Barat Education Foundation,
Lake Forest, IL
Maintaining the educational tradition of Barat College and the Religious of the Sacred Heart, the Barat Education Foundation develops and seeks support for innovative scholarships and entrepreneurial educational ventures that reflect empowerment of women, increased social awareness that impels to action, and the building of community and citizens.
Barat’s work with the Teaching with Primary Sources program has provided a bridge to help public and private schools improve teaching practices through essential questions and primary sources, while they learn to utilize technology and its ability to engage and sustain student learning. Barat has been active with the TPS Consortium, including the Adventure of the American Mind pilot program, since 2004. Barat has worked with more than 1000 teachers, and more than 25,000 students have used the program’s primary source projects.
Throughout its programs, the Barat Education Foundation uses primary sources to make history personal and integrates technology to bring action and engagement to learning. Each year, a new team of teachers collaborates to create student projects that can be used in classrooms across Illinois, and the country. The projects range from an early-reader workbook on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, to primary source-based online newspapers about historical events, to interactive games that teach the fundamentals of American Government and the Constitution. Access any of these projects, or others, via the Web site at www.Barat-TPS.org.
Barat’s current focus is to merge several proven primary source projects with new activities to create an after-school program that increases citizen engagement in youth. The program features an online learning community, web-based modules for individualized student learning, interactive web-based games and learning resources for educators. The program will pilot in approximately seven sites beginning Fall 2008, and will be available to adopt in other schools as of Fall 2009. For more information, please call 847-574-2465.