Summer Teachers Institute
Thank you to the teachers, community members and special presenters who participated
in our 2026 Summer Teachers Institute!
Keep your eye on this page for information about future institutes and scroll down to see lesson plans and additional resources for K-12 teachers.
Reconstruction Era Lesson Plans (South Carolina)
Discover a wealth of lesson plans on the Reconstruction Era made by South Carolina teachers for South Carolina classrooms from the 2023 and 2024 Summer Institutes:
Navigating Reconstruction in the Modern Classroom
What are the difficulties facing K-12 teachers teaching the Reconstruction Era in classrooms across the United States? Discover the Zinn Education Project's "Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle."
This 44-page report represents a comprehensive effort by the Zinn Education Project to understand Reconstruction’s place in state social studies standards across the United States, examine the nature and extent of the barriers to teaching effective Reconstruction history, and make focused recommendations for improvement.
Here are some additional articles discussing the challenges of navigating Reconstruction in the modern classroom, as well as resources teachers can use to present a more complete picture of this complex period:
- How the History of Reconstruction is Taught has Always Mattered by Kevin M. Levin
- Teaching Reconstruction: Some Strategies that Work by Hilary N. Green
Previous Summer Institutes
2026 Summer Teachers Institute - June 22 - 26, 2026
A History of the Present: An Exploration of Varying Relationships to Land & Community
in SC
During the 2026 Summer Teachers Institute, participants explored the experiences of African American landowners 1861-present in the SC Lowcountry. The institute’s focus was an intensive field study
with guided tours of sites in Beaufort & Charleston counties. Using the history of
the Beaufort region from 1861 to present, participants developed inquiry-based instructional units with primary document text sets. The 2026 theme is based on a project of the same name by Dr. Francena F.L. Turner,
ACE Mellon Humanities Fellow.
The 2026 Summer Teachers Institute was funded by the ACE Mellon Humanities Program and was a joint project between ISRE and the SC Council for African American Studies.
A special thanks to the staff of the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, the Edward Wallace Camp #21 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Fred Washington & Bria Bracewell, Rev. Alexander McBride and First African Baptist Church, Pernessa Seele and the Lincolnville Preservation & Historical Society, Dr. Robert Adams and Penn Center, Tony & Belinda Jones of Morning Glory Homestead Farm, as well as USC PhD candidate Mark Canavera, Susie King Taylor Institute Director Hermina Glass-Hill, and Mike Mewborne of the SC Geographic Alliance.
Thank you to the SC Geographic Alliance and the Zinn Education Project for donating learning resources for our 2026 institute participants!
2023 & 2024 Summer Teachers Institutes
Sins of Omission: Beaufort, South Carolina, Civil War and Reconstruction
History of the Summer Teachers Institute
The Summer Teachers Institute began in 2015 as “America’s Reconstruction: The Untold
Story” and was initially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities as a
multi-week professional development opportunity for teachers from across the nation.
The three week program combined field trips and seminars by top historians to help
illuminate the complicated and compelling story of Reconstruction in Beaufort, South
Carolina. By 2023 it had developed into a single week professional development opportunity
for South Carolina educators co-sponsored by ISRE and the SC Council for African American
Studies.
ISRE works with many wonderful partners for our Summer Teachers Institutes including, but not limited to, the SC Council for African American Social Studies, the SC Geographic Alliance, the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park, Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, Penn Center, the Mather Institute, First African Baptist Church, Tabernacle Baptist Church, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (Edward Wallace Camp #21), Morning Glory Homestead Farm, the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center, the Lincolnville Preservation and Historical Society and many others including Beaufort-area historians, community leaders and cultural heritage experts.
Contact Us
Valinda W. Littlefield
Interim Director of the USCB Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era
Associate Professor, History
Beaufort, SC 29902
