This four-week summer institute for K-12 school teachers of fields such as social studies/history, art, science, ESL, and Spanish language will be held in Oaxaca, Mexico, and is designed to facilitate the expanded integration of Mesoamerican cultural heritage materials, including new discoveries and the latest research, into curricular units that will appeal to a variety of learners and bring greater multicultural depth and understanding into U.S. classrooms. Our focus will be on the indigenous peoples of Mexico (with some attention to Guatemal), their societies in pre-Columbian times, under Spanish colonization, and then as communities within independent nations, up to the present time.  We will strive to understand how Native communities have persisted in the face of great efforts to change them and various processes that undermined their cultural survival. We will give special attention to archaeology, indigenous-authored manuscripts about their lives in the Spanish colonial setting, their cultural persistance and revitalization, including the arts and language.  We will also explore representations of indigenous cultures and their realities today through film.

Please consult the syllabus/calendar , the required readings (get the password from the Director), and video links.

For examples of projects developed by previous Summer Scholars, we recommend you explore the Curricular Units from 2010, 2011, and 2014. We are also developing a search interface for finding curricular materials by grade level, subject, author, and title.