School will soon begin. Make an effort to identify the most respected and innovative teacher of American history in your community. Get suggestions from students and faculty.  Find the grade 5-12 teacher who brings American history to life and excites students to understand our country’s past. Nominate this person for the DAR Outstanding Teacher of American History Award and honor this individual at a chapter meeting. Nomination forms, available on the NSDAR members’ website, are due to this officer by or before December 1, 2012.

Throughout the year, please take pictures, clip news articles, and collect mementos to help document the activities of our state regent. Label them carefully – identifying date, event, people, and chapter involved so that this information may be included in the State Regent’s History Book, providing a pictorial account of CSSDAR history for 2012-2014. Send the information in a timely manner to Wanda Prosser, State Regent’s History Book Chairman, at wprosser@cox.net.

As you plan your chapter meeting agendas, consider allowing time for an “American History Minute.” Select a committee chairman or assign individuals to share insightful information about an event in history from that month; delve into historical events in your own community or chapter; begin a study of the California Missions and give consideration to marking one in your area. There will be more information about this in the near future. Share a book review of a particularly noteworthy literary contribution in the field of American history. Actively encourage members to learn more about our past, helping us all to understand where we came from…how we got to where we are…and where we might be in the future.

Adele Lancaster
State Historian
historian@californiadar.org