The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is offering a five-day NEH Summer Institute July 23-28, 2023 entitled Becoming US:  The Immigrant Experience through Primary Sources.  Thirty educators will be introduced to archival research and provided strategies for using primary source materials to build lesson plans within their social studies and civics education curriculum around the theme of immigration.

The institute will simultaneously engage the teachers with HSP’s renowned archival collections that document the stories of our nation’s past immigrant groups and their experiences while delving into how to use these stories and collections to make social studies curriculum more effective. Specifically, we will introduce a teaching model that encourages students to pair historical research with family and community history, making the topic of immigration resonant with the students on a personal level. Immigration has played a critical role in the development of our country as we know it today, and almost all students can relate in some way to the stories of past immigrants and how it plays into the definition of what it means to “be American.”