Massachusetts Teacher Uses BRI Resources to Show Students What’s Possible

When she attended a Bill of Rights Institute workshop in Mount Vernon, Va., in 2010, Massachusetts teacher Karen Washington knew she found kindred spirits.

“While networking with other teachers, discussing how they deal with any problems when trying to teach, and consulting with other teachers for what they … think is good for students, I realized we shared similar concerns about how to teach,” Washington said.

“When we shared our lessons, we realized we were on the same page and it felt validating,” she added. “It helped me feel less isolated to be part of a group of teachers doing the same thing.”

A teacher of U.S. History at Greater Lowell Technical High School in Tyngsborough, Mass., Washington and her fellow teachers studied BRI’s Being An American curriculum during the Mount Vernon workshop.

Being an American is an 11-lesson curriculum that uses primary sources to teach students about civic values, important historical figures, and the meaning of citizenship.

Washington, who is also a BRI Master Teacher and a former member of BRI’s National Teacher Council, even used Being an American to help her students conduct a mock trial.

Washington now turns to multiple BRI resources to help teach her students civics and history.

In addition to Being An American, Washington has used BRI’s U.S. history curriculum Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and BRI’s African American history curriculum, The Plainest Demands of Justice: Documents for Dialogue on the African American Experience. 

Washington’s students also studied from BRI’s Votes for Women curriculum and each student received a BRI pocket Constitution, “and they loved it,” she said.

Washington noted many of her students are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves from countries like Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, and parts of Asia, and she said “some of them shared how corrupt politics in their home countries are, and then they see what’s possible here.”

“If they see a problem they want to fix, they learn about the tools to make those changes and how to get involved in other ways than just voting,” Washington said.