Michele Connors, a local teacher from Pleasant Valley Middle School, has been selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 48 summer seminars and institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities and cultural institutions so teachers can study with experts in humanities disciplines.

Connors, of Weatherly, will participate in a summer institute titled “Freedom and Unity: The Struggle for Independence on the Vermont Frontier.”

This participatory, place-based program focuses on the events and personalities of the American Revolution at seven historic sites in Vermont’s Champlain Valley, including innovative sessions held on Lake Champlain in a replica Revolutionary-era gunboat.

Participants will follow a route from a yeoman Vermonter’s 18th century homestead to war, and back again. Along the way, they will encounter the landscapes, artifacts, sites and primary sources that allow students to engage with the multiple stories and competing worldviews of frontier Vermont - and to relate them to the persisting tensions between rural and urban communities across contemporary America.

The program is directed by Angela Marie Labrador and Jason Barney through the Vermont Archaeological Society.

The 72 teachers selected to participate in the program each receive a stipend of $1,300 for their participation.