BHC's Summer History Camp is an immersive, two-week program for high school students on the history of Boston, featuring daily walking tours around the city, readings and guided discussions, and supervised research projects on historical topics of students' own choosing.
Have you ever wanted to immerse yourself in the history of Boston, the hub of the solar system? Our way of teaching history “with a wink,” at the locations where major events actually happened, makes the subject jump to life. Using humor, theatrical storytelling, and narrative formulas, we have a unique way of engaging students outside of the traditional classroom setting. With the whole city of Boston as our classroom, history has never been so fun! This 10-day summer camp for high school students is designed to accomplish three major goals:
1) Get you (or your kids) outside and walking around in the beautiful city of Boston! Every day will begin with a walking tour in a separate part of the city. Locations include the Freedom Trail, the Back Bay, the North End, Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Fenway Park, and more. Tours are presented by our staff of incredible tour guides, who have been doing this professionally for nearly 15 years. Ranked #1 on TripAdvisor in Cambridge for the last 12 years, these tours will be the highlight of the summer. After the tour, we'll eat lunch at favorite local dives, diners, and classic institutions of Boston food. See below for the daily schedule for tour locations!
2) Engage in thought-provoking discussions based on daily readings about the history of Boston and the art of historical storytelling. Discussions will be led by our Lead Teacher, Charlie Emerson Riggs. With a Harvard degree, a PhD in American History, and a personal family heritage that includes John Murray Forbes and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charlie has been one of our most cherished guides and teachers, and has a quiet sense of humor with a knack for drawing in any high school history enthusiast. We will also host classroom discussions with our company’s guides about their ways of historical research, tour preparation, and public speaking. For anyone interested in a career in public history or historical tourism, this camp is a great networking opportunity.?
3) Provide a structure designed to guide you through the process of researching, writing, and producing your own original work of historical storytelling about a local site. You will leave the camp with a tangible product that you can feel proud of, show to prospective colleges, share with friends and family, and maybe even go viral with. Whether you feel most comfortable on video (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok), audio (podcasts, radio), or in writing (academic essays, blog posts), you will be able to research your own passion and build your own story. On the final day, we will host an awards ceremony where the best student work is honored and presented before the entire camp.
What makes our camp different?
--Our staff of exceptional guides is first and foremost on this list. Each of the tours campers will experience is priced at hundreds of dollars for corporate groups. Our exclusive partnerships with area concierges from the Four Seasons, Boston Harbor Hotel, The Ritz, the Newbury, Boston Harbor Hotel, and the Mandarin Oriental, along with the top event planners, and rankings on Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and other review sites will hopefully speak for themselves!
--Students will have the opportunity to meet renowned historian Stephen Puleo, who has written the book, (A City So Grand:The Rise of An American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900) we'll be using in our daily readings and discussions. The opportunity to meet a professional, respected, and widely published historian is a wonderful opportunity for our campers.
--Research every day will be conducted at the beautiful and prestigious Commonwealth School in the Back Bay. But we will also make daily excursion to the Boston Public Library to do our research like professional historians.
--Rather than learning exclusively in a classroom or on a screen, campers will be actively walking around, and experiencing history on the locations in which it happened. We designed this camp after years of kids telling us "I wish we had learned history like this in school." Check our TripAdvisor and Google reviews for confirmation!
--Students will get to practice the often neglected art of telling stories about the past, crafting narratives that transport their listeners to another time, that entertain and edify, and that illuminate the present moment. We will coach them as they learn the practical skills of conducting historical research, fashioning their material into accessible segments, and recording and editing their performances using appropriate equipment. The best student performances will be honored in an awards ceremony on the final day of the camp.
A Typical Day of Camp:
9am: Drop off
9-9:30am: Storytime/Check-in.
9:30am-10:15am: Walk or take the T to our daily site for a tour
10:15am-12:45: Tour of Daily specified location
12:45-1:30: Lunch
1:30-2:15: Return to Commonwealth School or other research location
2:15-3:15 Directed discussion/lessons
3:15-3:30 Walk to Boston Public Library
3:30-4:15: Research and writing, one-on-one meetings
4:15-4:30: Back to Commonwealth School
4:30-5:30: Pickup
Camp Excursions By Day:
Day 1: Freedom Trail, Part 1 (Boston Common through Faneuil Hall)
Day 2: Back Bay and Beacon Hill
Day 3: Innovations of Kendall Square and MIT
Day 4: Freedom Trail, Part 2 (Faneuil Hall to Copp's Hill)
Day 5: Lexington and Concord
Day 6: Harvard and Harvard Museum of Natural History
Day 7: Massachusetts State House
Day 8: Museum of Fine Arts
Day 9: Fenway Park
Day 10: Special Guest speaker Stephen Puleo
This Camp is designed for rising 10th-12th graders. Exceptions WILL be considered. Each session will be capped at 15 students for an intimate and personalized experience.
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