Workshop Overview

 

The workshop is structured to provide a healthy mix of scholarly presentations, discussions, field excursions, social activities, and time for participants to work with the project team and teacher-facilitator on individual and group projects - as well as precious "down time" for reflection and wandering on your own.

We will be spending the week with some of the top scholars who have researched, taught, and written extensively on the beginnings of the Revolution. Readings - including works by workshop faculty members, documents at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and writings of the ninettenth-Concord authors (Amerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott) - will be assigned to accompany each scholar's session and must be done in advance.

Day-by-Day Schedule of Events (Tentative)

In 1775, towns around Boston became scenes of actions that ignited a war. Inhabitants were caught at the crossroads of Revolution. We will explore use of the crossroads theme  to investigate their decisions and dilemmas by applying this theme as choice (of route, direction, path); counterfactual history (the road not taken at the crossroads); intersection (of forces, ideas, paths); gathering place (for people, supplies, meetings);  turning point or change (in the life of a person, people, even a country); and physical landmark and connector (the role roads played in conveying and linking people, ideas, goods, and news).

Sunday: Welcome to Concord!

Activities/Schedule:

3:00 - 7:30      Project co-directors will be at the Colonial Inn to welcome teachers and assist with check-in

7:30                 Participants meet at Inn for bus to Hartwell Tavern (3 miles)

8:00-10:00      Battle Road Heroes Program: Listen to dramatic stories of people who lived along the Battle Road in April of 1775; whose paths and lives crossed through this place and through history. Meet characters such as Captain William Smith of the Lincoln Minute Men, Mary Hartwell, Ephraim and Elizabeth Hartwell, and His Majesty's soldiers during this special evening of theater and history.

  Monday: Life on the Eve of Revolution

Using Concord as a base, historian Robert Gross, author of The Minutemen and their World, will lead us in an examination of life at the beginning of the war. What happens to inhabitants of towns that are literally and figuratively "on the road to revolution" where local concerns and larger outside forces intersect? The Concord Museum's "Why Concord?" exhibition will provide visual context.

Activities/Schedule:

8:30               Walk to Concord Museum

9:00-10:00      Introductions, Overview of syllabus and discussion of key approaches (Project Team)

10:00-11:30    Lead-off lecture with Dr. Robert Gross on the world of the Minutemen and "Why Concord?"

11:30-1:30      Lunch and "Why Concord?" exhibition viewing

1:30-3:-00       Secoond session with Dr. Robert Gross on the world of the Minutemen

3:00-4:30        Introduction of lesson plan projects with Kathleen Barker and teacher-facilitaor Duncan Wood; Initial project group meetings

4:30                Walk back to the Colonial Inn

5:00-7:00         Free time in Concord

7:00-9:00         Orientation to Concord in 1775 and 2012: evening walking tour of participants' home base with Jayne Gordon.

  Tuesday: The Coming of the Revolution

In Boston, Professor William Fowler will lead us on a walking tour of revolutionary Boston as we investigate the issues and actions that brought colonists and the British to the point of confrontation, and the ways in which towns around Boston were working together on a regional and provincial basis by 1775. At the Massachusetts Historical Society, we will work with collections that document the background and beginnings of the Revolution.

Activities/Schedule:

9:00-9:30         Walk from Colonial Inn to Concord Depot

9:36-10:18        Commute to Boston via train

10:30-12:30      Meet Dr. William Fowler at North Station for Part I of our walking tour, including visit to Copp's Hill, Old North Church, the North End, Boaston Harbor/Long Wharf, and Quincy Market.

12:30-1:30         Lunch on your own at Quincy Market.

1:30-2:30           Part II of our walking tour with Professor Fowler, including visits to Faneuil Hall, Old State House, Old South Meeting House, King's Chapel, Old Granary, and Boston Common.

2:30-3:00           Travel to Massachusetts Historical Society via "T" (subway).

3:00-4:00           Wrap-up discussion with Professor Fowler; Welcome to MHS and ovierview of the Society.

4:00-5:30            Documents and Reception (switch groups at 4;45)  GROUP A: Viewing of original documents referenced in the workshop and available online at the Coming of the American Revolution website  Group B: Reception and informal discussion with Professor Fowler and MHS staff.

5:00 - 8:30          Free evening in Boston.Meet at North Station to take train back to Concord at 8:45.

8:46-9:24            Train back to Concord Depot (Additional trains at 10:40 and 12:10)

9:24-9:45           Walk back to the Colonial Inn

  Wednesday: The First Day of the Revolution

Park staff will guide us through the events of April 18 and 19, 1775 --  hour by hour -- at site throughout Minute Man National Historical Park, at Lexington Green, and at Concord's North Bridge. We will peice together conflicting evidence of "who shot first?", and consider the short- and long-term significance of decisions made on those two fateful days.

Activities/Schedule:

8:30               Bus from the Colonial Inn to the Paul Revere Capture site

8:45-9:30        Walk from Revere capture site to Minute Man Visitor Center along restored Battle Road.

9:30-10:30       View "Road to Revolution" multimedia show and explore Minute Man Visitor Center

10:30-12:00     Bus to Lexington Green and part I of "Who Shot First?" program with NPS ranger Jim Hollister.

12:00-2:00        Free time for lunch and exploration of Lexington Green area (wander to the Visitor Center, Buckman Tavern, Hancock-Clarke House, etc.).

2:00-3:00          Bus ride to North Bridge Visitor Center, discussion of site along the Road with Jim Hollister, time to view exhibitions at North Bridge V.C.

3:00-5:00          Part II of "Who Shot First?" program; walk to North Bridge for eyewitness actiity

5:00                 Walk back to Colonial Inn.

Evening          On your own in Concord

  Thursday: Ordinary People/Extraordinary Times

Brian Donahue, an environmental historian, will take us on a hike through the rehabilitated colonial landscape of farming fields, pastures, orchards, and woodlots, providing us with tools for "reading" or understading the "land of the embattled farmers." A research and writing workshop with Mary Fuhrer and Joanne Myers will allow us to look at five Lexington residents -- representing multiple perspectives -- and the choices they made "at the crossroads."

Activities/Schedule:

8:15                 Bus to Buttrick House at North Bridge Visitor Center.

8:30-9:15         Group A: Introduction to using local primary surces with Mary Fuhrer; Group B: Lesson planning time.

9:15-9:30         Break

9:30-10:15       Switch! Group A lesson planning; Group B with Mary.

10:15               Bus to Battle Road Farms area in National Park

10:30-12:00      Everyday Lives in the Landscape with Brian Donohue at Battle Road Farms

12:00               Bus to Hartwell Taven (from Brooks area)

12:00-1:30       Lunch at Hartwell Tavern area; Mett Jim the Ox; Optional tour of the Bloody Angle.

1:30-4:30         Hands-on Activity and Writing Workshop in McHugh Barn (Hartwell area): Each participant will be given one of five "identities" based on an actual person from Lexington c. 1775. After they have discussed questions of background, motivation, choice and action, they present their historical character's "choice at the crossroad" to the rest of the group.       

4:30                 Bus back to Concord Center        

4:45-7:15         Work on group projects and/or spend time exploring the landscape and collecting images.        

7:15                  Travel to Brooks Tavern.

7:30-10:00        Eighteenth-century working dinner and musical entertainment at Minute Man Park's Noah Brooks Tavern.

Friday: The Legacy of Revolution

In the settings of the Old Manse and Sleey Hollow Cemetery, we will discuss how the colonists made sense of the events that had transpired in their towns on those April days, and the part they played in those events. We will then explore the uses that the Concord authors made of Concord's revolutionary legacy in their own efforts to end intellectual and cultural dependence on the Old World.

 Activities/Schedule:

8:30                 Checkout of Colonial Inn and walk to the Old Manse/North Bridge.

9:00-10:00        "The Shot Heard 'Round the World": 1775 with Jayne Gordon and Tom Beardsley

10:00-11:00      Tour of Old Manse

11:00-12:00      "The Shot Heard 'Round the World": 1835-1875 with Jayne Gordon

12:00-1:00         Picnic at the Old Manse and discussion of lesson plans.

1:00-3:00          The nineteenth-century Concord authors and their own "revolutions": Discussion with Jayne Gordon in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

3:00-3:30          Informal evaluation of workshop; wrap-up

3:30-5:00          Formal end of workshop; Participants have time to tour either the Alcott's Orchard House, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Bush, Hawthorne's Wayside, or Toreau's birthplace on their own.

6:00                Optional picnic at Walden Pond and ice cream at Jayne Gordon's home located in Walden Woods (easy walk from Pond).

For those departing Concord on Friday night: You are free to leave Concord after 3:30; Flights should be scheduled for 6:00 P.M. or later.