Information for Teachers

Teaching about the Pilgrims is fraught with difficulties, due to the fact that there are so many myths and misconceptions about them that have become engrained into popular culture. Teachers also have had very limited access to accurate historical information. The Internet itself is littered with poorly-researched "Thanksgiving" lesson plans and web sites.

The Fourth World Documentation Project, for example, put out a lesson plan in 1986, which has found itself onto the Internet, where it is now widely available. This lesson plan is so poorly researched, and the facts so clearly wrong, that I have dedicated an entire page to factually debunking it.

Most elementary school teachers will dedicate at least a few days around Thanksgiving to teaching about the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. Even though much of MayflowerHistory.com is written for an adult audience (historians and genealogists), you should be able to get a lot of useful information from the History section of the website which is more oriented towards teachers and students.

MayflowerHistory.com also contains short biographies and genealogical information on every Mayflower passenger, which can be useful to students and teachers who want to learn about or study specific Mayflower passengers.

High school teachers will probably be more interested in pages dealing with social and political issues, so I would recommend the Crime and Punishment and Religious Beliefs pages as starting points for discussion. Also, higher level students should be introduced to some of the writings of the Mayflower passengers. The full texts of most everything written by a Mayflower passenger can be found on MayflowerHistory.com under the Full Text Primary Sources link on the side menu. The all-time classic is Governor William Bradford's History Of Plymouth Plantation, popular at the high school and collegiate level; but students might get more enjoyment reading the first-hand "explorer journal" style account found in Mourt's Relation.

And if you can't find it on MayflowerHistory.com, I am available to answer questions--see the Contact MayflowerHistory.com page for my contact information.