A 2010 survey indicates that only a small percentage of U.S. history teachers in these Idaho districts currently place a significant emphasis on chronology, primary sources or connecting historical events with broader themes. Due to budget limitations, few teachers have had an opportunity to participate in history-related professional development over the past three years, and most would be interested in strengthening their knowledge of primary sources and interacting with historical experts. This project offers summer and daylong institutes during the school year featuring renowned national historians and twice-monthly half-day Saturday online workshops led by history faculty from Idaho's four institutions of higher education. The teachers will be organized into four cohorts of 10 based on location. Each of the three years, they will study a different chronological phase of American history, focusing on significant issues, episodes and turning points. They will use primary sources to learn how the words and deeds of individuals have determined the course of history, and create lesson plans using backward design and one of five teaching strategies: Binary Paideia, haunted history, content scene interpretation, cause-effect generalizations and cognition strategies. The teachers will produce four lesson plans for each unit. An academic advisory board will select the best teacher lesson plans and student products for inclusion on a consortium Web site. In addition, the online workshops will be recorded and made available as QuickTime movies.

Districts from both western Idaho and southeastern Washington will be involved in this project; focus groups with history teachers found that few have learned from or taught with primary documents, and many believe their history curricula need to be updated. Following a 2-day launch meeting, annual activities will include curriculum improvement team meetings, three days of summer historian seminars/field study, five Saturday seminars, monthly Talking History viewing and discussion sessions, and quarterly book studies. In addition, three master teachers each year will attend a 5-day Gilder Lehrman summer institute. The project will serve at least 33 teachers and a principal who have volunteered to participate for the full term of the grant. To support improvements in teaching and learning, activities will become more participatory each year; in Year 1, many activities will be passive — lectures, podcasts — and by Year 5, most activities will feature discussions, practice and teaching others; specific activities will include re-creations, simulations and debates. Each year, all major historical eras will be covered so as to coincide with the time line used in secondary classrooms; repetition and differing perspectives over the life of the project will help teachers build depth of knowledge. Teachers will develop habits of historical thinking as they study 100 significant documents, 100 court cases and 100 significant turning points in history. Curriculum improvement teams at the project, district and school levels will develop curriculum maps, pacing benchmarks and common assessments. All teacher-created curriculum maps, assessment tools and lesson plans will be posted on a Web site for other teachers to use.

Located halfway between Atlanta and the Alabama border, this district's population has increased by 36 percent over five years, bringing greater diversity and more poverty to the area. In addition, many of the district's history teachers are novices who do not have degrees or endorsements in American history. Get WIRED With History will offer five full-day seminars each year, three lesson study sessions, a 10-day summer history alliance that includes field study, five podcast lectures, and the 3-day Georgia Council for the Social Studies conference. In addition, teachers will be encouraged to attend regional or state youth competitions, either to act as judges or to bring their students as competitors. The annual cohort of 38 teachers was designed to include one teacher from every elementary and middle school and two teachers from every high school, with some staying in for multiple years. The project hopes to develop a community of teacher and student historians. To this end, the project will focus on research-based instructional approaches, including essential questions, active learning (e.g., project-based activities) and problem-based learning. Teachers will employ lesson study groups to improve their practice. Running across the topic areas (see above) will be several conceptual threads, including ideas and beliefs; trade, industry and technology; social and political interactions; movement and migration; and globalization. The project Web site, "WIRED-Online," will host private discussion areas, program announcements and other project supports. In addition, its public space will make a variety of materials—including podcasts of lectures, related handouts, reading lists, teacher-created lessons and virtual tours—available to teachers elsewhere.

This Atlanta district, like many U.S. districts, has seen scores on end-of-course history tests fall dramatically—from about 639 points in 2005 to 429 points in 2009. Examining Years of Economic Strides, or EYES, will immerse high school teachers in a 1-day kick-off event, eight 1-day education matters events, a 5-day summer academy, three days at the American History Conference, two book study circles, five resource library activities and five days of field research each year. With additional activities, teachers will be involved in more than 400 hours of professional development during the grant period. Four cohorts of 37 or 38 teachers each will participate in two years of professional development; this will enable every high school history teacher in the district to be part of the project. EYES aims to use the lens of economics to make American history fresh, engaging and relevant, and to encourage critical thinking and historical investigation into central themes and concepts. For example, the content of Unit A (1) will include examination of the colonial economy in a global context, property rights among American Indians, and the costs and benefits of American independence. EYES will use a blueprint, or rubric, to help teachers and project leaders track instructional strategies, such as using primary documents and applying historical thinking skills. Participating teachers will post materials about their studies and the lessons they create to the district’s social studies Web site, and they will present at conferences, including state and national conferences, plus a local one that they will host in conjunction with historians who lead project activities.

Cobb County is northwest of Atlanta, near the borders of Tennessee and Alabama. Student performance on the history portion of state graduation tests has fallen in recent years, and district history teachers have had access to little or no professional development. Each semester, this project will deliver three symposia and two field trips, a book study, and workshops for developing curriculum materials. Each year, leading historians will present a 5-day summer seminar that will include lectures and materials, historian guidance during a field study, and opportunities for teachers to confer with experts in the field. The project will serve an annual cadre of 30 high school teachers; Year 1 participants will be encouraged to stay on, and any who leave will be replaced by new teachers. Applicants will be screened to select those who have the greatest need. By providing a cutting-edge professional development experience, the district aims to develop a cadre of lead teachers and mentors who can work across the district and the state. Symposia will be led by guest historians, and primary source materials will be reviewed for historical interpretation, point of view and analysis. Field studies will be designed to include history content and exploration of primary sources. Strategies will include use of History Habits of Mind, document-based questioning and the Understanding by Design process. Every teacher will design at least one lesson per year, and these resources will be available on the district and project Web sites. Participants will present at local and state conferences and will be encouraged to apply to national conferences.

A recent study demonstrates that teachers in this Florida district have limited accessibility to professional development in history and, due to limited budgets, lack resources and teaching materials. In this project, teachers will participate in at least 80 percent of the professional development opportunities. In Years 2 to 5, they will attend a summer institute, which will include a 2- or 3-day colloquium from the National Council for History Education, followed by 2 days of curriculum design from the University of Central Florida. Each year, the project will feature five online history webinar discussions from the National Humanities Center, two Saturday teaching history workshops from the University of Central Florida, a Saturday seminar or field study academy from the Florida Humanities Council to examine historic topics in depth, and a 3- to 5-day summer field study academy at historic sites relevant to the time period being studied. The project will involve 30 teachers, with the goal of recruiting 10 each from elementary, middle and high schools. Teachers will interact with historians, master teachers and curriculum specialists to examine, analyze and synthesize historical knowledge by reviewing primary and secondary sources. All activities will integrate educational technology and emphasize the use of resources to help history teachers improve their classroom practice. Annually, teachers will create at least one comprehensive lesson and then field-test it with students, revise it as needed and submit it to the project coordinator for review.

E Pluribus Unum: One Nation, One People will be developed in one Florida district, where assessment data indicate that American history is seldom taught in depth at the elementary level and that such knowledge is not being retained by middle and high school students. Each year, the project teachers must participate in at least three professional development sessions for a minimum of 30 hours, including at least one professional learning community or graduate course; take a nationally validated assessment; and complete follow-ups for all professional development activities. Those who meet the requirements will be eligible for an annual stipend; those who complete a graduate course will receive tuition reimbursements and stipends. The project presenters—local history experts, history professors, pedagogical experts and curriculum coordinators—will provide history content expertise, pedagogical training, historical research and/or historical thinking that applies to classrooms. The project strategies will focus on collaborations among teachers, history experts and the partners, supported through (1) Professional Learning Communities, where teachers can collectively study and inquire about topics, lessons and books; and (2) research opportunities and internships offered by the partnering museums and local university's history department. Project teachers will produce lesson plans and demonstrate lessons as follow-ups to the professional development; plans that demonstrate the necessary quality, impact and ease of implementation will be posted on a Web site and made available to all teachers. In addition, the Web site will feature other related resources, including videos of the lessons being delivered, the locations of local historic sites and museums, lists of available field trips and links to other useful sites.

In 2008-09, this district had an average of only 14.2 percent of students in Grades 8 and 11 proficient in American history. Teachers will be able to participate in a variety of weekend institutes that deliver content and methods training, local field experiences and end-of-year expeditions to national sites, and 5-day summer workshops. In addition, 40 teachers each summer can take credit-bearing graduate courses that will be delivered in a combination of in-person and online media. Teachers will come from the schools where students have the greatest need. To ensure that resources and activities complement grade-level standards, teachers will participate in an elementary/middle or high school cohort. Each summer's field experiences will align with the year's topic, and the two cohorts will study historical eras that align to content they teach in the classroom. Sessions on pedagogy and opportunities to collect resources for classroom use will be incorporated into all activities. The project Web site will house teacher blogs, reading lists, lesson plans, videos, journal entries and more; an annual product will highlight project activities to other teachers and the community at large (e.g., in Year 3, teachers will research and create archives on four local leaders for whom schools are named). At the end of the three years, teachers will host an Academy of American History Forum for all Duval County history teachers, where they will present workshops and lectures highlighting the experiences and materials developed under the grant.

A survey demonstrated that more than one-third of social studies teachers in Washington, D.C., have less than three years of experience. Each year, teachers will attend a summer institute at American University featuring two graduate-level courses: one in American history and the other in historical pedagogy. Throughout this institute, the teachers will be introduced to current historiography, public history in the form of archeology and exhibitions at historic sites, and a range of primary and secondary sources—from maps to material culture—that will be incorporated into lesson plans and curricular units. Each history content course will follow the same pattern: professors alternating lectures, field studies and discussions, while teachers collect video and documentary data for their curricular units. They also will attend a series of Saturday workshops. Eighty teachers will participate for three years with the possibility of a 2-year extension. The project will provide tangible connections to the past that can reveal social and cultural history through the built environment and memory studies. It will blend the content with visits to local historic sites, such as Mount Vernon, the Frederick Douglass House and the H Street Corridor. The teachers will discuss and adapt the substance and methods of academic and public historians' work to create robust learning environments, develop new strategies for engaging students in working with historic places and primary and secondary sources, develop techniques for integrating technology into curricular planning, and contextualize and integrate the district's instructional vision of the Teaching and Learning Framework into teachers' curricular units, which will be made available online.

These districts—the two largest in Delaware—are rated below target in terms of Adequate Yearly Progress. In addition, their American history teachers lack adequate preparation in their subject area. Each year of the project will include four 2-day American history workshops and two week-long summer institutes with field trips for two cohorts of 25 teachers and administrators, who will work in professional learning communities and lesson study teams. Cohort A will learn about events through the Civil War, while Cohort B will focus on post-Civil War history. To prevent attrition and ensure full impact, the project will employ an incentive system in which teachers and administrators who participate for three years will receive annually enhanced stipends. All topics are related to the theme of freedom. The project will concentrate on major eras of American history and more focused case studies of selected turning points in the evolution of freedom. The project Web site will feature videotaped sessions that allow visitors to view guided practice lesson presentations by the instructional specialist, a reader-response blog in which visitors can respond to recommended readings and research lessons, a forum in which visitors can recommend and discuss American history resources and best practices, an "Ask the Historian" component that allows participants to communicate with the project's guest historians, and a featured book site that draws attention to new and notable books.