BRI Kicks Off Its Conference Season
<p>The 2025-26 school year, which began last month, also marks the start of the social studies conference season. And the Bill of Rights Institute wasted no time hitting the road.</p>
<p>Don Jenkins, BRI’s manager of program partnerships, attended the Oklahoma Conference for the Social Studies late last month. BRI staff will also participate in conferences in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Texas this month to share information on BRI’s various resources.</p>
<p>BRI also hosted a group of 15 teachers from the Washington, D.C. metro area at our office last month. The teachers participated in a day-long workshop where they <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/games">played games</a> from one of BRI’s newest curricula, <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/curricula/government-and-politics-civics-for-the-american-experiment">Government & Politics: Civics for the American Experiment</a>. BRI hosted the workshop with Game Genius, which designed the games for the curriculum.</p>
<p>BRI is also expanding our <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/state-specific-standards-alignment-tool">state standards alignment</a> workshops, where BRI staff recommend our resources to teachers that align with many of their individual states’ standards for civics education.</p>
<p>BRI plans to launch a state standards alignment tool for Arizona teachers, and at a recent workshop in Chandler, Ariz., Jenkins and Lori Rech, BRI’s regional manager of programs, shared information on BRI resources that align with the state’s standards and also introduced teachers to our curriculum for elementary school students, <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/curricula/elementary">BRI Jr.</a></p>
<p>A teacher who attended the workshop said their students “will benefit from some of the BRI primary [and] secondary sources, essays, and videos on your website that I can use with my World History units,” while another teacher learned the importance of using primary sources in their lessons , “and the need for the principles and values in social studies,” they said.</p>
<p>Rech also hosted a workshop on our Government & Politics for teachers in Henderson, N.C., last month. A teacher who attended said they “have used civic virtues lessons to open each semester with my students. Looking at how the Government units are organized [at the] Institute, it matches so well with the way our units are organized in our district frameworks. It will be easy to incorporate some lessons for each unit.”</p>
<p>“Our instructor was so knowledgeable, and she gave us practical ways to use this in our classroom,” said another teacher about Rech. “She was also charismatic in her delivery!”</p>
