Jesse Breite, Upper School English teacher, has been selected as an National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool. Selected teachers will attend one of seventeen NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops. Breite will participate in a workshop entitled “The Most Southern Place On Earth: Music, Culture and History of the Mississippi Delta.” The one week program will be held at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. The teachers selected to participate each receive a stipend to help cover the cost of the workshop.
“I’m interested in the workshop because Delta culture has had a pervasive effect on American identity. Many of the writers we study in American Literature have been influenced by, or are derived, from Delta culture,” said Breite. “Through the workshop, I plan to reconsider how I teach Southern authors and literature. I also hope to find some interdisciplinary connections that I can use and reference in class.”
The NEH Summer Scholar Program offers a wide array of workshops for teachers on topics such as Abraham Lincoln, the American skyscraper, and America’s Industrial Revolution of Henry Ford. The National Endowment for the Humanities is a federal agency that each year supports summer study opportunities so that teachers can work with experts in humanities disciplines.