This capital city district serves students who are overwhelmingly minority and who receive special education services at a higher than average rate (20 percent). The district has never made Adequate Yearly Progress, and five middle schools and three high schools are underperforming. The Teaching American History Academy II (TAHA II) will offer two 3-year professional development pathways: (1) the master's track, in which 15 teachers will complete courses worth 30 graduate hours, plus workshops, an annual 1-day field trip, and an annual 4- to 7-day summer trip; and (2) the professional development (PD) track, which will provide 50 to 60 teachers with 100 or more hours of training in meetings during the school year and a 4- to 7-day summer trip followed by a 3-day institute (15 PD track teachers will participate in extra technology training). When cohorts are recruited, priority will be given to history and special education teachers who teach American history in the underperforming schools. TAHA II will focus on building collegiality among teaching colleagues and university historians. History content and instructional strategies will be delivered by historians, museum curators, and National Park historians, and retired mentor teachers. The master’s track teachers will earn a master's of education in curriculum and instruction for history and social studies from the University of Richmond; professional development track teachers will prepare curriculum materials to be posted on the project Web site. Over the course of the project, leaders anticipate that several teachers will attend and present at regional and national conferences.

Newport News, near the Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia, is a high-need district with achievement gaps across all school levels and between student subgroups. Voices of a Nation will focus on vertical aspects of teaching U.S. history with the aim of creating a more cohesive program. Cohort members will commit to participating in activities, most of which will also be open to other teachers who have a U.S. history teaching assignment. Activities will include lectures, seminars, and Professional Learning Team (PLT) meetings during the school year, supplemented by summer graduate courses and technology institutes. Annual cohorts will have 40 teachers in Grades 4 to 12. Each cohort will become a Professional Learning Community and will break into four vertical PLTs of teachers from schools that feed into each other. The theme of Voices of a Nation is embedded in its name. Although all topics and eras will be covered each year, activities will vary and involve different partners. PLTs will meet several times to chat with professional historians, share teaching ideas, review primary sources, create collections of resources, discuss differentiating instruction, or conduct other activities; all activities will be documented online. Each PLT will complete three products: a curriculum map of one U.S. history strand from the state standards, a digital resource such as a SMART board lesson or virtual field trip, and one product to be determined by the team.

The Navasota, Bryan, and College Station Independent School Districts in Brazos Valley, Texas, serve a growing number of English Language Learners. Overall, student scores on state reading and math assessments are below the state average, surveyed students' interest in history is low, and most history teachers do not hold a history certification. The Mystery and Power of History will offer intensive professional development throughout each year of the program, beginning with a 3-day colloquium and continuing with lectures, workshops, guided readings, 1 to 3-day seminars, opportunities for teachers to attend weeklong historical immersion experiences in the field and/or 5-day summer institutes sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and several evening platform discussions led by scholars. Participants can also receive support for obtaining a history certification. The Mystery and Power of History will accommodate 40 teachers, each of whom will commit to participating for one or more years and completing at least 75 percent of the professional development activities offered. The thematic goal of the project is to deepen teachers' and students' understanding of how the principles of liberty and democratic government have helped to shape America's social, political and legal institutions. Instructional strategies derived from Historical Habits of Mind will enhance students' higher order thinking skills and their knowledge of American history. In addition, teachers will use technology to enhance history education. The program will develop a group of master teachers and mentors who can facilitate professional development and sustain a Professional Learning Community among teachers of history in all three districts.

McAllen Independent School District in southern Texas serves mostly Hispanic students, a fourth of whom are classified as English Language Learners. Five of the district's 34 schools have not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress: the average Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) score for these five schools is 55 percent, compared to the state average of 72 percent. Most history teachers in the district have minimal credentials in the subject area and few opportunities for professional development. McAllen ISD Project TEACH (Teachers Engaged in American Culture and History) will target low-performing schools and engage 50 teachers annually in four 2-day colloquia, eight 3-hour seminars, and a 4-day summer institute. At least half of the teachers will participate in a 5-day historical site visit each year. The project will also provide support and tuition for five participants interested in pursuing a master's degree in American history. Themes explored in Project TEACH will include complex political, economic, and social dynamics that have shaped America from colonial times through the present. Through training, observation, and feedback, teachers will implement an instructional strategy called document-based questioning. Participating teachers will also share their work with colleagues face-to-face and online, mentor other history teachers, and use Texas's Web-based curriculum management tool to align classroom instruction to district curriculum. The teachers will create thematic "toolbox libraries" for classroom use.

The Fort Bend and Spring Branch Independent School Districts serve a diverse population from disadvantaged communities across Houston, Texas, where many students are first-generation Americans. Through the Teachers as Historians program, the two-district consortium will deliver teacher training and support to 14 schools that have not made Adequate Yearly Progress and to 49 additional Title I schools. Annual activities will include a 2-week summer seminar at Rice University, followed by a week-long experiential field study, two workshops and a field study during the school year, three district planning meetings, access to an online community network and digital library, a community lecture by a distinguished historian, and a mentor network facilitated by district curriculum specialists. Each participating teacher will research and create two lessons with the help of a content specialist and a master teacher. Participants who fulfill their grant obligations may apply for a $750 grant, which they can apply toward personal professional development opportunities and classroom resources. A new cohort of 30 teachers will be involved in the program's core activities each year and will be encouraged to continue their participation in the mentor network. The goal of the program is to teach students to think critically about what it means to be an American. Interactive instructional strategies will emphasize critical thinking in response to primary source documents. Lesson plans and resources focused on traditional American history will be presented by teachers at local, state, or national events and will also be uploaded to a digital library and made accessible to history teachers nationwide.

Seven central Texas school districts within the Education Service Center Region 12 service area have formed a consortium to deliver targeted services to nine elementary and secondary schools that have not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress. Through the Lyndon B. Johnson Liberty Fellowship program, consortium teachers of American history in Grades 5, 8, and 11 will be prepared to teach American history as a distinct subject. Annual professional development activities will include a 5-day summer institute, a 2-day fall colloquium, a 3-day winter colloquium, and a 2-day field-study trip. Teachers will also view the American Institute for History Education's monthly Talking History webinars and participate in regular half-day research/lesson development sessions throughout the year. The program will serve 40 fellows, including five seasoned veterans who will serve as teacher-leader content specialists and conduct turnkey sessions for history teachers in all nine schools. A guiding theme woven into fellows' research and instruction will be how geography, economics, and political thought contributed to events in American History. Instructional strategies will incorporate the Understanding by Design approach to constructing lessons, the American Institute for History Education's Twelve Effective Steps to Optimum Teaching, and thereNow's IRIS, which will allow coaches and trusted peers to watch teachers deliver lessons in real time and make constructive comments about the lesson as it happens. Based on their research and training, teachers will create historical narratives, lessons, virtual field tours, and innovative activities to be shared with other history teachers via a Web site.

The Dallas Independent School District serves many students with limited English proficiency, a contributing factor to low history scores. In a recent year, just 54 percent of eighth graders and 68 percent of high school students passed the first-semester exams. Each year History Sparks will begin with a kick-off day during which teachers receive independent study materials, review student work, and participate in sessions delivered by historians and master history educators. Other activities will include Saturday seminars and summer institutes, supplemented by field trips to a local site in Year 3 and a national site in Year 4. A cohort of 50 teachers will be selected from the district's 24 low-performing middle and high schools. Any teachers who leave the program before the final year will be replaced, so the curriculum for each year will be self-contained. History Sparks will help teachers learn to deal with complex questions of historical thinking, form habits of mind for studying historical events, people, and issues, and make connections to contemporary events. Years 1-3 will feature separate strands for middle and high school teachers, each presenting broad, chronological surveys of historical eras. In Years 4 and 5, all teachers will join in deep exploration of selected content. The project will employ primary source documents, books, videos, and Web sites—each accompanied by study questions and bolstered by online discussions that include project leaders and university historians. Participants will leave the professional development with classroom teaching resources and lesson plans that align with state standards and the History Sparks blueprint for effective history teaching and learning.

Teaching American History: Tennessee's First Frontiers being implemented by a consortium of school districts (Carter, Hawkins, Sullivan, and Washington Counties and Elizabethton City Schools) in northeastern Tennessee. It targets low-performing middle and high schools and those with high numbers of students performing below the proficient level on Tennessee achievement tests for American history. Professional development activities will include (1) intensive individual recruitment, counseling, and mentoring by a coach, who will assist teachers in developing their own professional development plans; (2) two 2-day in-service mini-institutes per year, emphasizing history content; (3) eight 2- to 3-hour after-school pedagogy workshops each year; and (4) a 3-day summer public history field experience and three 1-day Saturday sessions that relate local historic sites to major themes in U.S. history. Teachers' professional development plans may include activities such as book studies, development of curriculum and/or document-based assessments, examination of student work, and use of data to inform instruction. The project will serve at least 15 eighth grade and 15 high school teachers per year, and a total of 57 teachers will each participate for at least 90 hours over the life of the grant. Traditional American history content will be viewed through the prism of the changing definition of liberty and freedom. Teachers will be trained to make individual and collective struggles for freedom "come alive" by analyzing primary source documents, placing them in a historical context, and integrating technologies into their teaching practice. A program Web site will feature standards-based materials developed by participating teachers and by local historians and graduate students.

Located in central South Carolina, Sumter County School District Two, Sumter School District 17, and Clarendon County School District Two have not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress for the past two years. U.S. history end-of-course test results show that student performance in history lags far behind performance in math and English language arts in the districts. To develop more knowledgeable history teachers in the districts' elementary, middle, and high schools and to improve student performance, yearly STEP activities for participating teachers will include a 5-day summer institute, a 6-day field study trip, a history educators' forum, and three workshop days featuring local historians. STEP also includes a mentoring component and a technology component. Thirty teachers will be invited to participate in STEP for at least two years and preferably throughout all five years of the project. STEP will provide firsthand encounters with historical places, archives, and ideas to enable teachers to "see, touch, and talk history" and connect local and national history for their students as they explore the role of economics and technological changes and their relationship to society, ideas, and the environment. Instructional strategies will integrate technology and best practices in teaching the content of traditional American history. Teachers will create quality lessons plans and materials that engage students in activities that require higher-level thinking. These lessons will be posted on the districts' Web sites.

Florence School Districts One to Five are located in northeastern South Carolina. All five districts are in restructuring, and 31 percent or more of students in each district scored below basic on the state social studies test in 2007. To help history teachers gain the content knowledge they want, RWS will offer online graduate-level courses on a traditional semester schedule and through intensive study in 2-week summer institutes. Participants will conduct online discussions about history teaching, attend mini-institutes on examining student work and assessment and, in Year 3, become mentors to nonparticipating teachers to help them improve their knowledge and instructional practices. One cohort of 50 teachers drawn from all school levels will complete the 5-year program. Each year, half will take the online course and the other half will participate in the intensive summer institute. RWS aims to develop teacher-historians through increasing participants' knowledge of significant events, principles, historical thinking, and special topics, and by encouraging the practices of collaboration, curriculum design, and reflection. The graduate-level courses will focus on the eras and topics of American history outlined in the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the state's social studies curriculum framework. Other activities will focus on curriculum and instruction designed to build literacy skills and to engage both teachers and students in American history content. The project will result in a collection of teacher-created, technology-driven instructional units to be shared locally and nationally through the RWS Web site, which will also offer teaching resources and links to a variety of primary documents.