Registration Open for Summer 2025!
Presenting a new summer camp for Boston-area high school students with a passion for story–and history!
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:
1st Goal
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 (and lunch) locations!2nd Goal
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.3rd Goal
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. Tell me a STORY in 2 minutes, even if it was just about your dinner last night. Otherwise, blow our minds. But you have 2 minutes.
- 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: Charlestown and the U.S.S. Constitution
- 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
Assigned Readings from A City So Grand by Stephen Puleo Day By Day:
- Day 1: Please read “On the Trail: To Freedom?”
- Day 2: Please read Chapter 1: Abolitionists and the Fugitive Slave Law
- Day 3: Please read Chapter 2: The Railroad Jubilee
- Day 4: Please read Chapter 3: The Irrepressible Irish
- Day 5: Please watch John Adams: Episode 1
- Day 6: Please watch Murder at Harvard
- Day 7: Please read Chapter 4: Filling the Back Bay
- Day 8: Please watch This Is a Robbery
- Day 9: Please watch Spotlight
- Day 10: No reading
Lunch Locations By Day:
- Day 1: Quincy Market
- Day 2: DeLuca’s
- Day 3: Clover or Chipotle; meet on Roof Garden or in Marriott Lobby
- Day 4: Umbertos, Bricco Deli, or North End Sushi/Seafood, Meet at Greenway
- Day 5: Warren Tavern
- Day 6: Winthrop Park (Shake Shack, Tasty Burger, Pinnochio’s)
- Day 7: Flour Bakery/Anna’s Taqueria
- Day 8: MFA Cafe
- Day 9: Time Out Market
- Day 10: Surprise Meal
Camp Logistics:
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
Dates: July 7-18, 2025 (M-F)
Location for pickup and drop off:
Commonwealth School
151 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02116
Drop off is from 8:30am-9:00am
Pickup is 5:00pm-5:30pm
Tuition:
Tuition for tours, courses, and development of your own story is $1800 – includes lunch, books, supplies, and MBTA fare.
Drop off at 9:00am. We will not have an adult waiting before 8:30am.
Pickup at 5:00pm. There will be no adult after 5:30pm (we are not monsters and will not abandon kids, but we will charge a fee of $150 for each delayed pickup)
Check for tuition can be mailed to
Boston History Company
c/o Cambridge Historical Tours
7 School Street Pl
Boston, MA 02119
