In this high-poverty area of southeastern Tennessee, approximately one-third of all high school students fail to attain proficiency in American history, and their teachers have no history professional development program. All participating teachers will receive at least 280 hours of professional development, with high implementation (HI) teachers receiving about 400 additional hours during three years of colloquia and practicums as well as several summer study trips. Of the 90 teachers involved, 20 will be designated as HI teachers; they will receive in-depth training, including Web-based courses, to become history leaders for the district. Another 20 partner teachers will participate in professional development and be mentored by HI teachers. The remaining 50 consortium teachers will receive professional development. The project's underlying theme is making connections—teachers will connect to one another, to professional historians and to historic sites and events, thus bringing heightened levels of knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching. All professional development sessions will deliver content related to the topic for the year, with the goal of helping teachers learn to practice history as historians do; readings will be a mix of factual and fictional, selected to provide insights, perspectives and teaching tools. Instructional strategies will include using historical habits of mind, primary sources, backward mapping, authentic assessment, content-area reading, research and interpretation. Project-generated best practices, evaluation tools and lessons will be reviewed by history professors and state history specialists, then posted on three Web sites, including the Gilder Lehrman site, and promoted at professional conferences.

Like adjacent counties, this area of southeastern Tennessee is high poverty; many students leave high school with poor understandings of American history, and their teachers have no professional development program. All participating teachers will receive at least 280 hours of professional development, with high implementation (HI) teachers receiving about 400 additional hours during three years of colloquia and practicums as well as several summer study trips. Of the 170 teachers involved, 30 will be designated as HI teachers; they will receive in-depth training, including Web-based courses, to become history leaders for the district. Another 30 partner teachers will participate in professional development and be mentored by HI teachers. The remaining 110 consortium teachers will receive professional development. The project's underlying theme is making connections—teachers will connect to one another, to professional historians and to historic sites and events, thus bringing heightened levels of knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching. All professional development sessions will deliver content related to the topic for the year, with the goal of helping teachers learn to practice history as historians do; readings will be a mix of factual (e.g., Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers) and fictional (e.g., Arthur Miller's The Crucible), selected to provide insights, perspectives and teaching tools. Instructional strategies will include using historical habits of mind, primary sources, backward mapping, authentic assessment, content-area reading, research and interpretation. Project-generated best practices, evaluation tools and lessons will be reviewed by history professors and state history specialists, then posted on three Web sites, including the Gilder Lehrman site, and promoted at professional conferences.

U.S. history teachers in these South Dakota districts have expressed an interest in more opportunities for content-related professional development and interactions with historians. The project will include face-to-face meetings in which historians will lecture and lead discussions, and teachers will use 21st-century partnership teaching tools to create a curriculum. Teachers also will participate in asynchronous distance learning through structured online book discussion groups, blogs, webinars and podcasts. The project will involve 60 teachers over all five years. The content will focus on the early national period, including historical foundations and philosophical debates relating to the Constitution; controversies, successes and constitutional transitions through the Civil War period; deepening divisions caused by the legacy of slavery and the ultimate test of the Constitution —the Civil War and Reconstruction; the transition from an agrarian to an industrialized nation; and changes of the modern era resulting from two world wars, the Cold War and the civil rights movement. The project will examine constitutional concepts, key U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the three branches of government and periods of constitutional crises. The teachers will work with resources provided by the National Constitution Center, Library of Congress, Organization of American Historians and other organizations. They also will have access to various books, documents and electronic and multimedia resources. Dakota Wesleyan University will award six graduate credits per year for completing the activities. A Web site will host all project-generated teaching materials, including curricula tied to specific sections of the Constitution. In addition, participants will present and discuss their work at summer institute.

Below-average student achievement has put these western Piedmont districts on the South Carolina improvement list. To work toward stronger practice, project teachers will participate in a speaker series, where presentations by historians will be accompanied by training in methods and curriculum development. Book clubs will focus on assigned readings, and weekend study tours will explore cities of historic significance. Summer institutes will provide immersive experiences of content and methods sessions, field studies, primary source research and hands-on learning. Teachers will learn to use primary sources, and they will conduct online discussions about their activities. The 60 teachers will come from the grades where state and American history are taught, although many activities will be open to all 250+ history teachers. Teaching American History in the Lakelands will emphasize the role of individuals in shaping U.S. history, often looking at people from both sides of an issue. Presenters will contextualize topics within the state standards so teachers can easily connect what they're learning to what they're teaching. In the first four years, the content will align with eras defined by the National Assessment of Education Progress, and eras will be covered in the order of need defined by teachers. Year 5 will make connections between state and national history across all eras. Project leaders have selected History Habits of Mind as the methods framework. Teachers will share their knowledge with colleagues through local workshops and at state and national conferences. They will create lesson plans, videotaped lessons, annotated bibliographies and other materials, which will be mounted on the project Web site.

Eleven schools in this district had failure rates exceeding 70 percent on South Carolina's 2008-09 U.S. History High School End of Course assessment. To meet the needs of teachers as identified through assessment and anecdotal data, the project will offer two 2-day colloquia focused on historical content aligned with teachers' instructional assignments, ongoing instructional planning to help teachers share knowledge and resources, and a summer institute that combines historical content, pedagogy and field studies at historic sites in South Carolina. During five days of field studies outside of South Carolina, master educators will model how to convey content in classrooms using effective methods, including primary documents, artifact research, the incorporation of literature to help young students grasp historical complexity and learning/digital technologies. The project will involve 50 teachers per year: 30 from the 4th and 5th grades in an elementary cohort, and 20 from the 8th and 11th grades in a middle/high school cohort. The Palmetto Project: Perspectives in American History will include direct content instruction in the eight National Assessment of Educational Progress historical periods, effective pedagogy for content instruction and the production of high-quality resources. The project curriculum will focus on traditional American history and correlate to South Carolina educational standards, with an emphasis on the Civil War. The project will help teachers use primary documents and integrate technology into classroom instruction as they apply pedagogical methods based on effective practices. Some participants will present at regional and national conferences. A project Web site will share teacher-developed lesson plans and resources, and the project evaluation findings will be published.

These adjoining northwestern South Carolina districts share the challenge of students who are unprepared in history; the majority of middle and high school students fail to achieve proficiency on standardized and end-of-course history exams. During the school year, teachers will establish school-based professional learning teams, conduct book studies and attend several 1-day and 5-day workshops; in the summer, teachers will participate in a 5-day summer symposium and a 4- to 5-day traveling history institute. All events will deliver content and pedagogy, and the summer institutes will include activities focused on developing classroom curriculum. All middle and high school teachers of American history in the two districts will participate in this project with the goals of learning to think like historians and translating this skill to their students. As the learning moves from Reconstruction to the present, content will emphasize the struggles and perspectives of women and cultural minorities and their contributions to shaping American history. Instructional strategies will focus on using primary sources, aligning instruction to standards, developing critical thinking skills and thinking like a historian. Professional learning teams will also develop teachers' skills around using student data and analyzing student work. A project Web site will house all teacher-created materials and links to relevant sites, making them available to all teachers.

The northern Rhode Island districts involved in A New Birth of Freedom: Developing Historical Thinking in American History make up one-third of the state's districts. When some teachers who will be affected by the project took an Advanced Placement U.S. history test, their average score was about 47 percent. Every year, academic and public historians and educators will introduce content and teaching strategies through 1-day fall and spring workshops, a series of after-school sessions, and a 5-day summer institute with field experiences. Leading New England scholars will initiate substantive work with project teachers to increase content knowledge and create excitement for American history. Project leaders will encourage teachers to build horizontal and vertical relationships among schools and with historians as the partnering organizations. Separate cohorts of 60 teachers each year will participate; priority will be given to teachers with the fewest opportunities for history professional development. The project will stress the themes of communication and flexibility while working toward building a statewide learning community. Content will focus on the ideal of "freedom" and how this concept has been expressed by influential figures, founding documents and landmark cases that have transformed American history. Teaching strategies will focus on using primary sources, differentiated instruction, document-based questioning and performance-based authentic assessments to help students develop historical, critical and reflective skills. Teachers will be able to earn graduate or continuing education credits for their participation as long as they complete unit plans that consist of several lessons. Model lesson plans and student work will be posted on the Web site to help other teachers find materials and learn from colleagues.

In this diverse Philadelphia district, 72 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and none of the targeted high schools has met its annual yearly progress goals. Teachers in this project will participate in (1) 10 day-long symposia at Saint Joseph's University, focusing on historical research through technology, student evaluations and core content-related teaching practices; (2) an annual 5-day summer institute, featuring historical content, teaching strategies, review standards, and the development of lesson plans and classroom-ready resources and materials; (3) a program of regular student pre- and post testing, in which teachers will meet in teams after school to review state standards and the district’s pacing guide, prepare monthly or unit pre- and posttests, and give the tests to their students; and (4) a teacher network, which will offer follow-up support between monthly meetings. The project will involve four overlapping cohorts of 30: Cohort A (Years 1-2), Cohort B (Years 2-3), Cohort C (Years 3-4) and Cohort D (Years 4-5). Each cohort will include two representatives from 15 schools. The most academically challenged schools will be targeted first for participation. The project will provide a standards-aligned study of American history from the crafting of the Constitution to recent times, examining the issues, themes, events and interpretations related to the question, "What did freedom mean?" Teachers will learn to use content-related teaching strategies, including primary documents, artifacts, first-hand accounts, illustrations and site visits to translate freshly mastered content into classroom lessons. Reviewed lessons and other resources generated by the teachers will be posted online.

Nine of this project's 13 districts have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress, and few teachers have better than scant knowledge of American history. Three colloquia and a summer institute, totaling 11 days, will be offered each year, and sessions will be led by historians, instructional experts and master teachers. An annual book study will require reading, writing and discussions with professors and education specialists. Teachers will keep multimedia journals and compile collections of resources for classroom use. A cadre of 50 teachers will be recruited, with the goal of retaining all for the full 3 years to build an enduring, history-based professional learning community. By studying American history chronologically through the historian's academic lens, teachers will see the powerful cause and effect relationships and push/pull factors that have impacted our history. Teachers will engage in discourse and experiential learning with the goals of (1) developing historical reasoning skills, along with the ability to engage student learning and critical thinking; and (2) becoming trainers of colleagues in their schools and districts. Specific instructional methods will be introduced each year, and the historical reasoning approach will build a foundation for acquiring historical knowledge. Strategies will be bracketing history; E.Q.U.A.L., a strategy to study primary documents; and the Great Parley, in which students study events from multiple perspectives. All project work will be published on the Southern Oregon Education Service District Web site, and student- and teacher-created video resources will be posted to TeacherTube.

Project INSPIRE will serve rural districts with limited financial resources; many teachers have little background in American history and teach out-of-field. Activities will capitalize on experts in history and online learning to deliver in-person and distance learning experiences that are organized in five tiers: (1) a lecture series, (2) monthly online history activities, (3) annual colloquia at historic sites (e.g., Williamsburg, Boston, Gettysburg), (4) annual 2-day master teacher workshops, and (5) annual intensive summer workshops focused on a specific time period. Tiers 1 and 2 will be delivered mainly by 21st century technologies such as Skype, and all activities will be supported by such technology tools as Moodle, which will be used for lesson planning. The 57 teachers will be chosen on the basis of greatest need; all will participate for the first three years, and some will continue for the final two years, to be joined by additional colleagues. Each year 40 participants will rotate into the colloquium and master teacher workshop, with smaller groups of three per year selected for the intensive summer workshop. This 5-year training-of-trainers program aims to develop "teacher content specialists" who can sustain the professional development beyond the grant period. To build content knowledge of national and local history and to develop expertise in such research-based strategies as thinking like a historian, teachers will explore online resources and get hands-on practice with conducting research, using primary sources, and teaching from multiple perspectives. Participants will create lesson plans, book reviews, project activities and guides, and a Web site featuring student work and National History Day projects.