GRATEFUL AMERICAN FOUNDATION EMPOWERS ADLIT.ORG CONTENT WITH NEW BLOG ON AMERICAN IDENTITY

Grateful American Foundation Founder and President David Bruce Smith and WETA President and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller announced today that through the support of the foundation, the literacy website AdLit.org is expanding with new content celebrating the American experience as Jessica Lander has been named teacher blogger for the new AdLit.org blog Making History. In each entry, Lander shares her experience bringing history to life while supporting her immigrant-origin students’ development as readers, writers, thinkers, and community changemakers.

“The Grateful American Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm about American history for young people and adults alike and is delighted to welcome Jessica Lander to help us reach this audience in a new and exciting way,” said Smith.                                                                                                              

“I am thankful to David and the Grateful American Foundation for partnering with AdLit.org to expand our storytelling,” said Rockefeller. “The foundation’s commitment to fostering an interest in our country’s complex past is inspiring and will offer a compelling path to a lifelong love of history.”

Lander is an award-winning teacher, writer, and author who teaches history and civics to recent immigrant students in a Massachusetts public high school. She has won numerous awards, including being named a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2021 and was a Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Finalist in 2022. Lander writes frequently about education policy and teaching. She is the author of “Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education,” “Driving Backwards,” and co-author of “Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher’s Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success.”

In the new blog Making History, Lander will share her innovative classroom projects and instructional approaches that encourage students to add their experiences and perspectives to the American story.

ABOUT ADLIT.ORG

AdLit.org is a national multimedia project that provides educators and families with resources to support adolescent readers and writers. This is the second year WETA and The Grateful American Book Prize have partnered with AdLit.org on “Unlocking the Past” which celebrates careful reading, critical thinking, thoughtful debate, and learning about life in earlier times. It also gives teachers tools to prompt their students into thinking, questioning, and behaving like historians. For more information about this and other initiatives visit: //www.adlit.org/ and https://gratefulamericanfoundation.org/.

ABOUT WETA

WETA is the leading public broadcaster in the nation’s capital, serving Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia with educational initiatives and high-quality programming on television, radio, and digital. WETA Washington, D.C. is the second-largest producing station for public television in the United States, with news and public affairs programs including PBS NewsHour, PBS News Weekend, and Washington Week; films by Ken Burns such as The U.S. and the Holocaust and the forthcoming film The American Buffalo; series and documentaries by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., including Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Making Black America: Through the Grapevine; performance specials including The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, National Memorial Day Concert, and A Capitol Fourth; and health content from Well Beings, a multiplatform campaign. More information on WETA along with its programs and services are available at weta.org. Visit facebook.com/wetatvfm on Facebook or follow @WETAtvfm on Twitter.

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