A needs assessment of these 16 districts in the greater Boston area indicates that the teachers are interested in taking graduate-level courses and working with the museum and higher education partners involved in this project. Each year, a new cohort of 35 teachers will participate in a week-long summer institute with full-day workshops at the partner sites; immersion experiences at places like Gettysburg, Antietam and Washington, D.C.; training to incorporate technology nto history instruction; the Using Primary Source for Critical Thinking and Understanding course; graduate-level colloquia; and online professional development courses. In addition to the five 35-teacher cohorts, 100 new teachers per year will attend graduate courses—taught by Suffolk University faculty—to develop core content knowledge in American history and historical thinking skills. The overarching project focus is to examine how America's founding documents have defined freedom and democracy and to trace these ideals and the lived realities for different groups of Americans over 300 years. The content will explore the evolving struggle for human rights and justice, emphasizing the essential framework of American democracy, 19th-century social movements that challenged constitutional guarantees of freedom, the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction with regard to these freedoms, and 20th-century challenges to human rights at home and abroad, including the civil rights movement. The teachers will work together in district-based teams and develop Web-based teaching resources. At the conclusion of the coursework, participant teams will create a comprehensive unit that will be disseminated across the consortium districts and beyond.

Teachers in this project's western Massachusetts districts noted that they are least knowledgeable about recent history, which also is the most likely historical period to be limited by time constraints at the end of a year; therefore, it will be addressed in Year 1 of the project. Each year will begin with an immersion field trip to visit monuments and historic sites; the Veterans Education Project will provide personal accounts of people who witnessed related history, and funding will help teachers create "archive boxes" of primary sources and artifacts for classroom use. During the school year, participants will attend four seminars that deliver content, pedagogy and historical thinking skills; they will also take part in after-school workshops that include book groups and technology training. The number of teachers participating each year (35) will eventually produce a cadre of teacher leaders who can support their colleagues and sustain the benefits of the grant. The theme of American democracy will serve as the medium through which the content of each historical period will be filtered. The content addressed during each 50-year block of history will be presented so as to align with state standards. Teachers will learn to use fiction and graphic novels for history teaching, along with differentiated instruction, primary sources and technology tools, such as wikis, podcasts, digital storytelling and Web-based archives. Grant activities and products will be posted on a Web site, giving all history teachers access to virtual museum tours, videos of activities and examples of classroom teaching, examples of student work, blogs, podcasts and more.

This project targets underserved populations in urban and rural areas of south-central Kentucky, where student test data for social studies have shown little or no improvement, especially in high schools. Each year, the project will provide 15 days of professional development for two cohorts of 50 teachers (overlapping in Year 3 of the project), including (1) historical encounter sessions, consisting of intensive visits to museums and historic sites, seminars, historical research and grade-level collaborative work to integrate content in the curriculum; (2) a 2-day summer colloquium hosted by the National Council for History Education; (3) historical field institutes, in which participants experience past times and deeds that relate to the yearly topic; (4) a peer-mentoring and observation program; (5) Web lessons; and (6) a teachers curriculum institute. Teachers also will attend lectures by professional historians and local historians. Participants will be recruited by district superintendents, the project director and the curriculum specialist, with preference given to teachers in schools in high-need districts. The project strategies comprise a combination of curricular resources, including an electronic resource notebook containing reproductions from the Kentucky Historical Society collections, access to intranet-based discussion boards and online lesson plans, membership in professional history organizations, and ongoing instructional support from the project director and Campbellsville College history professors. In terms of products, the project teachers will create interactive, hands-on, standards-based lessons and traveling trunks.

In this Kansas City metropolitan district, budget cuts have significantly altered teaching assignments, resulting in more American history teachers who need better preparation. For each semester during the three years, the same 20 teachers will participate in eight semester-long colloquia, three 3-day lecture series, and three 5-day travel research workshops led by faculty from the University of Kansas history department. Over the course of the project, the teachers will conduct independent research, create lesson plans and attend 10 professional development sessions for additional training on historiography, pedagogy and local American history resources. Instructional resource teachers will provide feedback to the teachers through classroom observations. The project will explore continuity and change in American history by examining how the founding fathers drafted the Constitution to facilitate changes, recognizing that the nation was not yet perfect. It will also examine the economic, social and political factors that shaped the meaning of "We the People" over time, tracing the causes and effects of the events that have pushed the nation toward becoming a "more perfect union." Participating teachers will learn how to locate and use evidence in primary and secondary sources to interpret the past and explore different perspectives and points of view. They can earn 19 hours of graduate credit through the University of Kansas or receive professional development points through the district. A Web site will feature all the project products and resources, including faculty lectures, classroom videos of teachers and students, lesson and unit plans, electronic field trips, book reviews, and course and workshop syllabi.

This eastern Indiana district, like many districts, has lacked resources for history professional development for many years. Teachers say they want to know about recent American history, and this project will help them gain content knowledge and professional credentials. Graduate courses, intensive summer institutes and field studies will provide content knowledge that will support teachers' involvement in the district's curriculum writing and mapping initiative. Classroom observations will help teachers improve practice, and the annual history resource project will engage teachers in deep learning about a topic as they create digital resources for all teachers to use. Two separate cohorts of teachers will participate: 15 in Years 1-3 and 15 in Years 3-5. Year 1 themes will include economics, entrepreneurship, transportation and communication; Year 2 themes will include leadership, social justice and social movements. These themes will guide explorations of the topics that the teachers selected for study (see topics, above). Teachers will learn to use technology and inquiry-based instructional strategies as they work to improve student engagement, increase the rigor of student performance and help students develop critical thinking skills. Professors from the university school of education will conduct observation sessions, help teachers reflect on their teaching by examining student work, and provide coaching support. Each year will culminate with a colloquium, during which teachers will make formal and informal presentations about their annual projects. Teachers' projects will contribute to resource banks of wikis, podcasts, virtual field trips, lessons and more, all of which will be available as open educational resources.

A 2010 survey indicates that only a small percentage of U.S. history teachers in these Idaho districts currently place a significant emphasis on chronology, primary sources or connecting historical events with broader themes. Due to budget limitations, few teachers have had an opportunity to participate in history-related professional development over the past three years, and most would be interested in strengthening their knowledge of primary sources and interacting with historical experts. This project offers summer and daylong institutes during the school year featuring renowned national historians and twice-monthly half-day Saturday online workshops led by history faculty from Idaho's four institutions of higher education. The teachers will be organized into four cohorts of 10 based on location. Each of the three years, they will study a different chronological phase of American history, focusing on significant issues, episodes and turning points. They will use primary sources to learn how the words and deeds of individuals have determined the course of history, and create lesson plans using backward design and one of five teaching strategies: Binary Paideia, haunted history, content scene interpretation, cause-effect generalizations and cognition strategies. The teachers will produce four lesson plans for each unit. An academic advisory board will select the best teacher lesson plans and student products for inclusion on a consortium Web site. In addition, the online workshops will be recorded and made available as QuickTime movies.

Districts from both western Idaho and southeastern Washington will be involved in this project; focus groups with history teachers found that few have learned from or taught with primary documents, and many believe their history curricula need to be updated. Following a 2-day launch meeting, annual activities will include curriculum improvement team meetings, three days of summer historian seminars/field study, five Saturday seminars, monthly Talking History viewing and discussion sessions, and quarterly book studies. In addition, three master teachers each year will attend a 5-day Gilder Lehrman summer institute. The project will serve at least 33 teachers and a principal who have volunteered to participate for the full term of the grant. To support improvements in teaching and learning, activities will become more participatory each year; in Year 1, many activities will be passive — lectures, podcasts — and by Year 5, most activities will feature discussions, practice and teaching others; specific activities will include re-creations, simulations and debates. Each year, all major historical eras will be covered so as to coincide with the time line used in secondary classrooms; repetition and differing perspectives over the life of the project will help teachers build depth of knowledge. Teachers will develop habits of historical thinking as they study 100 significant documents, 100 court cases and 100 significant turning points in history. Curriculum improvement teams at the project, district and school levels will develop curriculum maps, pacing benchmarks and common assessments. All teacher-created curriculum maps, assessment tools and lesson plans will be posted on a Web site for other teachers to use.

This Atlanta district, like many U.S. districts, has seen scores on end-of-course history tests fall dramatically—from about 639 points in 2005 to 429 points in 2009. Examining Years of Economic Strides, or EYES, will immerse high school teachers in a 1-day kick-off event, eight 1-day education matters events, a 5-day summer academy, three days at the American History Conference, two book study circles, five resource library activities and five days of field research each year. With additional activities, teachers will be involved in more than 400 hours of professional development during the grant period. Four cohorts of 37 or 38 teachers each will participate in two years of professional development; this will enable every high school history teacher in the district to be part of the project. EYES aims to use the lens of economics to make American history fresh, engaging and relevant, and to encourage critical thinking and historical investigation into central themes and concepts. For example, the content of Unit A (1) will include examination of the colonial economy in a global context, property rights among American Indians, and the costs and benefits of American independence. EYES will use a blueprint, or rubric, to help teachers and project leaders track instructional strategies, such as using primary documents and applying historical thinking skills. Participating teachers will post materials about their studies and the lessons they create to the district’s social studies Web site, and they will present at conferences, including state and national conferences, plus a local one that they will host in conjunction with historians who lead project activities.

Cobb County is northwest of Atlanta, near the borders of Tennessee and Alabama. Student performance on the history portion of state graduation tests has fallen in recent years, and district history teachers have had access to little or no professional development. Each semester, this project will deliver three symposia and two field trips, a book study, and workshops for developing curriculum materials. Each year, leading historians will present a 5-day summer seminar that will include lectures and materials, historian guidance during a field study, and opportunities for teachers to confer with experts in the field. The project will serve an annual cadre of 30 high school teachers; Year 1 participants will be encouraged to stay on, and any who leave will be replaced by new teachers. Applicants will be screened to select those who have the greatest need. By providing a cutting-edge professional development experience, the district aims to develop a cadre of lead teachers and mentors who can work across the district and the state. Symposia will be led by guest historians, and primary source materials will be reviewed for historical interpretation, point of view and analysis. Field studies will be designed to include history content and exploration of primary sources. Strategies will include use of History Habits of Mind, document-based questioning and the Understanding by Design process. Every teacher will design at least one lesson per year, and these resources will be available on the district and project Web sites. Participants will present at local and state conferences and will be encouraged to apply to national conferences.

These districts—the two largest in Delaware—are rated below target in terms of Adequate Yearly Progress. In addition, their American history teachers lack adequate preparation in their subject area. Each year of the project will include four 2-day American history workshops and two week-long summer institutes with field trips for two cohorts of 25 teachers and administrators, who will work in professional learning communities and lesson study teams. Cohort A will learn about events through the Civil War, while Cohort B will focus on post-Civil War history. To prevent attrition and ensure full impact, the project will employ an incentive system in which teachers and administrators who participate for three years will receive annually enhanced stipends. All topics are related to the theme of freedom. The project will concentrate on major eras of American history and more focused case studies of selected turning points in the evolution of freedom. The project Web site will feature videotaped sessions that allow visitors to view guided practice lesson presentations by the instructional specialist, a reader-response blog in which visitors can respond to recommended readings and research lessons, a forum in which visitors can recommend and discuss American history resources and best practices, an "Ask the Historian" component that allows participants to communicate with the project's guest historians, and a featured book site that draws attention to new and notable books.