Past Institutes

Reconstruction and the Remaking of Texas (Spring 2023 Webinar Series)

In the spring of 2023, Humanities Texas held a series of 90-minute webinars for Texas and U.S. history teachers on Reconstruction, offering new assessments of the era and providing a collection of curriculum materials geared toward bringing innovative perspectives into the classroom.

Curriculum

The webinar series, team-taught by a historian and three master teachers, focused on exploring how Reconstruction remade the ways that Texans thought about freedom and citizenship and how state and national governments fought over the fate of both newly freed African Americans and their defeated former masters. Content aligned with the TEKS.

Like all Humanities Texas teacher programs, the webinar series was content-based and teacher-centered, with an emphasis on teaching with primary sources and developing effective pedagogical strategies. Teachers attending this webinar series walked away with an expanded understanding of Texas during the Reconstruction period and curated primary source lessons that are classroom-ready.

Faculty

The program faculty included Andrew Torget (The University of North Texas), Jay Ferguson (Round Rock ISD), Chassidy Olainu-Alade (Fort Bend ISD), and Michelle Phillips (College Station ISD).

Schedule

The series took place via Zoom from 5–6:30 p.m. on January 16, 23, and 30 and February 6. The webinar schedule can be viewed here.

Sponsors

The webinars were made possible with major funding from the State of Texas with ongoing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.