In 2025, the Hollyhock Summer Seminar will be held: 

• July 21st- July 25th and July 28- Aug. 1 2025
• Classes will run from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM. 
• There are no classes on the weekends.

The Saturday Intersessions will take place on:

• Oct. 4 & Dec. 6, 2025 and March 7 & May 16, 2026
• They will run from 9:30am to 4:30pm

Both the Summer Seminar and intersessions will be held in-person at The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10029. Through the partnership between the Hollyhock Humanities Fellowship and the museum, fellows will receive special access to museum spaces, exhibitions, and curated tours during the summer seminar and various intersessions.

To request more information, please email us at jverrilli@relay.edu and put “Hollyhock Humanities Fellowship” in the subject line.

Applications open for the 2025-26 cohort on December 1, 2024.

We prefer that teachers only apply if they can fully commit to attending the entire two-week summer seminar, the Year-long coaching and Saturday workshops.

The content focus of the Hollyhock Fellowship (The Long Reconstruction- The African-American Experience 1865-1965) is focused on US History. But all social studies teachers (including global, government and economics teachers) are invited to apply for four reasons:

1. The Long Reconstruction period is important history for all teachers to know. 

2. Our pedagogy sessions focus on broadly applicable skills and concepts such as document use, close reading, discourse, and equity which will surely be useful in your classroom.

3. Our supportive coaching will align to whatever curriculum you are teaching .

4. We know that teaching careers are fluid - you may find yourself teaching US history in the future!

Experienced teachers need support and opportunities for growth to help them thrive in the classroom. We want to work with teachers who are still seeking to grow and improve for their students and to help them become much-needed teacher leaders in their schools.

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For the 2025-26 school year, we are offering fellowships to secondary teachers who teach in history/social studies in grades 8-12.

The Institute typically runs from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm Monday through Friday with additional opportunities for socializing and community-building activities on the weekday evenings. Fellows will attend classes at the Relay Graduate School of Education Campus on 25 Broadway in lower Manhattan. We will have professional development sessions where we deep-dive into content, participate in daily intellectual discourse on relevant topics and work on practice-based pedagogy. Daily coffee, beverages, snacks and lunch will be provided each day. There will also be afternoon trips to NY’s renowned cultural institutions on certain days of the week.

Our hope is that all these experiences will build a community of teaching professionals that lasts long after the two-week summer institute ends.

Fellows are invited to write a short biography about themselves and their school for our website. Additionally, we will send out 2 short books to read and we will ask you to read specific documents and to review others in a collection of primary source documents.

Relay will email each Hollyhock Fellow a transcript with a record of the CTE’s earned after each summer and each school year. Fellows can use this transcript as verification of their professional learning hours from Hollyhock. Please note that these are not graduate credits as fellows are not enrolled at Relay as graduate students. Hollyhock fellows will also need to keep track of their own CTE documentation throughout the fellowship.

If you are a SPED or ESL educator who teaches history/social studies then you may apply. At this time, we do not offer separate sessions for SPED or ESL teachers.