This collection of segments taken from KET’s Kentucky Life provides opportunities for students to learn about the lives of unique businessmen and women living in Kentucky.

Program of Studies
Social Studies: Economics
Practical Living/Vocational Studies: Career Awareness, Exploration, and Planning

A 12-year-old girl named Lizzie discovers who veterans are, what they have done, and why they should be honored in this half-hour video. Along the way, she also learns about the importance of certain rights and responsibilities to individuals, families, communities, states, and the nation. Four veterans tell their stories, and the program concludes with a Veterans Day parade.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Society, Historical Perspectives

This multimedia civics project outlines the fundamental principles of democracy, explains the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship, and uses stories of real young people from around the country to illustrate getting involved in community issues. Programs 1-4 are designed for grades 2-4, while Programs 5-8 are for grades 6-10. All of the programs, along with the accompanying online materials and teaching guides, are directly aligned with national cross-curricular standards.

Program of Studies
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Society

Delivered in an entertaining style, this series uses contemporary and archival footage and computer graphics to provide a fresh approach to the study of civics.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Historical Perspectives

Delivered in an entertaining style, this series uses contemporary and archival footage and computer graphics to provide a fresh approach to the study of civics.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Historical Perspectives

Students learn about the juvenile justice system, the role of the court-designated worker, the diversion process, and the formal court system in this two-part special.

In a special video edition of National Public Radio’s Justice Talking, Margot Adler hosts a debate on “Free Speech in the Digital Age” from the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives. Adler and her guests look at censorship in libraries, censorship of textbooks, and censorship on the Internet and examine the reasons for both safeguarding and limiting speech, including protection of minors and community safety, ensuring a free marketplace of ideas, and guaranteeing democratic institutions. The panelists are First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams; Jack Valenti, past president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America; and Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig.

The hour-long program is a presentation of Justice Learning, a collaboration among National Public Radio, the New York Times Learning Network, and other partners. Justice Talking: Free Speech in the Digital Age and another Justice Learning production, Conversations with Supreme Court Justices, were developed to help schools meet the requirement of creating lessons for the annual Constitution Day observance in September.

This series, hosted by Bill Moyers, increases students’ understanding and awareness of the U.S. Constitution as a vital part of the American heritage and of their own lives. Each program features a dramatic episode in which constitutional law directly affects teenagers. The programs show the dynamism that enables the Constitution to adapt as our country changes, the structure that balances constitutional powers and rights, and the critical thinking skills demanded of young people as citizens and learners.

This program recounts the demand for a bill of rights, voiced by Jefferson and Madison, and Madison’s struggle against an unwilling Congress to attach such amendments to the new Constitution. Through the eyes of these founders, engaged in the fight to secure our rights, the program looks at the Bill of Rights issues that confront the nation today—religion in the classroom, the death penalty, civil rights. How would the founders have viewed these issues? How well has the document adapted to contemporary American society? Does the Bill of Rights secure, as Madison hoped it would, “the blessings of liberty”?

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Historical Perspectives

Online and DVD resources explore Abraham Lincoln’s life in Kentucky. “Lincoln: The Kentucky Years” is a 14-minute video that focuses on Lincoln’s early life in Kentucky and Kentucky’s influence on his personality, values, and accomplishments. The DVD was created from the 90-minute KET documentary, “Lincoln: I, too, am a Kentuckian.” Both DVDs are available from KET. The Lincoln on KET web site provides an array of resources that can be integrated in social studies classes at all grade levels.

Web Site Contents:

• Video and Audio Segments — 31 short video and two audio segments from KET productions explore various aspects of Lincoln’s life and career and include excerpts from some of his most famous speeches, read by actor Sam Waterston. Other segments take students to Camp Nelson, the Civil War military cemetery, and the Mary Todd Lincoln House and introduce them to sculptors Ed Hamilton and Robert Berks, who both have been inspired by Lincoln and his legacy.
• Student Features — An illustrated timeline includes significant events in Lincoln’s life as well as what was going on in the nation, the world, and Kentucky. “FAQs (Fascinating Abe Questions)” reveals interesting trivia about the 16th president. The “Abe Across Kentucky” interactive quiz offers a fun way for students to connect Lincoln’s life to people and places in Kentucky. When questions are answered correctly, Lincoln’s top hat grows and students hear an excerpt from the Gettysburg Address.
• K-12 Lesson Plans — 19 lesson plans and idea cards incorporating Lincoln video segments offer engaging ideas for teaching about Lincoln.

KET’s Lincoln resources were supported in part by a grant from the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Kentucky Historical Society.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Societies, Historical Perspective

Teach American history from east to west in the new Electronic Field Trip season from Colonial Williamsburg. The interactive lessons bring Native Americans, the authors of the Constitution, settlers, explorers, enslaved Africans, young Americans, and conservators to your classroom. Visit the History & Education section of the Colonial Williamsburg web site for a wide variety of classroom resources.

Teachers who register for the field trips receive extended taping rights as well as access to accompanying classroom materials.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Historical Perspectives

In the 1800s, before and after the Civil War, about 15,000 freed American slaves immigrated to Africa. This Kentucky Life special traces the ex-slaves’ journey from Kentucky to Liberia, West Africa. As they arrived in Africa, they formed their own independent county, “Little America” as some called it. They named their towns after American places such as “Kentucky in Africa” and “Clay-Ashland.” These towns are still there today, and in many ways, the population lives like Americans. Much of the story of this historic relationship is told through the words of people from the period, such as Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, and Alfred Russell, a president of Liberia from Kentucky.

Additional information and links to various resources related to Liberia and the colonization movement can be found on the Kentucky Life web site.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Cultures and Society, Geography, Historical Perspectives

Kentucky’s location on the border of slave and nonslave states and its unique geography as the only state surrounded on three sides by rivers, created opportunities for people who were willing to risk their lives to live in freedom and those willing to risk everything to help them. KET’s documentary, Kentucky’s Underground Railroad – Passage to Freedom, tells the stories of fugitive slaves and anti-slavery advocates in Kentucky.

The Kentucky Ungerground Railroad web site includes a brief history of slavery in Kentucky; teacher resources; audio and video segments from the documentary, including additional footage not seen in the broadcast; and a discussion forum. The web site promotes historical preservation and community research to document more stories of the fugitive slave movement in Kentucky. In addition, it includes arts and humanities resources and discussion questions.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Geography, Historical Perspectives

Through interviews with women leaders, primary documents, and brief biographical sketches, this documentary encourages young people to become more committed to Kentucky’s political process by volunteering as grass-roots advocates and to consider futures as office holders. The program inspires interest in Kentucky history, focusing particularly on the achievements of women, and promotes the values of citizenship and public service by documenting the progress of women in positions of community leadership and elected office.

This revision of Portraits of American Presidents — which focuses on individual Presidents’ influence on the historical events of their eras — shortens each program to correlate better with classroom units of study, provides better graphic details in maps, omits on-camera commentators, and adds two programs: 1. “The Making of America’s Presidency,” and 17. “G.H.W. Bush, Clinton & G.W. Bush.”

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Society, Historical Perspectives

George Rogers Clark was a Revolutionary War hero and the founder of Louisville. One of his younger brothers, William, was the Clark of Lewis and Clark. Their sister, Lucy Clark Croghan, ran the family home at Locust Grove, a gathering place for the prominent political and social figures of the early 19th century.

The Remarkable Clarks, a 2002 KET production, tells the story of this Kentucky founding family through dramatizations of pivotal incidents in their lives. It was created and staged at Locust Grove in Louisville to commemorate both the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the 250th anniversary of George Rogers Clark’s birth. Principal performers are Mandy Dick, Mel Hankla, and Bob Pilkington.

In addition to bringing early Kentucky history to life, this docudrama offers a unique performance for students to analyze and evaluate and a model for integrating the arts into the social studies classroom through dramatizations of historical events.

During the 1950s and ’60s, profound legal and social changes took place in Kentucky and across America as a result of the civil rights movement. This documentary is designed to give a feel for the times, to explain some of the issues that were particularly important in Kentucky, and to inspire young people by showing how people their age have made a difference in society.

To facilitate classroom use, the hour-long video is divided into segments that may be viewed separately. Related biographies, a historical timeline, and lesson plans written by Kentucky teachers for various grade levels, including connections to Program of Studies in social studies, can be found at the KET web site developed by KET.

Living the Story is a 2001 production of Video Editing Services, Lexington, and the Kentucky Oral History Commission of the Kentucky Historical Society. Extended versions of interviews with participants in the documentary are available in the Living the Story: The Rest of the Story series.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Cultures and Societies, Historical Perspectives

These 14 one-hour programs contain extended interviews with Kentuckians featured in the documentary Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. In unedited one-on-one conversations taped for a Kentucky Oral History Commission project, these eyewitnesses to history tell their own moving stories of life under segregation and of the struggle for racial equality in Kentucky and in America.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Cultures and Societies, Historical Perspectives
Arts and Humanities: Purposes for Creating the Arts

In the late 1930s, during the Great Depression, the U.S. government created the Federal Writers’ Project and put writers and researchers to work conducting oral history interviews with thousands of ordinary Americans from all walks of life. Immigrants and businessmen, Southern farmers and Northern meatpackers, out-of-work laborers and New Deal relief workers all told the stories of their lives and experiences. American Voices combines powerful human narratives from the Writers’ Project archives with historical film and photographs to provide a compelling, personal history of the first decades of the 20th century.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Society, Historical Perspectives

This series provides insight into the major historical events of the 20th century. Each program blends archival footage and interviews to give students a unique look at the momentous occurrences of the period.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Government and Civics, Cultures and Society, Historical Perspectives

Where the River Bends: A History of Northern Kentucky, KET’s three-hour documentary history of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties, traces the rich history of the northernmost tip of Kentucky, exploring such broad themes as the region’s evolving ethnic mix, its complex relationships with the rest of Kentucky and with Cincinnati across the river, and how both natural forces and human engineering have continually reshaped its economy and culture.

Students will hear the stories of the people who helped define the Northern Kentucky we know today—the explorers and entrepreneurs, slaves and abolitionists, Natives and immigrants, and gangsters and reformers.

The timeline for Where the River Bends begins some 10,000 years ago, when Paleo-Indian settlements developed along the receding southern edge of the glacier that then covered much of North America. The programs then follow Northern Kentucky’s fortunes through the early settlement period and the Indian wars, waves of immigration and backlash against immigrants, the slavery era and the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, flood and Depression, Newport’s “Sin City” era, and the riverfront revitalization projects of the late 20th century.

America Past introduces the people and places important to the social and cultural history of America. The historic sites that retain the influences of the United States' social history provide the locations for tracing this country's development from the founding of the 13 original colonies to the conditions that led to the Civil War. The series enhances American history courses by providing clear connections to the curriculum, extending and enriching typical textbook content, and highlighting personal experiences and dramatic events.

Program of Studies:
Social Studies: Cultures of Society, Geography, Historical Perspectives
Arts and Humanities: Humanity in the Arts