The New Jersey Center for Civic and Law-Related Education is available to provide Teacher Institutes and other professional development workshops demonstrating the materials and teaching strategies from Conflict Resolution and United States History. A workshop or institute would include a hands-on demonstration of conflict resolution techniques, detailed historical background, the use of primary source documents, maps and images, brief biographies of historical figures, role-playing activities involving selected historical conflicts, and discussions about the use of these teaching strategies and materials in the classroom.

You may choose to have your professional development focus on any of the following conflicts in American history:

• European Colonists and Native Americans
• The American Revolution
• Slavery and the Constitutional Convention
• Cherokee Removal
• The War between Mexico and the United States
• The Compromise of 1850
• Women's Rights in the 19th Century
• The Post Civil-War Reconstruction Debate
• War in 1898
• Labor Relations: The Pullman Strike and the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
• U.S. Entry into World War I
• Immigration Restrictions and the National Origins Act of 1924
• Rosie the Riveter versus G.I. Joe: Women in the Workforce after World War II
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• The U.S. and the War in Vietnam
• The 1992 Los Angeles Riots

Teachers and historians who have participated in past Summer Institutes have praised the strategies and materials for their ability to motivate and excite students to learn, to help students understand the complexity of historical conflicts and to appreciate that history is not always an inevitable flow of events but rather a series of alternative possibilities. Teachers have come away from past Institutes with renewed enthusiasm and improved teaching skills and greater insight into history. Many teachers also have found the conflict resolution skills useful as classroom management tools.

Some professional development opportunities are available with grant funding and may be offered free to your school. Otherwise, one-day workshops are available for $1,000 plus travel and copying costs.