ABOUT

The Writing Home summer institute for secondary (middle and high school) schoolteachers of literature, writing and history aims to build collaborative learning community for participating educators to enhance their instruction around themes linked to Americans’ efforts to claim homeplaces in their local and national communities. Drawing on shared humanities-guided study of a variety of texts, critical engagement with site visits, and analytical response writings, summer scholars will situate their institute work in the Great Plains while also envisioning comparative frameworks for future study of, and instruction on, related themes in their own regional teaching contexts. Four thematic clusters informed by writings drawn from the 19th through the 21st century will guide participants’ study: Finding a Home: Migrating in Search of Homeplace; Home-making: Enacting Domestic Roles; Historicizing Home: Re-visiting Native American Sovereignty; Sustaining Home: Reconsidering the Land. For each of these clusters, participating 6-12 summer teacher-scholars, project directors, and consulting scholars will set Plains-based textual examples of “writing home” in dialogue with recurring national-level inquiry topics. Participants will also use their own writing and discussion to build approaches for future teaching grounded in these interconnected humanities themes.