CHICAGO (February 9, 2006) - The Newberry Library is pleased to announce the second annual Illinois Teaching American History conference. This event is open to all United States history teachers and will feature topics ranging from the birth of American democracy and the struggle to create the United States to new scholarship on civil rights and feminism. The two-day conference will include:
This conference is sponsored by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and is an extension of the Chicago History Project (CHP), CPS's successful 2002 U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History grant project. Since 2002 CHP has provided more than 70 CPS teachers of U.S. history with intensive seminars and workshops to increase their knowledge and improve their teaching of American history. In developing this program, CPS collaborated closely with the Newberry Library as well other local cultural and educational institutions, including the Chicago Historical Society, the Chicago Metro History Education Center, and the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. CPS and the Newberry Library have organized this conference in collaboration with the thirteen other TAH programs in Illinois that the Department of Education has funded.
"The Newberry Library has greatly increased its outreach to precollegiate teachers in recent years, providing opportunities for them not only to study important topics with distinguished scholars but also to use the Library's rich collections in developing classroom materials," said Frank Valadez, director of professional development programs for teachers at the Newberry.
"The Chicago History Project and this conference exemplify the growing role that the Newberry is playing in professional development programming for teachers. In addition to CHP, the Newberry is actively involved in three additional TAH projects. During the 2006-07 academic year, more than 1,000 teachers will attend professional development programs at the Newberry," he added.
In addition to its work with the Illinois Teaching American History conference, the Newberry Library offers several professional development programs for Chicago-area teachers. All of these programs are content-based and focus on providing teachers with opportunities to study with noted scholars and deepen their knowledge about the subjects they teach. These programs are immensely popular among program participants, who consistently rate them among the best professional development opportunities open to them. The Library's programs for teachers are fully accredited by the Illinois State Board of Education, and those who participate earn recertification credits. Additional Newberry programs for teachers include:
Chicago Teachers as Scholars (TAS), is a partnership between Chicago Public Schools, the Newberry Library, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. TAS offers a series of two-day, content-based seminars on topics as diverse as public health, Shakespeare, Lewis and Clark, Darwin and evolution, the Crusades, religion in medieval Europe, and the physics of the Big Bang. This program is open to all CPS teachers and is funded by major grants from the Polk Bros. Foundation, the Brinson Foundation, and the Albert Pick, Jr. Fund. For more information, e-mail teacherprograms@newberry.org, or call Debbie Kraus at (312) 255-3672.
For more information about other Newberry teachers programs, please visit the teacher programs page on the Newberry Web site at http://newberry.org/research/L3rteacherscontent.html .
ABOUT THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY
The Newberry Library is an independent library open to the public for research and reference in the humanities. One of the largest independent research libraries in the United States, the Newberry holds an extraordinary collection of more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages and 300 thousand historic maps. As one of the world's leading repositories of a broad range of books and manuscripts relating to the civilizations of western Europe and the Americas, the Library's mission is to acquire and preserve research collections of such materials, and to provide for and promote their effective use by a diverse community of users. Visit the Newberry online at www.newberry.org.