Dear Friends,

 If you are involved with a charter school or know educators there, please share news of this important virtual event THIS WEDNESDAY, designed to help them with resources for teaching their students about the right to peaceful assembly, to put into context today’s conditions with our founders’ intentions. We hope you will share this with charter schools and charter colleagues you know as well as help others learn more about the program that will continue well after this week. 

“WHO WILL TEACH THE CHILDREN AND WHAT WILL THEY TEACH THEM?” 

The great philosopher Plato asked this question 2400 years ago, and it has never been more critical to our future in a day and age when there is so much disruption to “normal” life.

Our educators are struggling to put into context this new age of protest. Statues toppling, churches desecrated, streets and communities damaged, lives lost. But often lost on students is how the country that many of them see being criticized allows them to criticize, how the country that many of them see being torn apart allows them the freedom to demonstrate, to speak, to protest. 

Do students know that these things are not new? That the very founding of this country was a protest? And that even though that founding was imperfect, that it gave us the rights and freedoms to create a more perfect union? 

Welcome to Why America? 2020: Toward a More Perfect Union, an initiative of the Center for Education Reform (CER) designed to help teachers virtually to share with their schools, their students, their communities. Why America? will not only provide a series of live lessons for teachers, but also provide professional development credentials from an accredited provider to those interested, free of charge!. 

Inaugural event on August 19, from 4-5 PM

First in a  semester-long course into exploring the First Amendment and specifically that “Congress shall make no law respecting...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  

The rest of the programs will occur twice a month from September 2020 through January 2021 and will be live via Zoom webinar as well as available via recording for those who are unable to participate live.

Special Invitation for Teachers - Don’t Just Attend - Become a Member!

Thanks to the generosity of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, we cordially invite teachers to become members of our Why America? 2020: Toward a More Perfect Union program.

Teachers that sign up will:

• Receive free access to all future teacher Workshops and Webinars;
• Earn professional development credentials;
• Gain access for their students to our upcoming essay contest about First Amendment rights - which allows you and they to earn cash prizes;
• Have the opportunity to participate in and contribute to CER blogs, webinars, or podcasts. 

Membership is free of charge and includes access to teacher resources and lesson plans from prior sessions of Why America and VIP access to our growing database of resources aimed to give teachers, parents and students free and easy access to the best teaching and learning resources for American founding principles. 

Please click here to join the Why America? 2020 cohort. 

If you have any questions, please write to us at [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.