Teaching the Declaration of Independence with hashtags 250 years later

Jessica Culver teaches her students to understand history with hashtags. It is one of the innovative ways the social studies teacher engages her classes of 11th and 12th grade students in rural Ozarks while studying a 250-year-old subject: the Declaration of Independence. Culver, who has taught civic education for more than a decade, asks her students to think about the revolutionary period through the modern-day lens of social media. A student wrote the tweet, "The DOI has been approved! #newcountry #finallyfree" to mark the excitement felt in the colonies after the ratification of the founding document. "How would we tell people about it if we were posting on social media? If you were making a TikTok about the Boston Tea Party, what would you say?" Culver said she would ask her students at Ozark High School in Arkansas as they learned about the events that led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She said it helps create a connection to past events that still shape our lives today. A copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed by Robert Luist Fowle in July 1776. Joe Frederick / AP As the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July Fourth, educators, civic organizations, leaders and citizens are finding ways to engage Americans around the signing of the document, which guaranteed the new nation's freedoms. …