This summer, the Driven 2 Teach Program — which is underwritten by the Miller Family Foundation and Zions Bank — took 65 teachers from 21 school districts on three themed trips to various sites across the country where significant events in the country’s history took place, to give them a better sense of that history.

Nick Robbins, managing director of Miller Family Services, told the Standard-Examiner that Driven 2 Teach has been around since 2007.

“It was started by Larry and Gail Miller,” Robbins said. “They had met American historian David McCullough, and after realizing they had a shared love and passion for American history is when this was launched. I think what’s really cool about it is it’s a one-of-a-kind experience that takes Utah teachers out of the classrooms and puts them in the places where American history happened.”

He added that the program is free to participants.

“We want to make sure this is accessible to any and every history teacher in the state of Utah who has interest in going and doing this,” Robbins said. “Since 2007, over 1,000 teachers have participated and impacted over 1 million students in the state of Utah.”

This year, three different tours were offered:

• “Founding People and Principles of the American Revolution,” which focused on the country’s Colonial period through the Revolutionary War and saw teachers visit sites such as Plymouth Rock, Independence Hall, and Lexington and Concord.
• “Civil War to Civil Rights,” which took participants to sites relevant to the Civil War and Civil Rights movement in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.
• “Founding Generations, Founding Principles,” which focused on the founding of the country through religion, ethnicity and slavery and focused on the mid-Atlantic states.

“Between the 65 teachers, we’d divide them up into the three different trips,” Robbins said. “When they fill out the application, they put which trip they’d like to go on and then, based on availability, what they teach and things like that, we place them in the different trips.”

He said the participants learn about each stop from experts.

“When we go there, there are content experts that work at the site who are historians who give us insight on what happened there,” he said. “In addition to that, there are two professors of American history as well as a pedagogy professor who come with us and talk to us about how to incorporate what they’ve learned in the classroom. They fill in the gaps, give additional insight or give insight into things students would find interesting.”

Among those who participated this year was Emily Hewett, an eighth grade U.S. history teacher at Willowcreek Middle School in Lehi.

Hewett told the Standard-Examiner she was on the “Founding People and Principles of the American Revolution” trip.

“Teaching the first half of U.S. history, we are on the opposite side of the country from where all that happened,” she said. “It’s not like I can just take my kids to a park and say, ‘Hey, this is where the first battle of the Revolutionary War happened.’ That’s just not possible, but for me to be able to go out and have a full week of just one-on-one experiences with primary sources in the exact place where things went down was really eye-opening and awe-inspiring.”

Larry Bohne, a fifth grade history teacher at Liberty Elementary School in Ogden, also was on the “Founding People and Principles of the American Revolution” trip this year.

“Looking at the itinerary, I knew this was going to be the history teacher’s dream trip,” he told the Standard-Examiner. “It was amazing being in the places where these historical events occurred.”

Robbins said going to the sites where history happened does something simply reading about them can’t.

“By experiencing the moments of American history in the locations and sites where they took place, it really adds an element of humanity to the experience,” he said. “Participants are able to call upon all of their senses to better synthesize what happened and to gain an understanding of the people who are connected to these events.”

Hewett said it was an impactful trip that even broadened her understanding of places she’d been before.

“Being there is extremely meaningful if you know where you are,” she said. “I actually, during my undergrad, took a similar trip out to Philadelphia and then D.C., but I didn’t do much study before. So when I was in Philadelphia seeing all of these extremely historic sites, it just didn’t have much power for me versus this year. I went back to the same city I was in before, saw very similar things. But because not only had I taught a full year, because Driven 2 Teach supplied us with — I think I read seven books and I prepared a lesson plan on a specific aspect of the history that we were learning about. All of that work I put in and having taught a full year, those places really came to life for me in a way they didn’t when I visited them before.”

Bohne said having an in-person experience with these sites will help instill the students he teaches with a stronger interest in events of the past.

“It’s going to help history come more alive for my students,” he said. “One, it’ll have some credibility. ‘Oh, Mr. Bohne was there. This thing actually did happen.’ It will also lend to the storytelling of history, which I think is so important for all age groups, but especially for fifth graders. They need to be invested in the story of history to get excited about it. As I’ve been able to go to these places and see where these people walked and lived and I have pictures of myself in those places, then that story becomes more real for them. And as I’m able to visualize it and recreate that environment for them, then they can picture it themselves and hopefully grow to love history and see the importance of it.”

Robbins said, ultimately, a program like Driven 2 Teach enhances both the lives of the teachers who participate and their students.

“It enhances the lives of not just the educators who are going on these trips, but in turn, their students as they take what they’ve learned back to the classroom,” he said. “The hope is that those students will then use what they learn in the classroom from their teachers to enhance the lives of those that they interact with. It’s just a continuation of what we call the virtuous cycle of giving back.”