These districts serve the Colorado Springs metro area, which has seen recent influxes of new teachers and students; many are new to the United States and lack awareness of the country's history and what it means to be an American. The project will take a four-step approach: (1) grade-based learning teams with mentoring support, (2) summer and school-year professional development tracks, (3) a virtual network, and (4) resources (e.g., books, professional memberships in history organizations). Whichever track participants choose, they can earn academic and/or state continuing education credit. Every cohort will propose a presentation for the National Council for History Education annual conference, and four teachers will attend (one from each district). Five 1-year cohorts, each consisting of 40 history, civics and government teachers, will work in professional learning teams. Each cohort will commit to the school-year program, the summer program, or both; teachers may continue after 1 year, based on availability and need. Stories and Histories will pursue the theme of integrating thinking skills into history teaching. Inquiry questions will guide study of pivotal events, people, documents, legislation and judicial cases, as well as their local, state and national significance. Training will focus on helping teachers use digital storytelling, look at history as a historian does and apply such strategies as Understanding by Design and collaborative coaching. Every teacher will develop and use either a digital storytelling project or a primary source activity for the classroom; along with students' digital products, these materials will be posted on the Web for other teachers to find and use.

This district on the northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay area includes five cities and six unincorporated areas. One-third of the ethnically and linguistically diverse students are limited English proficient, and the area faces many social and economic challenges—lack of funding for history professional development being one. Teachers will attend a 10-day summer institute, four days of follow-up activities and a three-part historian lecture and book study series. Ongoing support will happen in online discussions and monthly meetings where teachers will have opportunities to collaborate on lesson study, share resources and discuss problems and successes. Participants will attend the California Council for the Social Studies conferences, where they will learn and present. Two 3-year cohorts of 34 teachers each, one for Grades 8 and 11 and one for Grade 5, will give priority to teachers from underperforming schools. A master's cohort of 15 teachers will pursue the higher degree, and all history teachers will participate in the lecture and book series. As they study the content for the grades they teach, project teachers will be exploring themes that take them deeper into political, cultural and economic turning points and help them understand local connections to national history. Teachers will learn historical inquiry skills and content-related teaching strategies, such as the use of primary documents, artifacts, firsthand accounts, illustrations and site visits—all intended to translate freshly mastered content into classroom lessons. Project-generated materials will be reviewed, shared through meetings and conferences and posted on three Web sites that reach local, state and national audiences.

This California county is halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento, and its population reflects the state's economic and ethnic diversity. Lack of teacher preparation to teach history is reflected in disappointing student performance. Activities will include four scholar seminars each year; these will provide insight into the history and examine primary source documents. After each seminar, teachers will participate in a history lab to consider how to apply the content in ways that engage students. The Year 1 cadre will include 30 elementary teachers; although they will be encouraged to stay for the full grant period, it is likely that many spaces will open up for middle and high school teachers in Years 2 through 5. Project content will focus on intensive reading of recent scholarship, considering its emphasis on how the United States has always depended on transactions with other nations for ideas, commodities and populations. As teachers learn to use lesson study in Year 1, they will produce one lesson each; thereafter, teachers will work in teams to develop curriculum kits that include a background essay, a multiday historical investigation that requires analysis of primary sources, a student assessment and related rubric, samples of student work, reflection on teaching the lesson and an annotated bibliography. The 10 best lessons each year will be published online and presented at the annual showcase, the 20 best lessons of the project will be presented at its summative conference, and the 30 best presenters among the teachers will go on a study and exchange trip to Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

The three rural California counties involved in this project often combine resources to provide teacher professional development, and this project will build teachers' content knowledge and help them learn to think like historians. Annual activities will include two symposia, during which historians and teachers will explore content, primary sources and lesson study practices. Four live, online seminars will bring scholars and teachers together to discuss historical questions. With support from content experts, teams of like-grade teachers will use lesson study to develop lessons based on the content. The year will end with a summer field study that augments the scholarly studies, and the next year will begin with a late-summer institute focused on scholarship and pedagogy. Each year, 35 teachers will participate, and increasing stipends will encourage multiple years of training. Years 1 to 3 will address eras taught by secondary teachers, and Years 4 and 5 will present content tied to elementary standards, but teachers will be welcome to join as openings are available. Working with teachers of different levels will encourage thinking about cross-grade connections. Teachers will explore California's gateways to the national narrative during field visits to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Historians and scholars will introduce historical thinking skills, such as deconstructing primary sources, and will help teachers see unifying themes in the state's history standards. The project model of blended in-person and online activities is designed to ensure advance preparation and active participation, while directing the focus to improved teaching practice; ongoing formative assessment will help project leaders adjust activities if necessary.

Located in southeastern California, these districts serve a population that is more than half Hispanic. Nearly one-fourth of students are English language learners, 60 percent qualify for reduced-price meals and nine percent receive special education services. Each year, teachers will participate in nine full-day workshops, six evening book discussions, lesson study training sessions and field study at a local historic site. They will have two summer institute opportunities: (1) 20 teachers will attend a 5-day trip to historic sites; and (2) all teachers can apply to attend a workshop sponsored by an external provider, such as Gilder Lehrman or the National Endowment for the Humanities, and have their costs covered. In addition, networking and discussions will be supported by an online professional learning community. Two separate cohorts of 75 teachers (25 from each grade) will participate in an intensive 2-year program. From each cohort, 30 will be selected to receive another year of history coaching training; these 60 content leaders will provide on-site support to colleagues to sustain the project's impact. Training from historians and education specialists will deepen content knowledge and content-related teaching skills (e.g., using primary sources, thinking maps, source analysis, historiography). In addition, teachers will learn to develop digital documentaries and use student assessment data to guide instruction. This combination of skills and knowledge will enhance capacity to think like historians and to teach American history in engaging, interactive ways. Best practices, lessons and materials will be shared through conference presentations and on three Web sites to reach local, state and national teacher audiences.

Due to the emphasis on language arts and mathematics, this California district has not had a professional development program for history teachers in more than a decade. Each year of the project, teachers will participate in (1) a 7-day institute on content and differentiated instruction; (2) 10 after-school or Saturday learning meetings, including four quarterly reading groups; (3) extended learning opportunities through four professional learning community meetings; (4) field study trips; (5) content/pedagogy mentoring and demonstration lessons to address diverse student needs; (6) a week-long summer institute; and (7) expanded learning through technology. Thirty teachers will have the option of participating in a master's degree program. In addition, two facilitators and 24 teachers who have completed 85 percent of the required hours will be eligible for a week-long study trip to Philadelphia, Gettysburg and Washington, D.C. In the first three years, the project will offer grade-level professional development on history and pedagogy to three cohorts of U.S. history teachers: 50 elementary, 30 intermediate and 30 high school. In Years 4 and 5, the project will provide 4-day institutes to support continued learning. Through the Professional Learning Communities, the teachers and mentors will review student performance data with a data-analysis model from Response to Intervention. They also will review state standards and the district pacing guide, and create pretests and posttests for the next study unit. The teachers will collaboratively develop curricula with a special focus on document-based writing lessons.

This project will focus on schools that serve continuation, correctional and alternative education students, who tend to be high need and low performing; many in this area south of Los Angeles come from families in poverty. Because teachers at these schools often teach more than one subject, they may lack deep content knowledge and want to learn more about American history. University faculty will provide expertise in content and historical methodologies, and K-12 teachers will lead training in pedagogy at the kick-off institutes and monthly follow-up sessions. Participating project teachers will work together to create a standards-aligned curriculum. The project will include a strong strand of developing teacher leadership and building learning communities. In Year 1, the main cohort will have 24 teachers divided into 12 teams to develop curriculum. These teachers will be joined by 12 additional teachers in each successive year, so each team will have four members during the final year of the project. At the end of each year, a separate cohort of 10 teachers will customize the curriculum developed by the main cohort so it can be used for independent study. The project's underlying theme will be emphasizing the history of American citizenship to develop students' critical thinking and academic literacy and to prepare them to participate in a democratic society. The project will employ lesson study as its main curriculum development and instructional tool, and project leaders will support the process through coaching and mentoring. Lesson plans and other materials will be available on the project's Web site.

A needs assessment determined that most history teachers in these California districts lack basic knowledge of U.S. history. They also need strategies and tools to help them make the content relevant and compelling for students. Each year, this project will offer four content seminars, three book-study discussion sessions, a 3-day summer institute and a year-end culminating event featuring a distinguished historian. Annual field study experiences will include "doing history" in Los Angeles, Tidewater Virginia through the Revolutionary War, Illinois and Missouri from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, industrial change in New England, and civil rights in the South. Annually, 40 teachers will attend at least 75 percent of the activities and have the option of participating in multiple years. New participants will be recruited to replace teachers who do not continue. The project will explore traditional American history from multiple viewpoints, placing visual art, music and literature in a historical context to add dimension and diverse perspectives. The content of each project year will lead the teachers on a voyage of discovery, where they will use primary sources, become acquainted with well-known historical figures, and gain insights into the development and evolution of the meanings of freedom and "a more perfect union." They will learn to place key events in time, name and analyze founding documents, recognize themes and key concepts in their curricula, demonstrate and teach historical thinking skills, and generally display a more profound level of historical literacy. Many project products will be available on the Web, including teacher-created model lessons, training materials and evaluation tools.

In this district—the nation's second largest—nearly three-fourths of the students qualify for reduced-price meals, and nearly one-third are English language learners. Most of the targeted schools are not meeting adequate yearly progress goals, and none are meeting state performance goals in U.S. history. In addition, budget issues have limited the amount of professional development available for U.S. history teachers in underperforming schools. During the project, teachers will attend (1) nine day-long in-service workshops, featuring content lectures and training in differentiated instruction, student evaluation and the project's core content-related teaching practices; (2) two after-school meetings per month to prepare pretests and posttests for students and examine content and relevant materials; and (3) a 5-day summer institute to study content, review standards, and develop lesson plans and classroom-ready resources and materials. The project staff will visit each teacher’s class four times per year to observe, model lessons, share new materials and provide support. The project will provide more than 250 hours of instruction to nine cohorts of 35 teachers —three fifth grade cohorts (Years 1 and 2), three eighth grade cohorts (Years 2 and 3) and three eleventh grade cohorts (Years 4 and 5). Over their two years of professional development, the project teachers will read at least 10 books and numerous articles as well as learn to use primary documents, artifacts, first-hand accounts, illustrations and site visits to translate content into classroom lessons. Best practices, lessons and materials will be posted online via three separate Web sites.