Roberts Elementary Teacher Selected As NEH Summer Scholar

Tim Williams talks with Silas House, a noted author and playwright, at the National Endowment for Humanities Summer Scholar program Mr. Williams attended in West Virginia from July 10 – 30.

(Fond du Lac)- Mr. Tim Williams, a teacher at Roberts Elementary School, was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 26 seminars and institutes supported by the NEH.  The Endowment is a federal agency that supports enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions so that teachers can study with experts in humanities disciplines over the summer.

Mr. Williams participated in a seminar entitled “Voices from the Misty Mountains.”  The 3-week program was held at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV and directed by Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt. The 16 teachers selected to participate in the program each received a stipend of $2,700 to cover their travel, study, and living expenses for this program.

During this enrichment experience, Mr. Williams created a multi-discipline teaching unit based on Appalachian culture to take back to his classroom in Fond du Lac. The project will include a section on storytelling where students will engage in the culture of Appalachia which they, in turn, will apply to their writing assignments.

Topics for the 26 seminars and institutes offered for teachers this summer include

A Reverence for Words: Muslim Cultures and the Arts; Abolition and Women’s Suffrage, 1830s–1920s; Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad; The African-American Freedom Struggle from Plessy to Brown; America’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era; Appalachia: Land, Literature, and Culture; Central Asia in World History; Charles Dickens; The Chinese Exclusion Act; Communism and American Life; The Dutch Republic, Britain, and the World Economy; Existentialism; Hannah Arendt; Immigration in California: Literature and Theater; Immigration, Industrialization, and Illness in 19th-Century America; John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist; Philosophers of Education; Punishment, Politics, and Culture; Race and Mental Health in History and Literature; Religious Worlds of New York; Roman Daily Life: Petronius and Pompeii; Shakespeare; Slavery, Equality, and the Constitution; U.S.-Russian/Soviet Relations, 1776-Present

The approximately 544 NEH Summer Scholars who participated in these programs of study will teach almost 68,000 American students in the 2016-17 school year. For more information, please contact: National Endowment for the Humanities: 400 7th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20024 or education@neh.gov or www.neh.gov