Professional Learning Opportunities

Join us for a fun and interactive day of learning and sharing about how to foster authentic and interactive communication among our language students. We will examine ways to combine the Integrated Performance Assessment model with Backward Design to create engaging and meaningful individual, paired, small-group, and full-class activities that are based on authentic resources and steeped in culture. The goal? To engage students in language use to the point where they forget they are using a "foreign” language! Lunch on your own

This professional development session will give you the tools to teach and initiate important discussions about the complex lessons of the Holocaust. In exploring classroom-tested strategies that can be implemented in your classroom, you will leave with increased confidence and effective materials to tackle the tough questions your students have about this subject. The why. The how. Through this program, educators will: 1. Explore a sound pedagogy for the planning and implementation of Holocaust education in the classroom 2. Examine instructional enhancements to support student learning and understanding 3. Discover and utilize classroom-ready digital assets including lesson plans, visual history testimonies, and additional primary source materials 4. Enhance personal knowledge about the Holocaust, including the history of antisemitism 5. Build confidence and capacity to teach this complex

Concerns over executive power have existed for as long as there have been executives with power. Fear that an executive would wield power unjustly led to various mechanisms for checking such power in modern states. This workshop will explore executive power in the United States in both theory and practice. How much power do presidents possess and how much should they be given? How has presidential power evolved over time? Because executive power is exercised, in large part, through the bureaucracy, what are the checks on technocratic power? Does the president have unlimited control over the bureaucracy or are there limits to what the president can do with - and to - the bureaucracy? This workshop is designed to answer these, and other, questions by providing historical, constitutional, and analytical tools to better understand executive power. Topics to be explored include the constitutional design for separation of powers; the growth of executive power over time; key Supreme Court cases on executive power and the administrative state; the Administrative Procedure Act and the (now nullified) Chevron doctrine; the unitary executive theory; the civil service; and the status of independent agencies.

The United States policy of Containment was to block the expansion of the Soviet influence. George Kennan believed it "must be a long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” This seminar will explore that policy and the administrations from Truman to Johnson that used it. This program will be conducted as a discussion, utilizing primary source documents as the only readings, and with the Discussion Leader facilitating the conversation, instead of lecturing or presenting. Registrants, therefore, are highly encouraged to read all the documents in advance and come ready with questions.