Jason L. S. Raia's Biography:
Jason Raia is currently Executive Vice President of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge – a non-profit whose mission is to educate about American rights and responsibilities, honor civic virtue, and challenge all to reject apathy and get involved. He joined the organization as Vice President of Education in November 2007 after nearly twenty years educating middle and high school students in Boston.
At Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Jason has developed and implemented and civic education and history programs for elementary, middle, and high school students that help develop engaged, informed citizens who are aware of both their rights and responsibilities grounded in an understanding of the ideals of the Founding Documents and the struggle to expand of liberty throughout American history.
Jason has utilized his own experience as a teacher to benefit educators from around the country by designing professional development and graduate courses for teachers with top scholars from Philadelphia and beyond. Programs series include workshops (traveling programs to historic sites) on American Revolution, Civil War, and Presidential History, and seminars (classroom based programs) in Constitutional studies, Medal of Honor and character development, and more. Faculty have included Danielle Allen, David Eisenhower, Carol Berkin, Allen Guelzo, and many more.
After graduating cum laude from Boston College in 1993 with a degree in philosophy, Jason returned for graduate studies as a Lonergan Fellow in the history of philosophy. He also dabbled in public policy at New England College.
Beginning in 1995, Jason taught a variety of courses at the high school level, including theology, world history, leadership, and Advanced Placement US history. He served as Dean of Student Affairs at Pope John XXIII High School in Everett, Massachusetts where he also served variously as advisor to student government, yearbook, and newspaper. He coached both the varsity golf and soccer teams.
As a teacher, Jason regularly participated in summer professional development opportunities through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute. He met Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth while studying the Civil Rights Movement at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and studied with Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Kennedy at Stanford University. During the summer of 2006 Jason was named an Adams Teacher Fellow by the Massachusetts Historical Society where he spent time reading through the Adams family letters, developing a curriculum unit on 150 years of American foreign policy as witnessed by the members of a single family.
In addition to his professional educational duties, Jason serves on a number of boards for organizations in the education and history world. In his second six year stint on the Board of Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies, Jason has been involved in organizing the annual conference and is a member of the Social Studies Journal Review Panel. , For the past three years he was a trustee of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia, and will soon join the Program Committee of the newly formed Legacy Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia. As Chairman of the Board of the American Historical Theatre, he has supported the use of first-person interpretation as a valuable tool to engage history learners. He volunteers on the Board of the Joey LoRusso Memorial Fund, a family based charity that helps provide alcohol awareness programs for students.
A true soccer fanatic, Jason follows Philadelphia Union and Liverpool Football Club in England. An avid traveler, Jason is always looking forward to his next trip. When not traveling or attending a game, Jason can be found at Opera Philadelphia, attending Broadway musicals, reading at Starbucks, or playing fetch with his chocolate Labrador retriever Ulysses.
Future of Social Studies:
Social studies in Pennsylvania is experiencing an important moment. There have been years of marginalization, where time in social studies continues to be cut, and the subject in many schools has become a second class subject. Great social studies teachers across the Commonwealth have never given up, and lately it seems people have started to take notice. Every student, every person, needs a solid education in history, geography, civics, law, economics, sociology, and anthropology to understand the world in which we live.
Maybe even more, our democratic republic needs an informed citizenry to function properly. Only when young people learn to interpret current events, apply constitutional and economic principles, analyze historical lessons, and contemplate the country’s founding ideals like liberty and equality, can they begin to take up their democratic responsibilities.
Social studies teachers are the vanguard in defending our democracy. In the next few years, Pennsylvania will host the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference as well as serving as the focal point for the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration. The Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies can help to seize these moments to shine a spotlight on the great things PA social studies teachers are doing.