The Teaching History Her Way Podcast · CherylAnne Amendola

Empowering Educators: Education for Democracy with Shannon Salter

·38 min·2 clips

The episode contrasts $50 a year for STEM with five cents a year for civics education.

1. The Teaching History Her Way Podcast episode centers on Shannon Salter and Educating for American Democracy, or EAD. 2. Host Sherrilyn Amendola introduces Shannon as a high school social studies teacher, partnership coordinator, and co-chair of the Teacher Leadership Task Force. 3. The episode asks what EAD is for and why its roadmap matters for history and civic education. 4. Shannon says the EAD Roadmap Project grew out of collaboration among over 300 academics, historians, political scientists, K-12 educators, district administrators, state administrators, and civic content programmers. 5. She says the project addresses decades of neglect in civics and history education. 6. Shannon compares federal education spending by saying the country spends about $50 a year per student on STEM and five cents a year on civics. 7. She links that spending gap to the original purpose of publicly funded schooling in a democracy. 8. Shannon says public education was launched to serve “this new democracy experiment.” 9. She says the EAD project shows stakeholders with different ideological perspectives and geographical locations can agree on content and pedagogy. 10. She says that consensus matters because schools need guidance for history and civic education in a democracy. 11. Shannon says teachers were “front and center” from the very inception of the project. 12. She says many strong social studies teachers had been working in isolation before EAD gathered their wisdom into one coherent model. 13. She points listeners to the pedagogy companion at educatingforamericandemocracy.org under educator resources. 14. Shannon names EAD umbrella concepts such as excellence for all, growth mindset, inquiry, and civic practice. 15. She says students should practice constitutional democracy and student agency in classrooms and school buildings. 16. She uses a science-teaching comparison, saying students should not learn theoretical science without hands-on lab experience. 17. The conversation stays conversational and collaborative, with Sherrilyn echoing examples and Shannon expanding them. 18. The tone is practical and teacher-to-teacher, with examples from line leaders, glue-stick caps, student government, and Project Citizen. 19. Teachers building civics lessons and history curriculum will likely get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting entertainment rather than classroom strategy may skip it.

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