SPAN is awarding a total of $50,000 in cash prizes. The top winning videos will air on C-SPAN, and can be viewed at http://www.studentcam.org/.

Vermont Archeology Virtual Museum Opens!

The following is from an email from Giovanna Peebles, Vermont State Archeologist:

We’re excited to announce that the prototype Vermont Archeology Virtual Museum, funded with a Digital Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is launched, warts and all! Play with it, kick the tires, have fun with it, hopefully you’ll register to experience it’s full functionality. Please complete the Survey Monkey at some point!

Go to: http://emergentmediacenter.com/vtarch/ Bookmark this!

The web museum site will serve as Vermont’s archeology portal. Of course it’s only a prototype, developed over 4 months this summer, so there’s only a few exhibits thus far but enough to give you the lay of the land. There’s also slow loading, funny spacing, too much on exhibit’s main page, just a few photos, etc… A WORK IN PROGRESS!

There are 3 types of visitors:
1) Visitors who don’t register and just poke around for information and to see what’s happening
2) Visitors who register - - they will have the full functionality of the social-networking features, are part of the museum community, can contribute comments, articles, links, save favorites, etc.
3) “Curators,” who will register as such - - this group includes mainly archeology professionals working in VT who will populate the web site with “exhibits” as they discover sites, write reports, etc. as well as special guest curators, for example, Abenakis and other Indigenous community members, perhaps historians, geologists, avocational archeologists, and others as appropriate.

We are very excited about this initiative and look forward to your feed-back. Many thanks!!

Please distribute to other who may enjoy seeing this, testing it, and starting to take advantage of the resources it offers

Grant: NYSE Financial Future Challenge

The NYSE Financial Future Challenge asks kids to create a new product/idea or process that will excite and educate friends and classmates about investing and the financial marketplace. Ideas can be activities, games, books, websites, videos, etc. that illuminate the fundamentals of the stock market and financial literacy. Maximum award: $2,500. Eligibility: kids ages 6-19. Deadline: September 30, 2009.

Image courtesy of Time Magazine.

National Humanities Center Online Courses

The following is a list of live, online professional development opportunities in U.S. History and American Literature from the National Humanities Center. They sound great, and they're only $35!!

Thurs., Oct. 8: The Consumer Revolution in Colonial America
Tues., Oct. 13: Why Some New World Colonies Succeeded and Others Failed
Tues., Oct. 20: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Tues., Oct. 27: Civil War Art
Wed., Oct. 28: The Cult of Domesticity
Tues., Nov. 10: Emancipation
Thurs., Nov. 12: The Ashcan School
Thurs., Nov. 19: In Search of the Civil Rights Movement

Photo courtesy of the Friends of the Vermont State House

Faked Photographs: Look, and Then Look Again

The following article appeared in the Sunday, August 23, 2009 edition of the New York Times:

What a marvel the first photographic images must have been to their early-19th-century viewers — the crisp, unassailable reality of scenes and events, unfiltered by an artist’s paintbrush or point of view.

And what an opportunity for manipulation. It didn’t take long for schemers to discover that with a little skill and imagination, photographic realism could be used to create manufactured realities. “The very nature of photography was to record events,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College and a detective of photographic fakery. “You’d think there would have been a grace period of respect for this new technology.”

But the tampering began almost immediately: affixing Lincoln's head to another politician’s more regally posed body; re-arranging the grim detritus of Civil War battlefields to be better composed for the camera; erasing political enemies.

Sorting icons of truth from icons of propaganda is often a thorny business that can take decades to resolve, and that’s if it gets resolved. The long-argued case of Robert Capa's shocking “Falling Soldier” of 1936, taken during the Spanish Civil War, has recently flared again. Is this a loyalist soldier in his fatal moment, or is it staged? A Spanish researcher has scrutinized the terrain in the photo’s background and determined that it is not an area near Cerro Muriano, as Capa’s biographer had said, but another spot, about 35 miles away. Whether this forces the conclusion that the scene was acted out is being debated with fresh vigor. (Critics have raised doubts about the photo since the 1970s.)

Questions dogged Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning shot of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima from the start — the result of a conversation overheard and misunderstood, according to Hal Buell, who wrote a book about the image.

Click here to read the rest of the article and to see the slide show "A Brief History of Photo Fakery."

Teaching About September 11th

What are you doing in your classroom to commemmorate the 8th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon? Or are you doing anything at all? Please feel free to use this blog to share your thoughts, ideas, and resources with the rest of us.

If you do teach about September 11th, below are just a few resources of the many available.

The National September 11th Memorial and Museum's web site education section offers the following:

• A History section with a webcast, timeline, and ongoing feature articles
• A discussion guide and activities
• 9/11: Stories of Survival and Loss - a short film featuring first-hand accounts of survivors, victims' familiy members, and first responders
• The Spirit of Volunteerism: 9/11 and Beyond - a short film highlighting the outpouring of compassion and volunteerism in the aftermath of September 11
• "History in the Making," a teaching guide with take-home pages
• A Scholastic Kid Reporter article from a kid who was there

NCSS also has a multi-resource page about September 11th:

• Dear Teacher’: Letters on the Eve of the Japanese American Imprisonment
• We are Living History: Reflections of a New York City Social Studies Teacher
• The Trauma of Terrorism: Helping Children Cope
• At Risk of Prejudice: Teaching Tolerance about Muslim Americans
• At Risk of Prejudice: The Arab American Community
• Debating War and Peace in Washington Square Park
• Media Literacy Skills: Interpreting TragedyFollowing a Tragic Event: A Necessary Challenge for Civic Educators
• In War, Is Law Silent? Security and Freedom After September 11
• Teaching about Terrorism, Islam, and Tolerance with the Internet
• Civil War in Afghanistan
• Letters to the Editor
• 2001 NCSS Presidential Address
• The Women of Afghanistan
• Restoring the Rights of Afghan Women: An Interview with Nasrine Abou-Bakre Gross
• A Thoughtful Patriotism
• Afghanistan In Focus
• My Name is Osama
• We Are Strong/We Are Vulnerable
• Both Sides of the Classroom Door: After 9-11, the Many Facets of Teaching
• Growing Up in the Aftermath of Terrorism
• World Religions and Personal Tolerance
• The Aftereffects of September 11 - What the Polls Tell Us

And finally, The September 11th Education Trust has just published a national, interdisciplinary curriculum for purchase.

Lake Champlain History Comes Alive! Workshop

For many years, Flynn teaching artists have collaborated with teachers through its signature Words Come Alive! program to develop techniques in drama and movement to strengthen student comprehension of various curricular topics. In this full-day workshop, participants will have the opportunity to experience these techniques as they are applied to primary sources and history texts of Lake Champlain, in support of the commemoration of Samuel de Champlain’s naming of the lake 400 years ago. These tried-and-true techniques deepen students’ personal connections with history and allow them to view the past from multiple perspectives of ethnicity, gender and loyalties. As a middle school student exclaimed, “It’s like learning history and being a part of history all at the same time.” Participants will receive the 2nd edition of the Words Come Alive! toolkit.

Date: Friday, September 25, 2009 9 am-3 pm

Location: Flynn Center

Leaders: Joan Robinson and Lida Winfield

Cost: Payable by check to Flynn Center on 9/25/

$25 CVEDC Members $35 Non-CVEDC Members

To register: http://cvedc.champlain.edu/

Registration deadline: 9/18/09

PBS Teacher Activity Packs

PBS has some great classroom resources, and now they've organized them by larger themes - called Teacher Activity Packs - in social studies, such as:

• American Identity
• Indigenous Cultures
• Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders
• Patriotism
• China
• Politics and Art
• Citizenship
• Religious Diversity in America
• Constitutional Controversies (NOTE: Constitution Day is September 17th)
• Studying Genocide
• Crime and Justice
• The Presidency
• Everyone's Business
• Unsung Heroes in African American History
• Global Population
• Women's Rights Then and Now
• Immigration
• World Religions
• In the News

International Travel Grant for U.S. Teachers

Here is a travel grant opportunity, the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA) reciprocal US teacher exchange, provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), US Department of State and implemented by IREX.

The grant provides for visa support, round-trip domestic airfare, lodging and meals to attend the TEA U.S. Conference, round-trip airfare from the U.S. to the assigned country, emergency medical evacuation plan, and lodging and a daily stipend in host country for a two week exchange to one of 27 countries. 80 awards will be made.

During the exchange, US teachers will work with their international hosts to conduct professional development workshops for the educational community and co-teach in their area of expertise. It is also a wonderful way to internationalize the US teacher's classroom by creating long-lasting ties to students and teachers on the other side of the globe.

For more information, please see our program flyer at http://eepurl.com/clfC. The program flyer website makes it easy for you to share the flyer via e-mail or through social networking tools. I have also attached a PDF version of the flyer for distribution. Applications are available at the TEA website, http://www.irex.org/programs/tea/tea_us.asp.

An Evening with Holocaust Survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein

The Cohen Center announces that Gerda Weismann Klein - survivor, author, and scholar - will present the 12th Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture on Monday, September 121, 2009.

Gerda Weissmann's life changed forever in 1939 when, during her fifteenth year, German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. Both Gerda and her brother Arthur were separated from their parents and sent to slave-labor camps. The horror of that day remained forever ingrained in Gerda's memory - it was the last time she would ever see her family. Never losing hope, Gerda's resilience supported her through three successive years in slave-labor camps and a 350-mile forced death-march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Throughout, Gerda never lost the will to survive.

In 1945, she is rescued at the point of starvation by her future husband, Kurt Kelin, and American intelligence officer. Gerda Weissmann's account of living through the Holocaust is documented in her autobiography, All But My Life and in the film, One Survivor Remembers (available from the Cohen Center).

12th Holocaust Memorial Lecture
Monday, September 21, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, Young Student Center, Keene State College

For more information contact:

Tom White
Coordinator of Educational Outreach
CCHS
www.keene.edu/cchs

Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Great Social Studies Speakers from the Vermont Humanities Council

From Peter Gilbert, Executive Director of the Vermont Humanities Council:

Professor Woden Teachout will be speaking as part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays program -- about how the American flag has been used by diverse groups through American history to promote support for their cause – including, for example, nativist and segregation groups on the one hand, and the civil rights movement on the other. She will be speaking at 7 pm on December 2nd at the library in Newport.

NOTE Also the other social studies/history distinguished speakers that will be part of First Wednesdays, a monthly series of free public talks offered on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May – in NINE Vermont towns – Brattleboro, Burlington, Manchester, Middlebury, Montpelier, Newport, Norwich, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury. (click on the link to get a complete listing of events) Other speakers include:

• Ken Burns on National Parks, an American idea;
• Pre-eminent civic engagement scholar, Harvard’s Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) examines disconcerting new evidence showing that community bonds can be weakened by ethnic diversity and considers how we can overcome those challenges to realize diversity’s benefits.
• Middebury College President Emeritus and historian John McCardell on Lincoln and the Causes of the Civil War
• NY Times’s Chief Washington correspondent David Sanger on the world Obama confronts and the Challenges to American power
• “Don’t Know Much about History” author Kenneth Davis on hidden history.
• Alistair Cooke’s daughter Susan Cooke Kittredge talks about the Unseen Alistair Cooke
• George Dennis O’Brien, former president of Bucknell and U. of Rochester, on the legendary grunge band Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, which offers insight into the world of rock, its promise, and its dangers.
• Retired NBC correspondent Robert Hager talks about 40 years of covering disasters, including the Munich Olympics massacre, the Islamic revolution in Iran, OK City, space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and more.
• Historian Allen Koop on NH’s only WWII POW camp and the inspiring story of how ordinary people in Stark, NH turned bitter division into camaraderie
• Former Iranian Ambassador to the UN Mansour Farhang on Iran
• Pulitzer-Prize winner Thomas Powers on “It’s all Uphill in Afghanistan”
• Retired CIA Chief of Counterterrorism considers problem-resolving in the Middle East and South Asia
• Middle East expert Gordon Robison considers whether Obama’s policies toward the Middle East differ from his predecessor’s
• VT Folklife Center founder Jane Beck on Vermont oral history gems
• Dartmouth art historian Jane Carroll on how images of leaders in art can be used to create myths more powerful than reality
• UVM Professor Frank Bryan compares New England Town Meetings with Congress
  Bryan will also consider why no president since 1952 has been ranked as great by presidential scholars.
• VT State Curator David Schutz on Vt’s State House at 150 years old
• Pre-eminent Native American history scholar Colin Calloway on 1763 and how a war of independence waged by Indian people set America on course for a second, more famous war of independence.
• Bill “Spaceman” Lee recounts his adventures in major league baseball
• Banned literature, Professor Elaine Razzano considers the reasons why books are banned, and more
• Dartmouth’s Annelise Orleck reflects on the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant Jewish and Italian women.
• Dartmouth English professor Tom Luxon explores how John Milton’s redefinition of marriage unintentionally charted a path toward making same-sex marriages imaginable.
  Historian Allen Koop explores the history, traditions of the Appalachian Mt Club’s Hut System in NH
• Middlebury’s Susan Watson explores the nearly mythical influence of Einstein on the twentieth century.
• Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans on the impact that immigrants have had on American culture and language and the role immigrant writers have played in your national consciousness.
• Dartmouth professor Irene Kacandes on the enduring appeal of Anne Frank and her diary.
  Author and illustrator David Macaulay traces the development of his books.

2010 Census: It's About Us

From Thomas L. Mesenbourg, Acting Census Director:

Preparations for the 2010 Decennial Census are accelerating. The census counts everyone residing in the United States – in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. These counts determine the reapportionment of Congressional seats and the allocation of significant resources, including over $300 billion per year in federal and state funding allocated to communities for schools, Title 1 programs, special education, neighborhood improvements, public health, and other programs and services.

The U.S. Census has developed a program of lessons and resources titled the 2010 Census: It’s About Us. The materials explain the operation and importance of an accurate census, showing students that the census is integral to many fundamental concepts of our democracy, including the Constitution, history, congress, our government, and public service.

Resources Spotlight

Peace Corps World Wise Schools - Classroom resources based on Peace Corps volunteer experiences:

• Connect with a volunteer
• Find a speaker
• Curriculum materials sortable by grade, geographic area, or subject area
• Service learning lesson plans and ideas
• Language lessons and audio (listen to languages from around the world)
• Videos, podcasts, etc.

National History Education Clearinghouse - builds on and disseminates the valuable lessons learned by more than 800 TAH projects designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of traditional U.S. history.

• Web site reviews
• Ask a historian
• Examples of historical thinking
• Using primary sources
• Teaching with textbooks
• Teaching guides
• Lesson plan reviews

The Genographic Project - The Genographic Project is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

• Atlas of the human journey
• Globe of human history
• Educator guide with lesson plans, etc.
  
  
• Have you used any of these resources in your teaching? If so, what feedback do you have about them?

Cultural Diversity Day Returning to U-32

U-32 sophomore Simone Labbance has been busy this spring writing a concerto, choreographing a dance and organizing the school's second annual Cultural Diversity Day scheduled for Friday. This year's celebration will include not only a full day of activities representing different countries around the world for students and staff, but also an evening line-up of events open to the public.

Beginning at 8:15 a.m. with African Drums, there will be ethnic food, music, dancing, guest speakers, a mini fashion show and art exhibits until the end of the school day. At 6 p.m., the cultural festival is open to the public and kicks off with John Mullet playing the fiddle. Evening guests will be treated to African drumming and dance, a fashion show, a Bollywood dance, face painting, ethnic foods and the Burlington-based band Guagua. The evening is free and open to the public.

Adopted from Calcutta, India when she was an infant, Labbance has spent the last few years of her life getting in touch with her Asian heritage."I really wasn't into my culture at all for the longest time," said Labbance, until she attended a Bharat Natyam dance performance and fell in love. Shortly after that performance two years ago, Labbance began taking dance lessons with one of the Bharat Natyam dancers. At 7:15 p.m. on Friday, Labbance will show her skills in the spiritual dance as a prelude to the Bollywood dance she choreographed with 12 fellow dancers.

Cultural Diversity Day was initiated by Labbance after she consulted with Cultural Links creator Carolyn Shapiro. The first year was an experiment that turned into a huge success, according to both. This year a throng of students and staff have stepped up to help. "She's really drawn in other students," said Shapiro, who noted that a Rwandan play will be performed by students during the day. "It's going to be a really engaging evening with food and dance and face painting for kids."

Several classes are scheduled to have speakers from around the globe and others are slated to make international culinary treats. "People are definitely excited, I'm really excited about the music," said Labbance, who will be performing the concerto she wrote by playing her sitar with members of the orchestra. "I read a lot about Indian music and try to listen to as much as I can and try to observe what's going on."

While discovering her own background, Labbance has exposed her school community to other cultures. This year, that invitation is going out to the central Vermont community. "The evening is just this huge cultural festival," said Labbance about the event that is scheduled to take place outside on the U-32 campus, weather dependent. If there is rain, the event will take place inside the atrium of the school.

By Sarah Hinckley Times Argus Staff - Published: May 21, 2009

Photo courtesy of http://www.timesargus.org.

National Standards...What Do You Think?

I received the following email from Ana C. Post, Director of External Relations & Council Communications at the National Council for the Social Studies. Please use this blog and the attached survey to give your feedback:

Dear Affiliate Leaders,

We wanted to share with you the following key points regarding the attached WP Hearing Summary, as well as article links (below), to keep you informed of a state-led initiative towards a building a common, voluntary set of standards, and how this may affect states, local school districts, administrators, teachers, classrooms and students. We also would like ask you to think of, and share with us, implications this might have on social studies (at the local/state level) and on the direction of future advocacy efforts at the state and national levels. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with any questions.

Sincerely,

Ana

Key Points (from NCSS staff):

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices, are anticipating that states will have a state-led set of common standards for k-12 math and English/Language Arts by the end of this summer. Standards for other core academic subjects would follow.

At the end of April, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to examine how states can better prepare their students to compete in a global economy by using internationally benchmarked common standards.

Key points expressed during the hearing were:

• Every state needs a well-educated workforce to compete in the global economy.
• Rigorous and relevant core standards – around what young people need to know and be able to do – need to be developed.
• Despite suggestions to contrary, teachers want this kind of reform and would like to be involved in process.
• High quality state assessments need to be designed based on the standards-- aligned tests, real accountability and high-quality instruction for all of our kids is needed for standards to work – developing assessments was cited as a potential area for federal involvement.
• Enlist teachers to design curriculum aligned with state standards

Please click here for an in-depth hearing summary.

I am also including the links to two articles that provide some more background on this topic:

“How to Raise the Standard in America’s Schools” by Walter Isaacson in the Electronic TIME issue of 4-15-09 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891468,00.html; and“Push is on for National Academic Standards,” by Cynthia Howell in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette http://www.nwarktimes.com/adg/News/258833/.

• Do rigorous and relevant core standards need to be developed in social studies?
• Do teachers want this type of reform?
• Do high quality state assessments, aligned with these standards, need to be developed?
• How would this initiative impact social studies in Vermont and around the country?