Primary
Resources
Documents using local American History sources.
Click here.
Contact Us
Essex LINCs is a Teaching American History grant designed to bring local primary sources directly into Essex County elementary classrooms. Each "semester" a cohort of 25 educators from K-6 classrooms around Essex County Massachusetts will be chosen to attend 4 workshops during the school year and a week long seminar in the summer. The staff for this grant brings a variety of skills, knowledge and interests to help educators learn more about American history both locally and nationally, and to help their students gain this knowledge as well.
Meet our Staff
Bethany Jay is completing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in American History from Boston College. Her work examines the ways in which slavery has been interpreted at the nation’s historic house museums throughout the 20th century. In addition to working as the Project Director of Connecting Essex LINCs, Bethany serves as the Academic Director of Using Essex History, LINCs’ sister grant that works with high school teachers in Essex County. Now in its fourth year of programming, Using Essex History has served over 100 teachers from virtually every district in Essex County.
Brad Austin is an associate professor of history at Salem State College, where he also serves as the secondary education coordinator. He earned his Ph.D. in modern American history from Ohio State University in 2001, and he has continued his research on American cultural and sports history since then. He has been involved in creating four Teaching American History grant programs in Massachusetts and Ohio and served for three years on the American Historical Association’s Teaching Prize Committee, one year as its chair.
Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Salem State College and Coordinator of the American Studies Concentration. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University. Her research and teaching interests include the construction and experience of “community” in the US, ethnic and immigrant studies/literarature, gender studies, midwestern culture, and cultural geography. Current projects include work on the relationship between public culture and public discourse of community in modernizing America, radical activism of the women’s movement, and the relationship between place and memory. In addition to having taught at the college level, she has worked as a museum educator. She is the former Director of the TAH grant Salem In History and has designed and/or taught in a number of other TAH and NEH projects. She has also served as a scholar-in-residence and consultant for Boston-area museums and K-12/university/museum collaborations. She sits on the Board of Trustees at the House of the Seven Gables and writes on the relationship between Humanities and public policy for “The Public Humanist” blog.
Rebecca Zimmerman has ties to both public education and museum work. An historical interpreter, lead interpreter and museum education teacher at Old Sturbridge Village for 13 years, Rebecca has experience researching and making use of primary source materials in work with the public. Her committment to using material culture and hands-on experiences with both children and adults has led her to endorse inquiry based learning as a primary way to reach learners. Subsequent to her museum career, she has taught elementary and middle school for the last 15 years. As a fifth grade teacher in Connecticut she taught all subjects and still feels a strong pull to include many areas in her lessons. After coming to the Salem Public schools in '98, she created social studies and language arts lessons for middle school children. She enjoys exploring American history in her classroom by bringing in both primary sources and artifacts/reproductions for students to examine.She also served as a master teacher for the Salem In History, Teaching American History grant. She believes that students' academic experiences are enriched by using a variety of materials to teach history and social studies, and that local source materials can inspire and motivate students to learn more about a variety of wider issues. She serves as the author of our main lessons, consultant to teachers and is responsible for creating and maintaining the website.
