These contiguous Vermont districts are overwhelmingly rural, and some have above-average poverty rates. The project will organize its teaching fellows into four regional learning communities to help combat the rural isolation factor. Each learning community will have an experienced teacher who provides leadership and support. Teachers will discuss books, engage in primary source activities and look at student work. Fellows will be able to choose from additional activities that include providing professional development in their own or nearby districts, presenting at conferences, and publishing in the Flow of History newsletter. Summer institutes will begin in Year 2 and carry into the school year; teachers will select topics and begin historical inquiry during the institute, then continue the work with students in the classroom, thus working toward the project aim of building historical thinking skills. Each year, fellows will create portfolios of primary sources, activities and student work keyed to the historical content, historical thinking strategies and inquiry techniques discussed during the year. As teachers learn about major themes, issues and events in American history, they will learn to scaffold historical thinking skills that build from basic observation to more sophisticated forms of analysis and interpretation, culminating in conducting inquiry-based research. Staff from partner organizations, regional museums and historic sites will provide content information for workshops and field studies. Project activities will help teachers earn continuing education and graduate credits. The project's advisory board will use a rubric to review materials produced by teachers, and completed materials will be available online through Web sites managed by two project partners.

Turning Points in American History will serve 70 public schools and 27 independent schools in rural northwestern Vermont; based on a survey, many of the teachers in these schools have a limited knowledge of American history. This professional development program will provide opportunities for long-term partnerships with local and regional historical organizations by centering activities around local museums. Events will include (1) three scholar-led seminars per year to build teachers' content knowledge and chronological-thinking skills; (2) book and primary source study groups, which will focus on one historical era per year; (3) summer field studies at national sites and local historic sites and museums; and (4) teacher leadership institutes, which will encourage teachers to discuss content and pedagogy through shared experiences and the new digital classroom. This model will (1) create inquiry-based study groups for teaching content and historical thinking, (2) add existing knowledge for best practice for creating digital learning communities, (3) produce new lessons around teaching with historical sites, (4) institute new policies around peer-to-peer professional development, and (5) build strong school-museum partnerships. The teachers will pre-read historical materials and attend lectures followed by small-group discussions with the scholars, learn to analyze and interpret primary sources and develop writing assignments to exhibit historical-thinking skills, and post their interpretations to a digital classroom for peer feedback. The project will create a Web site that features exemplary activities, lectures and other resources created by the project; in addition, it will produce new curriculum resources, including lessons, units, streaming video of study groups, historical writing assignments and benchmarks.

Many students in this Utah district come from multigenerational, low-income families in rural communities spread across a large geographic area, including an American Indian reservation. Each year, project teachers will participate in monthly symposia, featuring lectures and reading assignments that examine key concepts, issues, questions and primary sources; monthly lesson study groups, focusing on pedagogy, research, assessment development, presentations and the historical investigation process; and studies of online collections and on-site field research at local sites. Four teachers also will attend the annual conference for the National Council for the Social Studies. In Years 3 and 5, all teachers will participate in a 5-day regional capstone field study. Annually, the project will serve 20 history teachers (half elementary and half secondary), each of whom may participate for up to three years. In addition, the history lectures and instructional resources will be open to all district teachers. The project's themes will be based on common threads across the Utah History Core and an assessment of teachers' needs. The strategies will include using expert historians and master history educators, embedding impactful pedagogical methods, and using local and national resources. The trainings will be supplemented with effective strategies that entwine continuous learning into teachers' daily routines, including professional learning communities, lesson study, one-on-one mentoring/coaching and virtual networks. Teachers also will have an opportunity to earn professional and master's degree credits. The teachers will create high-quality products, including standards-based curriculum units, mini-research projects involving primary sources and benchmarks, and common assessments for the new Utah History Standards.

Schools in this district serve students from some of Utah's most disadvantaged communities. More than 40 percent of the students are minorities, and 24 percent are considered limited English proficient. This project will build on the success and momentum of an existing Teaching American History grant. Each year, the project will include a 2-week teacher academy, which features content taught by historical experts, the modeling of best practices in instructional methodology, and hands-on research and group work; quarterly school-year workshops to ensure that participating teachers know the Utah History Core, can assess student learning and can modify their instruction to meet student needs; and quarterly collaborative study groups to help teachers identify needs, brainstorm and prioritize appropriate solutions, and implement those solutions. To address the needs of its diverse population, the project will extend professional development to 40 teachers per year; based on their needs and performances, teachers may participate for up to three years. The highest selection priority will be given to teachers who are not highly qualified, have taken few academic history courses and/or have not recently attended history-related trainings. The content will explore questions and enduring understandings of traditional American history that transcend all time periods, focusing on pivotal issues, events, turning points, documents, legislation and judicial cases. The project will integrate cross-curricular and life-skills strategies, engage teachers in lesson study and develop peer mentors/coaches. Participants will create high-quality resources, including primary source kits, integrated language arts lessons, history unit plans and in-service units, and comprehensive elementary history curriculum maps and benchmarks.

Fort Worth is an ethnically diverse, urban, high-poverty area, and the schools targeted by Project HOPE have high percentages of limited English proficient and special education students; both groups need extra support to meet state achievement standards. Each year teachers will participate in four pull-out sessions, one field trip and four Super Saturdays of training; in Years 1, 3 and 5, teachers will attend 5-day summer institutes at historic sites. All events are designed to deepen American history content knowledge and help teachers learn how to think and share like historians. Teachers will be divided into two cadres, one of eleventh grade teachers and one of 5th- and 8th-grade teachers. The cadres will work separately on aligning content with grade-level standards and together to learn to use instructional strategies and tools, including those designed to support students with limited English proficiency and with special needs. Project HOPE aims to develop teachers' and students' critical thinking and analytical skills and to educate all students to become active citizens. Teachers will receive training in historiography and historical strategies, including the use of primary sources; will use the Institute for Learning protocol to conduct investigations of student work; and will learn to employ inquiry-based learning methods. Lectures, guided reading discussions, book studies and field trips will contribute to deepening teachers' content knowledge. The project will develop an online database and Web site that highlight teacher-developed units of study and provide access to resources; it will also establish and maintain ongoing collaboration among district teachers and project partners to develop a professional learning community.

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.