K-12 Lesson Plans from Summer NEH Workshops in Concord

In both 2017 and 2019, the Concord Museum offered weeklong summer workshops for K-12 teachers from across the country funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most of the faculty were also members of the Thoreau Society, and the project director Jayne Gordon is currently head of the Thoreau Society Education Committee. The Society is grateful to the Concord Museum for allowing us to share with our expanding community of educators the lesson plans generated by the workshop participants in Living and Writing Deliberately: The Concord Landscapes and Legacy of Henry Thoreau.

The teachers created curriculum units based on one of the following seven threads, adapted to appropriate grade levels, subject areas, and learning styles. Using as a base the observations Thoreau made and the questions he asked, the lessons focused on Thoreau’s inquiries, and their relevance to what students worry and wonder about today. They also answered the timeless question we all grapple with: Why does Thoreau matter?

1. Being Awake, Aware, and Alive
2. Hearing that Different Drummer
3. Examining Desperate and Deliberate Lives
4. Living in Society
5. Living in Nature
6. Practicing Simplicity
7. Choosing Life with Principle