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Student Historians Project

2024.08.16-reved_transparent_horiz2.pngRevolutionary Educators: Student Historians Project Overview 

Teachers located in Northern Neck and around the Commonwealth of Virginia are eligible for free registration for the Fundamentals of Historical Inquiry online course.

To receive a code, kindly send an email to [[leadlab]]

Purpose

Through generous support from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, we will develop and implement a two-phased program to support classroom teachers focused on a) engaging their students in historical inquiry through an online course open to all Virginia educators, and b) bringing local history in Virginia into their core curriculum through student-created public history projects centered on and available to their community through the RevEd Public History Fellowship program.  

Phase I (2024-25)

The Fundamentals of Historical Inquiry online course will be freely available for teachers across Virginia. Developed and offered in collaboration with the National Council for History Education (NCHE), the course is designed to be available on-demand and completed in a series of modules integrating videos, readings, and other interactive elements. Participants will create materials that they can use with their students. Teachers who complete the course will be offered a certificate that can be used for recertification. For the fellowship program, we will select a subset of up to 20 teachers who complete the online course from underrepresented & underserved schools from the Northern Neck, with a focus on teachers in the following school divisions:   

RevEd logo with an image of a fist holding a torch surrounded by stars

• Colonial Beach 

• Essex County 

• King and Queen County 

• Lancaster County 

• Middlesex County 

• Northumberland County 

• Richmond County 

• Westmoreland County 

Phase II (2025-26)

The hybrid RevEd Student Historian Fellowship Program will begin with a summer institute on W&M’s campus in Williamsburg with online activities and engagement opportunities before and after the on-site program. All costs for teachers to travel to Williamsburg and participate in the fellowship program will be covered. They will receive an additional stipend for their participation at the conclusion of the program. In addition to working on campus at W&M, participants will visit nearby partner museums and cultural heritage organizations/sites for inspiration and skill building. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, and Fort Monroe Authority represent a cross-section of local partners. 

Participants in the fellowship program will engage with historians and interpreters to increase their content knowledge of the Revolutionary period, including enduring themes which to span to the present. They will build practical skills for the design of public history projects and relevant technical expertise to support their work (e.g., recording oral histories, developing virtual exhibits, podcasting, etc.). The fellowship program will focus on uncovering “hidden histories” in various Northern Neck communities – exemplified in ongoing work at W&M with the Lemon Project, the W&M Bray School Lab, and the Brafferton Indian School initiative. Following the summer institute in 2025, teacher participants, historians and historical society staff from the Northern Neck, teacher educators, master teachers, and preservice teachers from the W&M School of Education will meet regularly online or in person to continue learning, develop their project plans and materials, and provide feedback and insight on their ongoing work. Teachers will implement their student public history projects during the 2025-26 school year. 

Community Engagement Celebration (May 2026)

W&M and division partners will co-host a public presentation in the Northern Neck for teachers and selected students to share their local history projects with the broader community. This will be recorded and made widely accessible via W&M and partner web sites.