Organization description
Established in 1986, ADST has recorded more than 2,800 oral history interviews with diplomatic practitioners and participants in the U.S. foreign affairs process, available to the public at https://adst.org/ and on the Library of Congress website as the Frontline Diplomacy Collection. ADST is committed to strengthening public appreciation of diplomacy’s contribution to America’s national interests, and enriching the professional knowledge of diplomatic practitioners.
Project description
History Through Diplomacy 1945 to Present Day
Three seminars were held, each seminar having two scheduling options (six separate events). The first round included an introduction of a module on “Working with Primary Sources”. The module covered how to approach analysis of primary sources in the classroom, with a special focus on oral histories. It drew heavily from TPS’s “Getting Started with Primary Sources” page and also used Stanford’s video on reading laterally.
In the first round an overview was shared of ADST’s Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection and its educational resources, to include diplomacy-based lesson plans (https://adst.org/teachers/) and a Prezi presentation (https://prezi.com/view/YekHxLfJVulNNoGqy2XR/) of ADST’s United States Diplomacy: From Its Beginnings To Today booklet (https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/ADST.HistoryofUSDiplomacy.Book.small.pdf). Library of Congress primary sources are incorporated in both the lesson plans and the Prezi Presentation.
The second round included working with teachers to draft classroom workshops and lesson plans. And the final round was a collaborative discussion with teachers on how to best present materials developed together in the previous workshops. During the final round, teachers took part in presentations and a roundtable. The short presentations focused on syllabi and how teachers intended to use primary sources for the coming school year or semester.
The seminars increased awareness of ADST’s Primary Source oral history collection for teachers and students around the country and ADST continues to receive requests and feedback from teachers who either attended the seminars or we connected with in subsequent TPS Consortium Meetings.
