After six successful years implementing three Northern Nevada Teaching American History projects, it became apparent to us that we could challenge ourselves and our teachers to move beyond individual professional development experiences and engage in a long-term, three-year project aimed at fostering collaboration between vertical teams of upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Because teachers at these various levels had different curricular foci in American history, we sought common ground through common themes and questions. A primary goal for these vertical teams was to reframe their entire curriculum around the same essential questions (EQs) to facilitate historical inquiry and historical thinking.

Essential questions are open-ended questions that address the big ideas of history, have no predetermined correct answer, allow for multiple interpretations, and, most importantly, are applicable across historical eras and to contemporary events. Four to six well-written essential questions could frame every unit of study across all grade levels. After setting the instructional stage with these essential questions, teachers could structure historical inquiry around specific historical questions (HQs) for each unit of study. An HQ is directly related to specific historical content and to an individual EQ. The formula used by teachers was: EQ + history standard = HQ. Our article, “The Past as a Puzzle: How Essential Questions Can Piece Together a Meaningful Investigation of History” in The Social Studies (2011), details the process and results of our adventure implementing EQs and HQs in grades 5–12.

(For more examples of EQs and HQs for elementary, middle, and high school, download this chart.)

The first difficulty we faced in this process was collaboratively writing the overarching essential questions. Writing questions that were truly open-ended and thematic proved difficult to say the least. Despite originally believing that one eight-hour session introducing the concept and writing the EQs would be enough time, we found that the process actually took almost the entire year. We had to allow teachers time to process and play around with the questions before we could adopt them as a whole group.

Even more difficult was facilitating the use of EQs with integrity. That is, EQs were meant to help teachers reframe their curriculum around broad themes and enduring questions but were not initially used in this fashion. For some teachers, the leap to instruction and assessment around EQs was natural. They had a yearning to focus on the big picture and enduring ideas while engaging students in inquiry, and so the change was embraced. However, a majority of the teachers involved struggled with reframing their curriculum around EQs. They were eager to implement EQs, recognized the potential for increased student engagement and understanding, and even regularly inserted EQs into their lessons. They hung posters of the EQs in their rooms and talked about them sometimes during class. BUT, for these teachers, we had to provide additional tools, guidance, and mentoring in ways to think about EQs as a framework rather than an addition to their classroom goals.

Despite the initial difficulties, we have all found great success in implementing EQs. Teachers have noted that students in their classes who were exposed previously to the same EQs in lower grades grasp the enduring issues in history and comment on their comfort in using EQs to inquire deeply into the content.

We have been most impressed by the natural link to the next NNTAH project focus: creation and implementation of Document Based Questions (DBQs). Familiarity with using questions to guide the curriculum supported the move towards answering historical questions with DBQs. Historical questions, directly aligned with EQs, were the foundation of the document based questions. Teachers were able to create DBQs that supported their year-long focus on enduring issues in history, because the historical questions under study were always linked to the EQ. In 2010–2011, 44 teachers created their own high-quality DBQs based upon essential and historical questions. Since that time, many have reported creating additional DBQs to support historical inquiry in their classrooms.

Directing my first Teaching American History (TAH) grant in 2003, I had three years to spend nearly a million dollars providing professional development to teachers of American history. What could go wrong?

Plenty, of course. Organizational issues aside, the project faced two challenges. First, given the dollars and the time we had to spend, we simply could not get enough teachers to fill the seats. I have heard over the years TAH grant directors complain about recruitment. "We offer these fabulous programs," they sigh, "but people don’t come."

Program quality could never overcome the structural issue: the teachers in our service area could not consume all the professional development we offer. We had a serious problem of oversupply.

None of the obvious solutions made much sense. We couldn't provide less professional development than the grant proposal promised, or serve fewer teachers. We had to expand our pool of teachers, and expand it quickly.

In New England, with its many districts in a small geographical area, the solution was simple if politically tenuous: invite other districts into a consortium to expand the market for our offerings. We maintained our relationship with our primary partner by providing them with preferred service: guaranteed spots, special privileges, and direct curricular support. Our pool of available teachers tripled, and we seldom had any recruitment issues.

Districts more geographically distributed could achieve the same result through distance learning options. Most higher education partners have that capability already; why not use it?

The second problem had to do with the offerings themselves. The proposal I had been brought in to manage promised a smorgasbord of professional development: institutes, lectures, seminars, and graduate-level courses. We could mix and match as the talents and availability of our historians dictated.

The menu of potential professional development is limited. We asked teachers what they wanted and districts what they would support, and rounded up the usual suspects. But the offerings sometimes sputtered. We filled the seats, and people liked what we gave them, but the self-reported impact on students never satisfied us.

We hit on two solutions, one that any existing grant holder can replicate, and another that has to grow organically out of a proposal from the start.

The organic solution proposes a three-year project that intends to create a specific change in a region. Instead of planning to offer the usual types of professional development organized around a unifying theme, look at what your districts need to organically change the way they teach history.

The first TAH grant I wrote sponsored school-based teams of elementary teachers working together for a year to add flesh to the statewide standards. By the time we finished, a third of the region's elementary schools had gone through the process, and another third had heard detailed reports about the changes.

The second grant supported a research-based induction program for new teachers of American history. Few districts could afford a state-of-the-art induction program, but the TAH grant, coming just as history faculty turned over through retirement, filled that need.

These proposals (and more I have written and received) started from the question, "What do the teachers and districts need to improve history instruction?" rather than "What professional development can we provide teachers and districts?" Districts gladly bought in to these organically conceived proposals. We could explain the grant in a sentence, a sentence that spoke to pressing educational needs.

The other program came almost as an afterthought, when the first grant had an unspent balance. We brought together a group of teachers who had worked with us for years. We asked them to assemble booklets of primary sources that they thought could amplify the richness and meaning of some key documents in American history.

We ended up publishing five booklets—on the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address and "I Have a Dream"—each containing 60 or more primary sources. We distributed them for free to every history teacher in the region. The booklets attracted more money and support, and have been distributed across the state.

The teachers who created the booklets described the work as the best professional development they ever experienced, transformative personally and professionally. And the booklets are used, bringing students closer to primary sources, some obvious and some arcane, than ever before.

TAH grants can provide immense service to students and their teachers. A little creativity makes a world of difference in their success.

On more than one occasion, teachers participating in our Teaching American History (TAH) project have speculated that one reason their middle school students often have trouble understanding historical texts may be because they have not yet developed the ability to imagine the past. Because they are young their experience is limited and many have yet to discover museums, historic houses, or other places of historical interest. In addition, the historical past is not immediately evident on the surface in New York City, where it is often difficult to see through the many layers of changes in the landscape and the built environment.

As a museum educator, I have been encouraging teachers to bring the tools of art history and material culture studies to their classrooms by presenting works of art and architecture, photographs, and historical artifacts to students. In this way, the definition of the primary source is expanded beyond the written word to include the visual and the tactile; the historical source material available for consideration and evaluation is greatly increased; and students are offered the possibility of a sensory as well as intellectual encounter with the past.

In periodic visits to art museums, historical collections, and historic houses in New York City, as well as in a series of after-school workshops, our group of middle school teachers has explored a range of art and artifacts with an eye toward conducting similar explorations with their students. Teachers are learning a process of investigation that involves observation, deduction, speculation, and interpretive analysis to uncover the meaning of art and objects.

The technique, standard in museum education, is simple and direct: It asks students (or anyone seriously approaching a work of art) to begin by describing the object, to analyze its structure, to consider the circumstance of its creation, and only then to propose an interpretation of the meaning of the piece.

Here are the basic guidelines for exploring a work of art or artifact of culture:

1. Sensory experience is at the heart of our interaction with works of art or artifacts of culture. Observe the piece for at least one full minute—this is surprisingly long for many students.

2. Take note of your first response. Aesthetic response is personal and often emotional. It deserves our attention. Here students can register their reaction and then set emotion and opinion aside.

3. Describe the work. Make note of the obvious in neutral language, e.g. "seated female figure in green dress, landscape background . . ." This constructs a visual/verbal inventory that serves to focus our viewing. It is especially important in conversational settings with students because we cannot assume that we all see the same things. Articulating the description brings everyone to a kind of consensus about what is being looked at.

Articulating the description brings everyone to a kind of consensus about what is being looked at.

4. The formal elements of a work of art or artifact of culture constitute the language by which it communicates. Analyze the piece by examining the use of line, shape, color, form, composition, format, medium, etc.

5. Consider the context where the work would originally have been seen; the purpose it might have served; the physical condition in which the work has survived; when, where, and by whom the piece was made; and the title. All of these conditions contribute to the meaning of an object.

6. Make historical connections. How does the piece connect with the broader historical context? Young students exercise their chronological thinking here to contextualize the piece at hand. Recalling contemporaneous events and issues, students consider how the object relates to the larger historical picture. Steps five and six often require additional research outside the object itself.

7. Reevaluate your response. Has it changed? Has it become more nuanced? Is it possible to appreciate the work on multiple levels (intellectual, emotional, historical)? Close reading of objects deepens our understanding of the historical past and teaches us to consider the evidence before forming opinions.

This process has been developed primarily for group conversations, the principal mode of teaching in the museum context. In the classroom or on a self-guided museum visit, teachers may have their students work individually or in small groups to create a written record of their investigations. This allows the students to choose the object of their investigations, either from the museum collection, a museum's online resource, or a collection of photographs or reproductions.

Whether in the classroom or the museum, requiring students, even reluctant artists, to draw their chosen object serves to slow down their observation process and forces them to notice all the aspects of the piece from overall structure to fine details. In this way, they are firmly grounded in the actuality of the object before advancing speculation about its function, meaning, or historical significance.

When conducted in a disciplined yet free-flowing and open-ended fashion in the hands of an experienced teacher, this type of engagement with art and artifacts empowers students to enjoy the materiality of the past, develop their powers of reasoning, make critical historical connections, and furnish their historical imaginations. It encourages students to propose possible alternative meanings and to develop the ability to hold multiple, sometimes contradictory interpretations simultaneously. This method provides authentic contact with art and artifacts and teaches close reading of objects, thereby engaging students in the type of work historians do on a daily basis.

At the very least, aesthetic experience can spark excitement and curiosity in students. Many times, teachers have remarked to me that a particular student who is not normally engaged in the classroom was very responsive to a work of art or more generally to the excitement of a museum visit.

A few years ago, I had an experience that forever convinced me of the value of this work. I was working with a group of 4th-grade students in a series of classroom visits in which we had looked at, considered, and discussed a variety of works in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With the goals of sparking their curiosity, introducing the idea of connections between art, history, and culture and developing their critical-thinking skills, we looked at projected images of art and artifacts from Ancient Egypt, colonial America, and the modern period.

On a class visit to the museum, students were eager to encounter the real thing in person. As we made our way to our destination, Romare Bearden's six-panel collage entitled The Block, I could feel the excitement mounting. As the children seated themselves in front of the work on the floor there were murmurings of recognition among the students who remembered seeing photographs of the piece in their classroom. As I was about to invite the students to look quietly at the work, 10-year-old Leticia, who was normally very quiet in class, raised her hand impatiently, bursting to say what was on her mind. "I think art is about ideas," she said. "It's about the ideas the artist has—and those can change. And it's about the ideas we have when we look at it." This is precisely the lesson I wish to share with my TAH teachers and their students.