Williamsburg, Va. – Sarah Thornbery, the teacher-librarian at Springboro Jr. High School in Springboro, OH, recently completed an intense, six-day immersion in American history at the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute. The Teacher Institute was created to encourage history education and make it engaging for students. Now in its 28th year, the Teacher Institute helps prepare teachers to help students meet national and state history standards through hands-on immersion experiences in colonial history.

Thornbery is a teacher-librarian in the Springboro Community City School District. She has taught for the past 15 years at Springboro Jr. High School. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Secondary Social Studies Education with a minor in History from Miami University of Ohio, a Master of Education in Educational Leadership with a focus in School Library Media from Wright State University and a Master of Library and Information Science in Academic Librarianship from Kent State University.

The Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute provides participants with interactive teaching techniques and skills to become mentor teachers who can assist their peers and other educators to develop active learning classrooms and make history exciting for their students.

During six-day sessions on location in Colonial Williamsburg and the surrounding area, participants engage in an interdisciplinary approach to teaching social studies with American history as the focus. Teachers have the opportunity to exchange ideas with historians, meet character interpreters and become part of the story in The Revolutionary City. Throughout each day, teachers work collaboratively with Colonial Williamsburg staff and Master Teachers to examine interactive teaching techniques and develop instructional materials that improve instruction, raise literacy levels, enhance thinking skills, and bring history to life in the classroom. Participating teachers agree to conduct in-service training sessions following their attendance at Teacher Institute in order to share their experience with other teachers. Teachers also are required to develop lesson plans that to implement in the classroom.

Colonial Williamsburg builds on a nearly 60-year educational outreach tradition by exploring new technologies, expanding successful initiatives and offering new ventures to fulfill its educational mission. Teacher Institute was developed to improve the quality of American history education in the nations’ schools and insure that every student gains an understanding of the principles behind our system of government. The program began in 1990 with 44 fifth-grade teachers from two southern California school districts. Today, more than 8,500 teachers from all 50 states and three foreign countries have participated since the inception of the Teacher Institute.

Established in 1926, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is the not-for-profit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the inspirational stories of our nation’s founding men and women. Within the restored and reconstructed buildings, historic interpreters, attired as colonial men and women from slaves to shopkeepers to soldiers, relate stories of colonial Virginia society and culture — stories of our journey to become Americans. As Colonial Williamsburg interprets life in the time of the American Revolution for its guests, it also invites them to interact with history. Williamsburg is located 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., off Interstate 64. To learn more about Teacher Institute, visit www.history.org/history/teaching/tchsti.cfm.