Located on Florida's Gulf Coast, Sarasota County has several elementary schools with a diverse student population in need of improvement. Casting the Net teachers will participate in summer institutes, book studies, and independent studies as they work with partners and historian mentors to develop a rubric for historical quality, revise curriculum, and build learning materials. Summer institutes will focus on NAEP eras, and related book study topics will be determined as the project progresses. Annual cohorts, with an expected enrollment of 25 teachers each year, will be open to all county teachers and pre-service teachers in Grades 5-12 who teach, or expect to teach, history. The project's overarching theme is to cast a net to the next generation of Americans and engage them in examining the relationships among national, state, and local history to create a dynamic picture that provides relevance and sets a context for studying the past and learning from experience. Casting the Net content and instruction will focus on incorporating critical reading strategies, primary sources, and technology into history instruction, and using research to develop materials and lessons that are relevant and hands-on. To this end, the project will provide mini-grants for action research and independent studies. With project staff and the steering committee, teachers will contribute to a new district curriculum that aligns with new state standards and that fosters rigorous study of American history. They will also create high-quality, field-tested learning materials and kits to accompany the core texts and a collection of video case studies that demonstrate student learning using engaging materials.

Polk County Public Schools in central Florida includes 37 elementary schools identified by the state as being in need of Improvement. The district serves a growing number of Spanish-speaking migrant students whose knowledge of American history is limited. To meet the needs of elementary and secondary American history teachers, Our Heritage: Our Future will offer a dual-track program of professional development. Track 1 (Grade 5) teachers will participate in a summer institute consisting of a 3-day colloquium, a day with a historian, and a 5-day field study; a 2-day spring training on using Reader's Theater and primary sources; a 1-day fall seminar on a history topic; a 1-day curriculum alignment workshop; regular online "meet the historian" mini-courses; and lesson development activities. Track 2 (Grades 8 and 11) will involve teachers in a variety of day-long and after-school professional development events and collegial learning. Track 1 will include 144 teachers (one 36-member group a year for 4 years, followed by a year of collegial work and delivery of district wide professional development). Following the same pattern of cohort engagement, Track 2 will expand the district's existing teacher-leader development network. In addition, eight to 12 teacher leaders will revise district curriculum maps based on new Florida American History standards. Our Heritage: Our Future will involve teachers and students in reading and experiencing American history to help them become more informed, productive citizens. Classroom instruction based on the Learning-Focused Strategies model will emphasize vocabulary in context, visual tools such as graphic organizers, and Reader's Theater. Teachers will create lesson plans and materials for district-wide dissemination.

Pinellas County, on Florida's west coast, has embarked on a high school redesign plan intended to improve the performance of all district high schools. To that end, the Circle of We project will be paying special attention to the 10 low-performing high schools in the district. The district's increased focus on academic rigor and student engagement will be reflected in the project's annual activities, which will include three 3-hour lectures followed by full-day colloquia, two day-long workshops, a summer institute, and an ongoing virtual learning community. Each year a cadre of 20 teachers, ranked by need, will be recruited to participate in 175 hours of professional development. In addition, teachers will receive tuition-free graduate coursework toward dual-enrollment certification. The project will examine the ideas behind "We the People" and how it has been debated, defined, defended, challenged, and redefined over the past 200 years. This examination will extend to the democratic principles of freedom, justice, inclusion, and equal opportunity that underlie our constitutional rights, and to the social, legal, and civic institutions that embody these principles. Middle school teachers who completed a similar TAH project in 2008 will open their classrooms so that the high school teachers can observe effective teaching practices, such as document-based questioning. Circle of We will create a Moodle site that will become part of a permanent infrastructure to support history professional development, and teachers who complete the professional development will constitute a high school cadre with period-specific content expertise and content-specific pedagogy.

Miami-Dade County has many students from immigrant or first-generation families and many teachers who feel underprepared to teach American history. Teaching American History activities will address these needs in a variety of ways. Elementary teachers will meet for six Saturday workshops, a one-week summer institute, and two online workshops on using Web lessons. Intensive study teachers will have seven 2-day workshops, and master teachers will complete a 3-year program to earn 30 graduate credits. The three types of cohorts will be constructed as follows: elementary cohorts will include 30 teachers, with a new group participating each year of the project; intensive study cohorts will have 30 different teachers each year for four years; and the master teachers cohort will consist of 20 teachers who participate for three and a half years. An overall goal of the project is to build capacity within the district, and the three types of cohorts will enable both immediate improvement in the classrooms and long-term support for history teaching. During elementary workshops, everything will be structured around essential questions: historians will present content and discuss its application in the classroom, and then participants will complete project-specific assignments. During five intensive study workshops, teachers will focus on content; the remaining two workshops will address instructional strategies. The master teachers program will include 10 graduate-level courses and an original research paper. In Years 2 to 5, scholar-guided travel will take 20 participants to national historical sites for five to seven days. The Professional Learning Communities that develop among cohort members will contribute to sustaining and expanding the project's impact.

Lake County School District in central Florida includes 42 schools, 12 of which have been identified through Florida's Differentiated Accountability Model as in need of improvement. Since 2001, Lake County's population has increased by more than 38 percent, and the district has hired hundreds of new teachers in response to increased student enrollment. Inheriting a Legacy of Freedom will target schools in need of improvement and address district-identified gaps in teachers' content knowledge and qualifications through a program of interrelated activities: 8-day summer academies that focus on document-based questioning strategies, school and district-level Professional Learning Communities that meet throughout the grant period, technology-based learning that includes monthly book study sessions and podcasts of historians' lectures, and action research that encourages participants to examine their teaching practices. Four separate cohorts of 35 teachers will receive professional development, and lead teachers will be chosen from these cohorts each year to coach other teachers of American history on topics such as meeting individual student needs and integrating technology into classroom practice. Lead teachers will also model effective teaching practices for American history teachers at schools in need of improvement. Inheriting a Legacy of Freedom will incorporate several overarching themes, including constitutional interpretation and American identity, culture, and religious development. The primary instructional strategy employed to convey content will be document-based questioning, which develops students' skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking. Teacher participants will create museum-like interactive exhibits, accompanied by curriculum support guides, for use by educators across the district.

Florida Virtual School, the first and largest statewide Internet-based public high school in the United States, serves 64,000 students across Florida. It has been charged by the state legislature to give priority to minority and rural students and students in low-performing schools. Teachers will be recruited for Turning Points in American History (Turning Points) through an application process that incorporates a needs assessment as the main selection tool. Each year, participating teachers will engage in a 3-day, face-to-face National Council for History Education colloquium; online professional development and networking that includes readings, workshops, book discussions, and lesson development; and 3- to 5-day field study academies at historical sites and museums. All American history teachers in Florida Virtual School will have access to WebLessons, an online lesson development resource. A cohort of 30 teachers will receive services throughout all five years of the program. Project coordinators will identify a subgroup of 10 lead teachers who will provide ongoing professional development to all Florida Virtual School history teachers; six of these teachers will be eligible to attend a national history conference each year. Turning Points will explore watershed events that have changed American history—political and cultural revolutions, social and religious changes, new technologies, and explorations of unknown places. Teachers will learn to integrate primary documents, art, and thematic connections between literature and U.S. history into their instruction, as required by Florida’s new state social studies standards. Teacher-created lessons and enrichment activities such as podcasts and virtual field trips will be shared through the Florida Virtual School Web site.

Citrus County, Florida, is rural and remote—teachers must drive about 75 miles each way to pursue university training opportunities. The district has not made Adequate Yearly Progress for six years, and district schools have performed only somewhat better. Because reading and writing have been weak, Nature Coast Liberty Fellowship activities will include a focus on integrating literacy into history instruction. Each year teachers can attend two 2-day colloquia, two half days of research, a 3-day summer institute, and 12 videoconferences (which are open to all district teachers). The project will offer turnkey replication of training. An annual cohort will consist of a core group of 35 fellows and five teacher leaders. The teacher leaders will train intensively to replicate project activities to nonparticipating district history teachers in Year 2. To help teachers take a professional historian's approach, the project will instruct fellows on how to conduct research, write historical narratives, and create substantive lessons and lively Web-based activities. Approaches will include Binary Paideia, Understanding by Design, and classroom coaching to support transfer of new strategies into practice. Fellows will study the American Institute for History Education's historical frameworks, signature strategies, and 12-step process for creating classroom lessons, and they will participate in its Talking History network. All district teachers will have access to fellows' lessons and to training on creating substantive lessons themselves (through CICERO, a Web-based collection of history resources). After receiving turnkey training, every history teacher will create one lesson a year. Partner organizations will maintain ongoing contact with fellows in support of their efforts to replicate training across the district.

Windham Public Schools is collaborating with a regional education service center (EASTCONN) in rural northeastern Connecticut to implement Themes of History. Windham Public Schools has been identified as a district in need of improvement, and 10 middle schools among the other participating districts have also been so identified. The program's core professional development activities include a week-long summer institute, three evening presentations by guest historians (open to all educators in northeastern Connecticut), and three full-day workshops. Supplemental activities include three seminars on content-related pedagogy and three evening lesson-planning sessions based on the Lesson Study approach. Participants will also receive in-class support from master history teachers, participate in an online Professional Learning Community, and attend the annual conference of the state's Council for the Social Studies. Fifty history teachers will participate for all three years of the program. Also, each year, five graduate students who are preparing to teach history will be invited to participate. The thematic focus of Themes of History is on helping students see and understand recurring patterns and themes in American history, with an emphasis on significant events, people, documents, and turning points. Participating teachers will learn to incorporate primary and secondary documents, artifacts, and historical materials as they use inquiry-based instructional strategies in developmentally appropriate ways. Exemplary history lessons will be posted online, and work accomplished through the program will contribute to the development of a stand-alone American history curriculum for statewide use.

In the Shelton, Trumbull, and New Haven Public School Districts, secondary school students have scored well below average on Connecticut's reading and writing exam, and in New Haven, only a third of the students who took the 2008 U.S. history exam scored at or above proficiency. To strengthen the quality of instruction in U.S. history, Democratic Vistas will offer eight history forums each year, supplemented by two follow-up workshops on pedagogy. Other activities will include several day-long field trips to regional historic sites, a week-long summer institute, online networking, classroom observations, and coaching. Over five years, Democratic Vista will serve at least 320 teachers. Annually, up to 160 teachers can participate in one of three ways: (1) participate in all activities and create a unit plan for graduate course credit or a stipend and Continuing Education Units; (2) participate in individual activities and study instructional strategies; or (3) participate in the summer institute and receive graduate course credit or a stipend and Continuing Education Units. The program will challenge history teachers to increase student interest and knowledge in traditional American history by making connections between the past and present, Connecticut and U.S. history, and history/culture and the arts. Instructional strategies will focus on concept-based teaching and development of historical thinking; the lesson design frameworks of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (Understanding by Design), and differentiated instruction. To sustain a Professional Learning Community of teacher leaders, the three partnering districts will create an online space for blogging, networking, and sharing curricular units, projects, assessments, and other resources.

The Making History project serves Connecticut's largest city, where 13 percent of students are English learners who come from 70 language groups. In 2009-2010, one year of American history is being added to Grade 7 and a semester to Grade 10, meaning that teachers who have never taught American history will need extra support. Teachers will receive 50 hours per year of professional development delivered in five stages: (1) a summer colloquium, (2) content-focused seminars, (3) a field trip, (4) workshops on pedagogy, and (5) practica for implementing innovations in the classroom. Annual cohorts of 80 or more elementary, middle, and high school teachers will learn together, share content knowledge, and instructional strategies, and support one another in implementation. Making History will focus on the human elements of history, especially presidents and other "history makers" from the Revolution to World War II. Teachers will explore the "history of history" as an academic discipline. Seminars will include sessions such as "Picturing American History," where teachers learn about interpreting pieces of art as historical artifacts. Instruction will include learning historical habits of mind, using document-based questioning, and initiating student research and presentation. At the end of the project, the district will have a group of eight to 10 key lead teachers who are history specialists and advocates and a standards-based curriculum. All activities, lessons, and/or units of study created during the project will become Assured Experiences—things all district teachers are required to teach—and will be included in the electronic curriculum.