America's Promise: 400 Years of Defining the American Dream

The HRVI’s “America's Promise” project is cosponsored by Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster County BOCES and funded through a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education grant from the U.S. Department of Education awarded in 2003, and again in 2006.

Teachers participating in the Institutes have access to the digitized archives made available through Marist and the College's Hudson River Valley Institute, a regional history center whose partners include an extensive network of collaborating institutions including the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in Manhattan, the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, and the National Maritime Historical Society.

Weeklong summer institutes have been developed to address the following topics. Lesson Plans will be added under each topic as they become available:

• The American Revolution: the Creation of American Democracy (2003)
  
  • Stamp Act: Virtual vs. Actual Representation (Grade 11)
  • An Empire in the Balance (Grade 11,A.P.)
  • Economics of the Revolution (Grade 7,11)
  • Washington’s Encampment at Fredericksburgh (Grade 7)
  • Geography of the American Revolution (Grade 11,A.P.)
  • Loyalists in the American Revolution (Grade 7,8)
• From Slavery to Freedom: African American Life in the Hudson River Valley Before the Civil War (2003)
  
  • Slavery in the Eyes of the Many (Grade 11)
  • Slavery in New York (Grade 7,11)
  • Resistance to Slavery (Grade 8)
  • Children and Slavery (Grade 7,8)
  • Perspectives on Slavery (G.E.D.)
  • Abolitionists and their impact on Sectionalism (Grade 11)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal and World War II: the Defense of American Democracy (2004)
  
  • Japanese Internment During WWII (Grade 8,11)
  • Internment: Fears, Justifications, Endurance, Reaction, and Apology (Grade 8,11)
  • The Manhattan Project (Grade 11)
  • FDR: Court Packing or Court Reform (Grade 8)
  • The Roosevelt Administration and Messages for Today (Grade 8,11)
  • The Impact of the Great Depression on Teenagers (Grade 8)
• Pursuing Justice in the Modern World: Eleanor Roosevelt and American History (2004)
  
  • Women and Children in the Great Depression (Grade 8)
  • Eleanor Roosevelt & Human Rights (Grade 8)
• American History through the Lens of Supreme Court Cases: A Review of Landmark Supreme Court Cases and Their Impact on the Constitutional and Civic Values of Our Society (2005)
  
  • Supreme Court Vocabulary Lesson Plan High School (Academic Intervention Services)
  • Does the Supreme Court Affect Teens?: A Survey of Court Cases General Equivalency Diploma (GED) Social Studies
  • Schenck v. United States, Lesson Plan (Grade:11^th)
  • James McBride's The Color of Water, Lesson Plan (Grade:11^th)
  • Korematsu v. United States, Lesson Plan (Grade:11^th)
  • The United States Supreme Court as an agent of Social Change, Lesson Plan (Grade:11^th)
• Commerce, Industry, and Immigration in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the Hudson River Valley (2005)

• Hamilton, Jefferson, and the Birth of Modern America (2006)

• The Civil Rights Movement (2006)
  
  • Music and the Civil Rights Movement (Grade:7/8^th)
  • Struggle for Civil Rights: African American Women (Grade:11/12^th)
  • The Civil Rights Movement (Grade:11^th)
  • Revolutionaries in the Civil Rights Movement (Grade:8^th)
  • Putting the American Civil Rights Movement into an International Context (Grade:9/10^th)
  • The American Dream (Grade:12^th)
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Grade:12^th)
• Henry Hudson and the Clash of Cultures in the New World: European and Native Americans in Seventeenth Century North America and the Hudson River Valley (2007)
  • Henry Hudson and the Clash of Cultures (Grade 7)
  • The Dutch in New York (Grade 7, 11)
  • Introduction to the Lenape-Dutch Indians (Grade 7)
  • Where in the World is Henry Hudson (Grade 9-12)

• Social Movements, Social Justice, and the Expansion of American Democracy (2007)
  • Women's Vote in England and America (Grade: 11/12th)
  • Get Out and Vote (Grade: 7/8th)
  • Sweat it Out! (Grade: 8th)
  • The Cult of True Womanhood (Grade: 11th)
  • Reform Legislation: Reaction to Industrialization (Grade: 9-12th)
  • Child Labor (Grade: 9th)
• Presidential Leadership During Wartime (2008)
  • Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia (Grade 11th US History & Government, 12th PIG)
  • US Military History
  • History as an Interpretive Discipline (Grade 8)
  • American Imperialism in the late 1800s (Grade 8)
  • Presidential "Hats" (Grades 7th and 8th)
  • Advice to Future United States Presidents Regarding Civil Liberties (Grade 11)
  • The President as Commander and Chief (Grade 12)
  • Lincoln the War Leader (Grade 11)
  • Causes of United States Entry into WWI (Grade 11)
  • Civil Liberties and Presidential Power (Grade Junior High Special Education, 12 grade honors, R and Alternative High School)
  • Rubric for Civil Liberties and Presidential Power
  • Assessing Leadership Qualities (Grade 9-12)
  • George vs. George: The Nature of a Presidential Leader
  • How Would You Evaluate President Wilson as a Commander-In-Chief?
  • Presidential Powers: Expressed and Unwritten (Grade 11th grade US History, Regents level, 12th grade Participation in Government, AP level, and 12th Grade Rights and Responsibilities)
  • Lincoln and the Issue of Slavery (Grade 8)
  • Migration (Grade 9)

• Beyond Europe: Asian and Carribbean Emigration to the United States in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2008)
  • Coming to America: Myths versus Reality (Grade 8)
  • Compare/Contrast Immigrant Groups (Grade 8)
  • Comparing Immigrant Experiences While Constructing Learning Centers (Grades 7-12)
  • 19th Century Chinese Immigration (Grades 11th US History &Government, 12th PIG)
  • Chinese Immigration and Migration in the 19th Century
  • The Chinese Experience in America (Grade 8)
  • Field Trip to Staatsburgh Mansion
  • Charting Immigration (Grades 9-12)
  • BEYOND EUROPE- Asian Emigration to the U.S. in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Grade 8)
  • Anti-Chinese Movement and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Grade 8)
  • The Impact of Globalization on Immigration Policies (Grades 10-12)