2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

High school teachers and teacher educators comprise the target audience for this session. It will attract those who continue to recognize that the only women featured in their American History curricula are the most famous of them, sometimes given photographs and sidebars in textbooks: Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and so on. Teachers who seek to expand these two dimensional treatments find allies in the women’s studies departments of universities, in local and national humanities councils, and in initiatives like the National Women’s History Project.

Thoughtful teachers have begun to use inclusive social history accounts of women throughout their school year, and to include more than just the suffrage story in their lessons; the dominant role of women in the Progressive Era provides a stellar example of this expansion of the high school scope and sequence.

Rothschild’s and Golston’s experiences with oral interviews and local history would comprise the opening of an interactive session on secondary school curriculum and instruction in women’s history. The instructional piece would be particularly important, as the new social studies state standards (Social Studies for the Next Generation) emphasize an “inquiry arc”: higher level questioning, active learning, student research, and taking informed action. Participants would then share their own ideas and practices. The session would eventually become the basis for an article for Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies.