Teacher’s Institute

Teachers’ Institute is designed to equip teachers with the understanding, skills, and tools to enhance lifelong civic learning and increase student engagement in the classroom. Through an extended series of interactive sessions, teachers practice skills of deliberation, issue analysis and moderator development exercises. The Mathews Center conducts one Teachers’ Institute annually at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama.

Teachers’ Institute participants:

• Learn how to implement deliberative pedagogy that connects classroom learning to current events and educates students for citizenship in a democracy

• Gain an understanding of the application of National Issues Forums in the Classroom to common core, national, as well as state standards

• Practice skills of deliberation, issue analysis and moderator development

• Experience the basic dynamics of a decision-making deliberative forum

• Explore strategies using the seven democratic practices to teach students how to deliberate

• Examine types of evaluation measures and methods to assess civic learning