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In the fall of 2015, Humanities Texas will hold professional development workshops throughout the state for Texas social studies and language arts teachers.

Teaching and Understanding Poetry

On October 6, 2015, Humanities Texas will hold a one-day workshop in Austin introducing strategies for teaching and understanding poetry that secondary-level language arts teachers can use with their students. Workshop faculty includes Betty Sue Flowers (The University of Texas at Austin), Naomi Shihab Nye (American Academy of Poets), Coleman Hutchison (The University of Texas at Austin), and Rosemary Catacalos, the 2013 Texas Poet Laureate.

Teaching the U.S. Constitution

In October, workshops on teaching the U.S. Constitution will take place in Midland (October 6), Houston (October 7), Lufkin (October 8), and Austin (October 9). Topics to be addressed include the debates that took place during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, teaching the Bill of Rights, and significant constitutional issues in the nineteenth century. Workshop faculty includes Elizabeth Alexander (Texas Wesleyan University), Michael Les Benedict (The Ohio State University), Steven Boyd (The University of Texas at San Antonio), Charles Flanagan (National Archives and Records Administration), Joseph Kobylka (Southern Methodist University), and Thomas Pangle (The University of Texas at Austin).

Teachers at all workshops will receive books and other instructional materials and be trained in the examination and interpretation of primary sources. Content at all of our fall workshops will be aligned with the TEKS. For details on eligibility, substitute and travel reimbursements, and venues or to apply online, visit the Upcoming Institutes page on the Humanities Texas website.

Betty Sue Flowers, emeritus professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin and former director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, leads a seminar on writing in the 1960s at a teacher institute in Austin.
Charles Flanagan, director of educational programs at the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives, demonstrates the evolution of the First Amendment using the "Congress Creates the Bill of Rights" mobile app at a teacher workshop in Dallas.