New Web Site, TV Series for Middle School Teachers
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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 4/2/2008 2:05:00 PM
Calling all middle school history teachers: here’s your chance to help create a social studies curriculum and lesson plan—and possibly appear on national TV. The creators of Young American Heroes, a new TV series, are seeking teachers to help produce a pilot TV show on Frederick Douglass, along with two Web sites—one for teachers and the other for students—in real time as they are being created.Young American Heroes is the result of a partnership between Palace Production Center, an award-winning Connecticut media company, and Fairfield University Graduate School of Education, along with a team of top historians from places like Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Young American Heroes television series and Web site are funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and tell the story of America's past to middle school students by using primary documents and diaries to show ordinary kids doing extraordinary things during seminal moments in American history.
“This peer approach to historical narrative brings the past to life in a way that is both captivating and informing for the target demographic: young people ages 11–14 in grades 6–9,” says the Young American Heroes Web site. “To help us make these stories work for you and your students, we invite you to give us your thoughts, comments, opinions on all aspects of the Young American Heroes project.”
The first program in the series will focus on the early years of Frederick Douglass, based on his memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. The Young American Heroes Web site will also offer a curriculum and classroom support materials developed around the program. The half-hour TV show is scheduled for broadcast on CPTV in September, 2008, with a national broadcast on public television stations slated for February, 2009, in conjunction with a national rollout of Young American Heroes materials to coincide with Black History Month.
Currently, teachers and students are able to critique the latest draft of the script for the Frederick Douglass TV show through the Young American Heroes Web site.
