The Newberry Teachers’ Consortium offers a series of intellectually stimulating, content-based seminars led by scholars from area universities and colleges. The seminars aim to reconnect teachers with the world of scholarship and re-inspire them to model the love of learning for their students.
In 2010-11, approximately 800 teachers participated in 49 seminars on diverse topics like the cultural impact of World War II, the Mexican Revolution in history and myth, political polarization in the United States, and teaching film and literature. These teachers came from 60 schools representing over 30 school districts in the Chicago area.
Subject Groups
NTC offers seminars in nine subject areas:
- American History
- American Studies
- European History
- Foreign Language
- Geography and Environmental Science
- Library Science
- Literature and Drama
- Political Science/Economics/Government
- World History
Seminar Format
Seminars are three hours long and take place on weekdays at the Newberry. Seminars are always scheduled from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. Participants earn three CPDU credits for attending a NTC seminar.
Participating in NTC
NTC is a membership-based program that requires the purchase of an annual membership. School districts, schools, departments, or individuals are welcome to purchase any level of membership to fit their professional development needs. District, school, and departments that are NTC members use a central contact person to coordinate seminar requests, track seminar participation, and monitor membership status.
Seminar registration is limited to 20 participants per seminar. Registrations are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Each member may only send two teachers to any given seminar. Register Now.
Memberships
- Individual Membership: $135 per seminar
- Department Membership: $660 for six seminar slots
- School Membership: $1,140 for 12 seminar slots
- District Membership: $1,600 for 20 seminar slots
Download the current NTC Membership Form.
Access the Seminar Readings.
Digital Collections for Classroom Use
For questions or more information contact Charlotte Wolfe, NTC Coordinator, at wolfec@newberry.org.
Upcoming Seminars
From Millennium Park to Northerly Island and the 1996 Democratic National Convention to the failed 2016 Olympic bid, Richard M. Daley’s shaping power on the city of Chicago, for good and/or ill, has been second only to that of his father, Richard J. Daley.
This seminar will explore questions of gender and power in the poetry of canonical and lesser-known poets of the Beat Generation.
In this seminar, participants will examine A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs.
From the working-class children running along a moving train and asking its passengers for a dime in Fernando Birri’s documentary Tire Dié (Throw me a Dime, Argentina, 1961) to the story of the two middle-class boys pursuing a hedonistic and sexualized “road trip” in Alfonso
Between Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494 and the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, European diplomacy underwent fundamental changes that still influence diplomatic theory and practice today.
Desde las imágenes de los chicos humildes corriendo a un tren en movimiento y pidiendo a sus pasajeros “diez centavos” en el documental de Fernando Birri Tire Dié (Argentina, 1961) hasta la historia de dos adolescentes de clase media en su aventura hedonista y sexualizada en
Few political issues inspired such intense debate among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans as what should serve as money, who should control its creation and circulation, and according to what rules.
Religion and politics are two topics we’re told to avoid in discussions with polite company, but they’ve been central in the shaping of American culture.
This seminar explores the crusades in their historical setting - the causes, motives, and impacts on relations between medieval Christians and Muslims - and as they shape discourse today.
This seminar explores the crusades in their historical setting - the causes, motives, and impacts on relations between medieval Christians and Muslims - and as they shape discourse today.
Socrates found poets to be so dangerous he wished to exile them from his Republic. Who fears poets and literature today? Perhaps we should more than we are aware.
The topic of this seminar is the remarkable transformation of southern African Americans from slaves into voting citizens during Reconstruction.
Today, American boredom appears to be a plague of epidemic proportions—one held responsible for almost every type of undesirable behavior running counter to what are considered acceptable social norms.
This seminar aims to practice and discuss several means of encouraging students to engage with narrative cinema at the level of detail and intensity that they apply when close-reading works of literature, to include strategies for working /across/ film and literature as a way of
“History” was everywhere at the World’s Columbian Exposition, the gigantic world’s fair staged in Chicago in 1893.
Chicago sits more than 600 miles from Gettysburg and more than 700 miles from Manassas and Atlanta, yet the city’s residents were intimately connected to the Civil War.
Today, American boredom appears to be a plague of epidemic proportions—one held responsible for almost every type of undesirable behavior running counter to what are considered acceptable social norms.
This seminar aims to practice and discuss several means of encouraging students to engage with narrative cinema at the level of detail and intensity that they apply when close-reading works of literature, to include strategies for working /across/ film and literature as a way of developing studen