Destination: Democracy

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755

As we navigate the multitude of opinions about what social studies looks like in our classrooms today, it is important to remember that putting all students first and being true to our core teacher concepts we have as educators is as important as ever. We encourage presentation proposals for our theme “Destination: Democracy” for this year’s conference to celebrate all of the hard work done by our elementary school social studies teachers as they discuss everything from developing a sense of time and chronology to laying the foundation for the development of civics by focusing on the values and principles of American democracy as Kindergarten standards state. We want to celebrate the work done by our middle school teachers to promote a huge amount of social studies content from teaching spatial thinking by using maps and other geographical tools to acquire and process information to explaining the challenges faced by our new nation through an analysis of the development of the Constitution as a new plan for governing. We also want to look at how high school teachers are engaging students in everything from differentiating between the global systems of trade, migration, and political power during the age of exploration to analyzing the role of our government in the economy. This year's conference will return to the Macomb ISD May 3-4, 2024. Our keynote speakers will be Joe Spaulding who’s work on 2018’s Proposal 2 regarding gerrymandering greatly affected voting and democracy in our state. We will also hear from Dr. Annie Whitlock who’s research is centered on teaching elementary social studies through civic engagement, place-based inquiry, and curriculum integration at the University of Michigan Flint and now at Grand Valley State University. We will also hear from Mr. Carl Brownlee, a middle school social studies teacher at Fisher Magnet Upper Academy in the Detroit Public Schools who is the reigning Region 10 Teacher of the Year and a former U.S. Marine and Gulf War Veteran.