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.

Centennial BOCES in north central Colorado includes schools that are diverse in size and demographic composition. Fabric of Freedom will serve four districts that include 16 schools in need of improvement. Professional development provided through the program will be guided by five focal points: standards-based U.S. history, historical investigation, primary source enrichment, incorporation of local stories, and framing of history as a historian. Each year, the program will deliver a 10-day summer academy, six day-long professional learning team workshops, interactive online discussions and presentations, intensive technology training, and one-on-one mentoring and coaching. Participating teachers will be eligible for graduate credits, acquire libraries of durable learning goods to support instruction, read and review historical nonfiction, and receive paid memberships in professional history organizations. A cohort of 30 teachers will enter the program each year, and cohort members can continue some activities after their year of training ends. Year 1 and Year 3 participants will continue as teacher leaders beyond the life of the program. All participants will investigate the pivotal people, ideas, events, documents, and legislation that have created and shaped American democracy since the 17th Century. They will learn about historical investigation, historical analysis and interpretation, and other instructional strategies that are effective and engaging for a wide spectrum of learners, such as the use of digital storytelling to support content delivery. A Web site will disseminate teachers’ digital storytelling products, curricula, and a "source book" that contains classroom exercises based on primary documents.

Tulare County is located in California's mostly rural Central Valley, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Developing Freedom in America will target U.S. history teachers in 46 school districts identified as needing intervention. These districts serve significant numbers of English Language Learners. Each year will feature a 5-day summer institute that includes interactions with historians, guided research in primary sources, and curriculum development; two in-service seminars that integrate literacy and content development; and an online community that features guided discussions, Lesson Study, and peer review. Within these professional development settings, pairs of teachers will design, teach, and refine units of study aligned with state standards in U.S. history, with support from a university historian and graduate students. Developing Freedom in America will serve two teacher cohorts of 50 teachers each, with each cohort participating for three years. Participating teachers will connect local and national history as they examine the nation's founding principles of freedom and democracy and America's ongoing struggles, setbacks, and achievements in realizing those principles. They will learn about research-based instructional strategies for improving students' reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, with an emphasis on addressing the literacy challenges presented by primary and secondary documents, especially for English Language Learners. The program will establish a process for collaborative lesson design, an online archive of classroom-tested lesson plans and resources, and a network of American history teaching professionals to support geographically isolated colleagues within the county

The California budget crisis and an increase in English Language Learners make American History in the Schools (HITS) important in a region where more than half of students performed below proficient on recent state history tests. This project will provide 16 days of intensive professional development, including a 10-day summer institute and six 1-day sessions during the school year. Annual cohorts of 35 teachers from all grade levels will attend the summer institute then split into two tiers, both of which will focus on continuous improvement. Tier 1 aims to build a strong history foundation for teachers with five or fewer years of experience and Tier 2 offers a history apprenticeship in which experienced teachers can explore innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Tier 1 will include two content sessions, four Professional Learning Communities sessions and development of an authentic lesson resource. Tier 2 teachers will work with staff and university faculty to build the learning community, transfer content knowledge into practice, observe effective delivery of history content, and participate in interactive online sessions. Classroom approaches will include focusing on the public memory of key events, discussing geographic and policy-related expansions in terms of frontiers and borders, considering how diversity is reflected in sports and culture, looking at the economic thinking and actions of ordinary Americans, and observing government use of power and government's role in regulating practices and commodities. The project aims to build capacity through Professional Learning Communities supported by the American HITS Web portal, which will house content, resources, classroom examples, activities, and active collaboration media

Sacramento City, an urban district with a diverse population, has 31 low-performing schools. Across the district, history gets an average of 12 instructional minutes per day, and only 35 percent of 8th graders and 33 percent of 11th graders achieve at proficient or better on the state's American history test. Legacies of Liberty will present 50 hours of annual professional development in four supper seminars, three history labs, Lesson Study sessions, and a research visit to a historical site. Based on a recruitment plan shaped by state standards and school needs, the first cohort will include 30 elementary and middle teachers who will be encouraged to complete Years 1-3; Years 4-5 will focus on high school content. As teachers work toward maximizing the instructional potential of time devoted to history, they will get support in supper seminars delivered by academic historians and teacher-leaders who will review state standards, present content on a topic included in the standards, then distribute and discuss lesson plans focused on that topic. The sessions will also model how historians use primary and secondary sources in teaching and research. History labs will explore practical ways to bring content and the discipline of history into the classroom, and Lesson Study sessions will help teachers better understand how to craft a lesson as they work in groups to create new instructional units. The learning from these settings will be augmented by authentic research during the summer field experience. Legacies of Liberty teachers will develop a collection of standards-based, tested instructional units for use by all history teachers.

The Pomona Unified School District in Los Angeles County serves a large population of English Language Learners who perform significantly below the state average in American history and English language arts. The district has been designated for program improvement. Each year of professional development provided through the Pomona Project will begin with a 40-hour summer institute that includes training in California state American history standards. During follow-up seminars in the fall, winter, and spring, teachers will research local history at various partner sites. They will receive regular coaching on instructional strategies specific to the needs of English Language Learners. The program will culminate with a study tour of key historical sites on the East Coast. A single cohort of 50 teachers will participate throughout all three years of the program. Although most teachers will participate in all program activities (Track 1), they may elect to participate in Track 2 (all activities except the seminars) or Track 3 (all activities except for the summer institute). The thematic focus will be on the connection between local and national historical events and social, economic, and political trends. Teachers will receive instruction and support in implementing differentiated instruction and Specifically Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE). Lesson plans and resources developed through the Pomona Project will be disseminated through a Web site, and some SDIAE resources will be sent directly to teachers throughout the district. Participating teachers will become teacher-leaders who continue to develop curricula and present at local and national conferences after the grant has ended.

Placer County, located northeast of Sacramento, California, includes diverse rural and suburban schools that are spread over a large and varied geographic area. Its underperforming schools serve many English Language Learners, Hispanic students, and economically disadvantaged students, and achievement among these subgroups is up to 40 percent lower in history-social science than that of other students in the county. The first two years of Our Dynamic Nation will focus on building a History Leadership Community who will recruit, train, and support fellow history teachers. Ten teachers (Year 1) and 12 more (Year 2) will attend 4-day summer seminars and 2-day spring and fall seminars to learn historical content and leadership skills. In turn, they will present outreach workshops to recruit 25 teachers, who will join five teacher-leaders for 8-day summer institutes (which include field studies) and four Lesson Study workshops each year. Participating teachers will gain insight into the complexities of American history through the study of key issues, episodes, and turning points and the impact of U.S. social, political, and legal institutions. They will learn to foster historical habits of mind and strengthen students' ability to understand and interpret primary source documents by using graphic organizers, questioning techniques, essay writing, group work, and other teaching strategies. Our Dynamic Nation will produce a cadre of teacher-leaders who will share exemplary lesson plans, provide professional development, and sustain a professional network among Placer County's American history teachers.

The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District is within Orange County, California. It includes three Title I schools that are in program improvement status, and those schools are targeted for services through The Promise of Democracy. Following a kick-off and recruitment event, selected teachers from across the district will participate in a range of professional development offerings: four 2-week summer institutes with travel-study tours, three 2-day seminars each year, a 4-day Technology as a Tool for Historians session for each participant, two vertical alignment sessions each year, evolving special interest group sessions, and training in cognitive coaching and mentoring for a team of 15 teacher leaders. The summer institute/travel-study tours will be open to 30 of the 128 participants, and the teacher-leader team will be selected from that group. The Promise of Democracy will explore how well America has realized the promise of democracy as it has evolved over time and will emphasize what students must know to be active and responsible citizens in an era of change. Teachers will learn to develop students' historical thinking and writing skills through the use of document-based questioning, expository reading strategies, simulations, debates, role-playing, and technology integration, with special attention to effective strategies for English Language Learners, special education students, and students in alternative education settings. The Promise of Democracy will establish a scope and sequence for history as a separate subject in Grade 5. A culminating countywide showcase conference will feature distribution of lesson materials and presentations of teacher-developed lessons across grade levels.

In these remote northwestern California districts, nearly three fourths of 8th and 11th grade students scored at or below basic on the 2007 statewide U.S. History test. Substance abuse, juvenile crime, and violence are common, and teachers face great challenges in engaging students in academics. This project will help teachers develop their pedagogical skills and content knowledge through a variety of annual activities: four evening book discussions, two weekday workshops, two Saturday workshops, two Constitutional workshops, 20 afterschool workshops, and a variety of summer activities. Participants can join one of two cohorts—the master's program, or MA cohort, or the professional development, PD cohort. Of 70 participants in Years 1-3, half will enter the MA cohort and half the PD cohort; in Years 4-5, another 70 teachers will complete the same program. In addition, 10 preservice teachers will join the activities each year. The MA cohort will pursue a content-dominated program of graduate courses, and the PD cohort will balance pedagogy with content; however, both groups will pay attention to classroom instruction. For example, MA teachers will be required to create and demonstrate teaching "hooks"—quick ways to introduce a topic by using a visual element and a primary source document. In the PD cohort, curriculum groups will develop, test, and edit at least two projects oractivities a year: these might be Web-based activities, field trips, classroom-ready differentiated instruction, or lessons that integrate California history into U.S. history. To make the professional development available to as many teachers as possible, the 20 afterschool workshops will be held at 10 different low-performing schools.