This week’s Scholar Exchange: Freedom of Assembly and Petition.

This week's sessions examine answers to the following questions:

How can you assert your rights to freedom of assembly and petition– even in the time of COVID-19?
How did the founding generation exercise their assembly and petition rights?
How have assembly and petition rights been used to give voice to the unenfranchised?

First Amendment: Freedom of Assembly and Petition

Wednesday, April 8 and Thursday, April 9

12 p.m. EDT – Middle School Level
Join here.
1 p.m. EDT – High School and College Level
Join here.

Students will trace the right to petition from its origin as a way to give those without a voice in politics a way to share their beliefs, to its modern implications for the practice of lobbying the government. In examining the right to assemble and its case law throughout history, students will determine if there is also a right to protest. The session will help define key terms, such as petition, redress of grievances, and lobbying.

Just Announced: George Washington and Writing History with Jeffrey Rosen and Alexis Coe

Friday, April 10

1 p.m. EDT – High School and College Level
Join here.

In this Scholar Exchange, we will take a unique look at George Washington, and how historians have captured his past and have retold history. Join Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and Alexis Coe, historian and author, to examine how America remembers our first president. Explore how George Washington gets romanticized by male biographers and how Coe, only the third woman to write a complete Washington biography, reexamines some of the common and unfamiliar stories of our first president, as described in her new book, a New York Times best seller, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.

Teachers can register for the session and forward the link to their students, or ask students to register individually.

VIEW FULL SCHEDULE

Private Scholar Exchanges

Private Scholar Exchanges, which include your class, a scholar, and a moderator, are also available. Complete a survey here for more information, or to register your class to participate. A member of the education team will be in contact to help with the planning process.

Online Professional Development Workshops

Join us Mondays from 12 –12:20 p.m. EDT for open-source professional development programs highlighting the Center’s free, online resources and strategies to support constitutional literacy education in the classroom or remotely. Online professional development programs are facilitated by a member of the Center’s education team and hosted on Zoom. Each week features different resources reflecting the topic of that week’s Scholar Exchanges.

Upcoming webinars include:

April 13: The Fourth Amendment: Search and Seizure
April 20: The 14th Amendment: Origins and Interpretations
April 27: The Second Amendment: Past and Present

For information about scheduling an online workshop for your teachers, email [email protected] and include “Online Workshop” in the subject line.

LEARN MORE

We the People Podcast: Civil Liberties and COVID-19

Some of Americans’ civil liberties—like the freedom to assemble in public, the ability to purchase a gun at a gun store or visit a reproductive health clinic, the freedom to exercise religion by going to church, and more— are typically exercised in person. As states enforce the stay-at-home orders necessary to prevent the spread of coronavirus, how will those rights be impacted? And what will happen to them after the crisis is over? This episode explores those questions as First Amendment experts Lata Nott and David French join host Jeffrey Rosen.

Find the episode here or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

The National Constitution Center's education team is here to help with any of our online resources. Email [email protected] with questions or comments on how we can help you and your students with your remote learning needs.

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