Local teacher attends Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Beth Huffman, a 7th grade teacher at Zion Lutheran School in Bethalto, IL, recently completed an intense, seven-day immersion into early American history at the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute.
The Teacher Institute was created to encourage history education and make it engaging for students. Now in its 19th year, the Teacher Institute helps prepare teachers to help students meet national and state history standards through hands-on immersion experiences in colonial history.
Beth is a teacher and she has taught for 11 years at Zion Lutheran. She holds a bachelor's degree in Secondary Education from Concordia University-River Forest and a master's degree in Secondary Education History from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
The Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute provides participants with interactive teaching techniques and skills to become mentor teachers who can assist their peers and other educators to develop active learning classrooms and make history exciting for their students.
The Teacher Institute provides an extensive background in colonial history from the first English settlement at Jamestown to the American Revolution. Teachers participate in re-enactments of 18th-century events and meet historians and interpreters portraying historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson, as well as the common citizens who helped shape a new nation. Participants share teaching strategies to improve instructions, raise literacy levels and enhance thinking skills. Participating teachers agree to conduct in-service training sessions following their attendance at Teacher Institute in order to share their experience with other teachers. Teachers also are required to develop lesson plans that will be shared with future Teacher Institute participants.
Colonial Williamsburg builds on a more than 50-year educational outreach tradition by exploring new technologies, expanding successful initiatives and offering new ventures to fulfill its educational mission. Teacher Institute was developed to improve the quality of American history education in the nations' schools and insure that every student gains an understanding of the principles behind our system of government. The program began in 1990 with 44 fifth-grade teachers from two southern California school districts. Today, nearly 5,500 teachers from 48 states and three foreign countries have participated since the inception of the Teacher Institute.
Established in 1926, the Colonel Williamsburg Foundation is the not-for-profit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the inspirational stories of our nation's founding men and women. Within the restored and reconstructed buildings, historic interpreters, attired as colonial men and women from slaves to shopkeepers to soldiers, relate stories of colonial Virginia society and culture-stories of our journey to become Americans. A Colonial Williamsburg interprets life in the time of the American Revolution for its guests, it also invites them to interact with history. Williamsburg is located 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., off Interstate 64. To learn more about Teacher Institute, visit www.history.org/history/teaching/tchsti.cfm.
Beth is a 1990 graduate of Chester High School. She is the daughter of the late Dennis and Karen Engelage of Ellis Grove, IL.