Texas Trip Post #2 - The L.B.J. (Lyndon Johnson) Presidential Museum and Library in Austin

You will hear this periodically - there is a reason I titled this website (and blog) "ECON and More". While I've spent the last 8 years of my life focused on professional development in economics, personal finance, and business - the previous 25 years before that was teaching middle school social studies (and math). That meant a LOT of areas of social studies . . . and always looking for connections between history, geography, civics, economics, financial literacy, and a number of other subjects. And - I just like learning (and seeing) new stuff!

Last week I was in Austin and San Antonio, Texas (and the surrounding area) doing some work, and was reminded of several previous trips to Texas both for family reunions (on my wife's side) and of several PD conferences and classes taken at the University of Texas in Austin. I had planned to do a quick drive through campus on Saturday before my flight home, but it turned out they were hosting a big basketball game early that afternoon at the Moody Center (which had a lot of streets closed temporarily while they directed fans to the parking lots). So an aerial view from elevated I-35 had to suffice.

Anyway, there were two programs I was able to apply for at UT-Austin during my teaching days to offset the lack of PD sessions in the Rocky Mountain region. One I attended several times was the Hemispheres International Outreach Consortium Summer Teaching Institute - that's a program jointly sponsored by several of the foreign studies programs at UT to help K-12 teachers incorporate more cultural connections into their classes. A favorite one I still remember was 4 days on the history and culture behind world foods - learning about the cultural and economic significance of certain foods in specific areas of the world and (in a few cases) having local restaurants in the Austin area come in to do a presentation and food sampling during a session. While the Hemispheres program is still in existence, they struggled during the pandemic and as far as I can tell have not been offering the summer programs in person the past few years, which is really too bad in a time we could use more cultural awareness in schools.

The other one I wanted to focus on in this post is the L.B.J. (Lyndon Baines Johnson) Presidential Library and Museum, which is located on the south end of the UT-Austin campus. They usually host a week-long summer institute for teachers that is connected in some way to the time period of L.B.J. (but not always directly to him). Last summer they did a week on Historical Memories of Military Service (which obviously connected to the Vietnam War among others), but the previous summer they did a week on American Music and Culture, connected to a travelling exhibit they had at the museum on “Music America: Iconic Objects from America’s Music History”. The one I did many years ago was on foreign policy during the Cold War, and allowed me to expand some of my postwar units with new lessons and research I did at the library while I was there.

In a post last year I mentioned the Truman Presidential Museum in the Kansas City area and that they had just reopened after a big renovation project. In this case, the L.B.J. Museum is trying to stay open during a similar renovation project, but the place is pretty torn up and a lot of portions are unavailable to the public right now. So like the earlier post, I am going to focus on what I think is the bigger value for teachers - the wealth of primary source materials available from his administration, as well as education resources regularly available online. Here are a few you might want to look at . . .

General Information:

Basic link to the Presidential Library and Museum - https://www.lbjlibrary.org/

A Permanent Gallery Virtual Tour (if you can't get there, or during the construction) - https://www.lbjlibrary.org/exhibits/online-exhibitions/permanent-gallery-virtual-tour

Education Center for the library - https://www.lbjlibrary.org/educate

The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park (focuses on his early life in Texas) - https://www.nps.gov/lyjo/index.htm

Lyndon B. Johnson State Park & Historic Site - https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/lyndon-b-johnson

More Specific Resources You Might Want to Make Use Of:

Archival collections at the LBJ Library. The biggest portion of this collection is based on the daily diaries of both Lyndon Johnson and the First Lady (Lady Bird Johnson). https://discoverlbj.org/loh

Teacher Lesson Plan collection - If you prefer to work with something already developed, the library has a pretty good collection of K-12 lesson plans (mostly HS, but middle school and elementary are covered as well). This list is ordered by intended grade level, then alphabetical by lesson title - https://www.lbjlibrary.org/educate/curriculum-resources

Lesson Plans from the LBJ National Historical Park (main site listed above) - Three specific lessons listed there - an elementary lesson on frontier life in the Texas Hill Country (for LBJ's early life) and two secondary lessons on environmental and civil rights issues of his presidency - https://www.nps.gov/lyjo/learn/education/index.htm

"What the Hell is the Presidency For?" (video), History Channel, Jun 2016 - Originally broadcast on the History Channel, the LBJ Museum now has exclusive control of the video recording and student viewing guide, available for free download on their website - https://www.lbjlibrary.org/news-and-press/press-releases/what-hell-presidency-lbjs-battle-civil-rights-premieres-history (press release for the initial release with information about the video) AND https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ifo57twe5e18oby/AACpfwZpyZ-mj-g0sqQC9xvaa?dl=0 (link to the video and student viewing guide)

"American Experience: LBJ" (video from "The Presidents" series), PBS, Oct 1991 - Includes a number of primary sources that can be used with portions of the video - https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lbj/