Paul Revere Memorial Association Corp.

To engage families in history we provide interactive programs that range from colonial music to demonstrations of colonial crafts and from story telling to reenactments.These programs encourage inter-generational communication as families learn together by interacting with each other and with our presenters.

Workshops are a valuable and cost-effective means of helping teachers teach historical content mandated by the Massachusetts Frameworks for History and Social Sciences and English Language Arts. Curriculum frameworks for social studies, teacher and student testing, and new certification standards for teachers in Massachusetts have created a demand by school systems and teachers for training opportunities. Working directly with teachers increases exponentially the potential impact of our mission. By reaching teachers who will reach thousands of students over the course of their careers, we serve far more students than we could ever accommodate at our site. In the last few years, we have offered programs that have focused on a number of topics: Boston Loyalists; using children's literature to enhance study of the Revolution; Rachel Revere's activities during the Revolutionary era; and colonial crafts and trades. These programs help to introduce teachers to a wide range of resources - historic sites, historians, publications, artifacts, and techniques that are effective for teaching history. Teachers are shown how to use role-playing, object identification and storytelling in the classroom. Our goal is to offer teachers a richer, more complex view of the Revolutionary period to share with their students. One of our goals in presenting teacher workshops is to introduce teachers to local living history performers and scholars whose areas of expertise relate to their curricula. Workshops are often done in partnership with other historic sites which helps to introduce teachers to the wealth of resources available in Greater Boston.Through our agreement with Framingham State, teacher can gain PDPs or graduate credit.

We maintain a robust web presence that serves audiences in search of basic tourist information as well as those seeking content-rich historical information. Our site is heavily used by teachers looking for resources and schoolchildren working on school projects. Currently we are exploring ways to use the Internet more effectively, both to market our offerings but also to expand our audience via remote access to resources and programs.

Our core programs are interpretive tours of our two historic houses -- the Paul Revere House (c.1680) and Hichborn House (c.1711) -- and interactive educational programs designed to acquaint our visitors with Boston history. Both houses contain remnants of many periods, originally functioning as private residences and eventually as cramped tenement apartments. By interpreting our buildings as reflections of the changing history of the North End, we are able to focus on the lives of ALL the residents of our houses. We also maintain and exhibit a significant collection which includes 2,000 artifacts and documents (furnishings, 18th-c artifacts owned or made by Paul Revere, items which reflect Revere's folk legacy, and the history of the North End), 800 photographs and genealogical materials. While 50% of the collection is on exhibit, sensitive objects are rotate off display for conservation reasons.