Participants in this workshop will learn about Chicago's meatpacking history and the legacy of the Maxwell Street Market through compelling historical fiction narratives. Based on the Museum's collection, these stories form the core of the Great Chicago Stories website, an award-winning educational resource.

Participants in this workshop will learn about Chicago's meatpacking history and the legacy of the Maxwell Street Market through compelling historical fiction narratives. Based on the Museum's collection, these stories form the core of the Great Chicago Stories website, an award-winning educational resource.

Constructed around an online "toolbox" of texts and documents collected at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, participants in this seminar will discuss four themes that are central to the Gilded Age: City and Country, focusing on Arcadian mythology, urban realism, and nostalgia; Citizens and Others, especially immigrants, African Americans, and children; Work and Leisure, especially craft, industrialization, and consumerism; and Politics and the State, including party culture, populism, and progressivism. Within each thematic unit, participants will be searching for characteristic sensibilities of the age, as manifest in public life, literature, and/or the arts. Across the discussions, they will try to identify those documents, questions, and exercises that might best enliven their own classrooms.

Participants in this workshop will learn about the role of chocolate in colonial America. Topics include cacao and rainforest ecology, world trade, the role of chocolate in the colonial diet, and military uses of chocolate. The day includes a presentation of the new exhibition "Stimulating Beverages: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate Wares at Historic Deerfield," an open-hearth cooking demonstration, and a tasting of American Heritage Chocolate® Finely Grated Chocolate Drink, which captures the form and flavor of historic chocolate.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach the California local community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

This workshop will examine the questions "What constituted progress during the Progressive era?," "How did Americans define the 'old' and 'new,' 'backward' and 'progressive' during this period?," and "How did economic and industrial ideas and methods influence other areas of American life during the Progressive era?"

The Center's online resource workshops give high school teachers of U.S. history and American literature a deeper understanding of their subject matter. They introduce teachers to fresh texts and critical perspectives and help teachers integrate them into their lessons. Led by distinguished scholars and running 60 to 90 minutes, they are conducted through lecture and discussion using conferencing software. A resource workshop identifies central themes within a topic and explores ways to teach them through the close analysis of primary texts, including works of art, and the use of discussion questions. Texts are drawn from anthologies in the Center's Toolbox Library. To participate, all that is needed is a computer with an internet connection, a speaker, and a microphone.