Past Institutes

Professional Development Webinars (2020)

An Introduction to DocsTeach for 8th Grade History Teachers

Tuesday, April 21, 2020
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CT
Join Humanities Texas and the National Archives for an introduction to DocsTeach.org, an online tool for teaching with documents. Discover how to find primary sources and online activities for teaching the Civil War and Reconstruction in your classroom. Explore the twelve different document-based activity tools and learn how, with a free DocsTeach account, you can create your own activities or modify existing activities to share with your students.

An Introduction to DocsTeach for 11th Grade History Teachers

Thursday, April 23, 2020
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CT
Join Humanities Texas and the National Archives for an introduction to DocsTeach.org, an online tool for teaching with documents. Discover how to find primary sources and online activities for teaching U.S. History since 1970 in your classroom. Explore the twelve different document-based activity tools and learn how, with a free DocsTeach account, you can create your own activities or modify existing activities to share with your students.

A Civil Rights Investigation: Mississippi Burning

Tuesday, May 12, 2020
1:00–2:00 p.m. CT
LBJ Presidential Library Education Specialist Mallory Lineberger will guide teachers through one of the Library’s popular lesson plans for high school teachers, A Civil Rights Investigation: Mississippi Burning. In this activity, students investigate the disappearance of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964 using telephone conversations, oral histories, and documents from the LBJ Presidential Library archives as evidence to solve the case. This lesson has been transformed into an online investigation, ideal for independent and virtual learning settings.

Teaching with Texas Originals

Thursday, May 14, 2020
1:00–2:00 p.m. CT
Join Humanities Texas for a webinar on using our Texas Originals radio program with your students. Developed in partnership with Houston Public Media, Texas Originals is a radio series profiling individuals who have had a profound influence upon Texas history and culture. Texas Originals episodes are broadcast on public radio stations throughout the state and available on the Humanities Texas website and on iTunes. Former teacher and Humanities Texas Outstanding Teaching Award winner Signe Fourmy will discuss ways to creatively incorporate Texas Originals into your curriculum throughout the year as well as ideas for remote, end-of-the-year assignments using Texas Originals.

Teaching the First Amendment with Resources from the National Constitution Center

Wednesday, June 3, 2020
1:00–2:00 p.m. CT
Join Mike Adams, director of education at the National Constitution Center, for a webinar that introduces educators to the Center’s First Amendment Plan of Study. Created to support middle and high school-level learners, the plan of study features videos, lesson plans, reading materials, and more to help students build deep understandings of the history and changing interpretations of fundamental American freedoms—religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition—and to help them grapple with questions we face about these rights today. The webinar features time for Q&A about ways to incorporate the materials into instruction.

Teaching the Fourteenth Amendment with Resources from the National Constitution Center

Thursday, June 4, 2020
1:00–2:00 p.m. CT
Join Mike Adams, director of education at the National Constitution Center, for a webinar that highlights Fourteenth Amendment educational resources—including the Drafting Table, which allows users to compare versions of the amendment as it made its way through Congress; video clips from the Center’s theatrical performance FOURTEEN, featuring two actors bringing the amendment’s story to life with dialogue drawn directly from primary sources; essays from the Interactive Constitution about the meaning of the amendment today; student-friendly videos with scholars Eric Foner, Jeffrey Rosen, and Tomiko Brown-Nagin; and more. 

Introduction to Reading Like a Historian with the Stanford History Education Group

Tuesday, June 30, 2020
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CT
Join staff from the Stanford History Education Group for an introduction to their free Reading Like a Historian curriculum. During this interactive workshop, participants will complete a model lesson, explore the curriculum's design principles, and learn about the research upon which the curriculum is based. There will be a particular focus on how to teach historical inquiry in an online setting. This workshop is designed for teachers of grades 5–12. The online workshop is limited to 100 participants. 

Using Art in the Literature Classroom

Wednesday, July 1, 2020
2:00–3:00 p.m. CT
Join art educator Stacy Fuller for a webinar that provides strategies on how to engage students and support state and national teaching standards by incorporating artworks into the literature classroom. Discover how art and literature have been intertwined throughout history, and learn how to use artworks to teach character, setting, plot, mood, and point of view. Participating educators will receive supplementary materials, including digital images and classroom activities. The material can be easily adapted for a variety of grade levels, and no prior art history experience is required.

Using Art in the History Classroom

Thursday, July 2, 2020
2:00–3:00 p.m. CT
Join art educator Stacy Fuller for a webinar that provides strategies on how to engage students and support state and national teaching standards by incorporating artworks into the U.S. history classroom. Consider how an artist’s choices and possible intentions and biases impact how we can interpret their works as historical documents. Participating educators will receive supplementary materials, including digital images and classroom activities. The material can be easily adapted for 8th- and 11th-grade U.S. history courses, and no prior art history experience is required. 

Introduction to Reading Like a Historian with the Stanford History Education Group

Tuesday, July 14, 2020
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CT
Join staff from the Stanford History Education Group for an introduction to their free Reading Like a Historian curriculum. During this interactive workshop, participants will complete a model lesson, explore the curriculum's design principles, and learn about the research upon which the curriculum is based. There will be a particular focus on how to teach historical inquiry in an online setting. This workshop is designed for teachers of grades 5–12. The online workshop is limited to 100 participants.

Teaching Film in the ELA Classroom: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of Anne Frank

Monday, July 20, 2020
10:00–11:00 a.m. CT
Join UT Austin professor Donna Kornhaber for an introduction to incorporating film in the middle-school ELA classroom. Dr. Kornhaber will focus on popular film adaptations of two works commonly taught at the middle-school level: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of Anne Frank. The webinar will introduce new skills in both film literacy and literary close reading, helping teachers and students alike to approach film in a new way.

The Great Gatsby: Literature, Film, and Adaptation in the High School Classroom

Monday, July 27, 2020
10:00–11:00 a.m. CT
Join UT Austin professor Donna Kornhaber for a discussion of how to help students examine The Great Gatsby on page and screen. Look closely at how different film versions have approached this classic novel in distinctive ways, and practice the skills of visual analysis that bring film adaptations alive for students. By learning to help students master film literacy using the tools discussed in this webinar, teachers can also help students strengthen their powers of literary close reading.

Webinar Series: Reading Like a Historian Curriculum with the Stanford History Education Group

July 27–30, 2020
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CT daily
Join staff from the Stanford History Education Group for a four-session workshop about their free Reading Like a Historian curriculum and Beyond the Bubble assessments. These interactive sessions will introduce participants to the Reading Like a Historian curriculum, explore strategies for modeling historical thinking, identify approaches to facilitating discussion, and consider best practices for formative assessment with Beyond the Bubble assessments. There will be a particular focus on how to teach historical inquiry in an online setting. This workshop is designed for teachers of grades 5–12. The online series is limited to 100 participants.

Writing Through the Collections with The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens

July 29, 2020
2:00–3:00 p.m. CT
Taking the theme of Journeys and Journeying, join staff from The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in drawing inspiration from a range of primary sources, from landscape art to letters, to engage high school students in inquiry, research, and writing. Their staff will also share ideas for how to foster dialogue and spoken presentations as an integrated part of the teaching and learning process. This webinar will be interactive, so be prepared to sketch and write during our time together. The online workshop is limited to 50 participants.