Heritage Education is the use of local cultural and historic resources for teaching the required curricula of Pre-Kindergarten thru 12^th grade.* Interdisciplinary activities and lesson plans focus on historic structures, archeological sites, and cultural landscapes and combine components such as documents, photographs, living traditions, history, artifacts, maps, and oral history to help students learn to appreciate and value cultural resources as treasures of their shared heritage. 

*Hankins, Caneta S. Focus on 2000: A Heritage Education Perspective.  Murfreesboro: Middle Tennessee State University, 1997. 

Heritage Education Initiative

The National Park Service is committed to sponsoring a sustained national dialogue with our youngest citizens about our prehistory and history, about the culturally diverse peoples who made it happen, and about the places where it all happened.  By establishing the Heritage Education Initiative, NPS’s goal is to instill a sense of stewardship for America’s cultural resources in the nation’s grade-, middle-, and high school-age students. Ultimately, the effects of the Initiative will be long-term and long lasting, as generations of children aware of the significance of their cultural resources grow into responsible adults who seek to conserve them. Once developed and tested, the model will be used as a basis for similar efforts in other states throughout the South and the nation.

Using cultural resources information as content for lessons can be educational, exciting and fun while still meeting curriculum standards, benchmarks, and foundation skills. 

Heritage Education – Louisiana

The Heritage Education Initiative is piloted as Heritage Education – Louisiana, a program developed by teachers for teachers.  Classroom teachers, preservation specialists, and education specialists were and continue to be consulted to ensure that the program meets preservation ethics and provides professional development for teachers in innovative and evolving educational theology and techniques. 

Meeting the needs of classroom teachers who must not only cover curriculum standards and benchmarks, but must also consider high-stakes testing, Heritage Education – Louisiana aids teachers in creating integrated lessons and activities that use local, cultural resources such as archeological sites, historic structures, and cultural landscapes as the foundation.

Workshops, Mini Grants, the newly created website, and quarterly newsletters are avenues by which Heritage Education – Louisiana meets its goals of

• Enhancing and enriching Pre-Kindergarten through 12^th grade curriculum;
• Instilling a sense of cultural stewardship to tomorrow’s leaders; and
• Serving as a national model for other states.