This is the first time that “Beyond the Trail of Tears: A view from the Cherokee Homeland” has been offered as a NEH Institute for School Teachers and I am particularly pleased to be the director, as the mountains of western North Carolina are also my homeland. I mention this because “place” will be an important concept in this institute.
Although this is a new Institute, I have directed four previous NEH Institutes for School Teachers at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado where I was director of education for more than eight years. I consider myself a career educator, having spent 14 years as a classroom teacher before returning to graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill for a doctoral degree in educational foundations with a minor in anthropology. My work over the last eight years has focused exclusively on leading innovative professional development programs for teachers. I am currently the director of the Kenan Fellows Program at NC State University in Raleigh, NC; just prior to this I served as executive director of the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), which is our host institution. In this Institute, as in those conducted at Crow Canyon, I am able to bring together two personal interests about which I am passionate: American Indian history and providing teachers with opportunities for in-depth study with outstanding scholars.
