Teachers in eight southeastern New York districts have expressed interest in this project, and its topics were based on teacher-identified priorities. A typical year's activities will include a kickoff session, two after-school sessions, two 3-hour Saturday sessions, two full days of content learning, one or more online sessions and a full-day field trip to a local historic site. During the summer, teachers will attend a 5-day institute with content workshops, visits to historic locations and exploration of primary source documents and instructional strategies. Teachers will participate in one of three tiers: Tier 1 (50 teachers) will constitute the core group, committing to full participation and to mentoring other tiers; Tier 2 (50 teachers) will join in Years 2 and 3, attending many but not all activities; and Tier 3 (up to 100 teachers) will have access to Web tools training and to some other events. Rather than treating history as a set of facts, this project will address historical themes and questions that tell us who we are as Americans and how we got this way. Strategies such as document-based questioning and using primary source documents will support this approach. Teachers will focus on incorporating 21st-century technologies and skills into their practice; to this end, and to limit time away from the classroom, the project will employ both in-person and online activities. The online platform will support conferencing and social networking tools, providing the added benefit of helping teachers build a learning community. The Tier 1 teachers will produce unit plans that will be available on a regional Web site.

In these New York state districts, teachers have minimal American history training and limited access to content-specific training or professional experiences. During each school year, monthly seminars will incorporate recent scholarship and historical thinking skills. These meetings will be supplemented by online book chats using the project's Blackboard site. After completing the 10 seminars, teachers will attend a 5-day summer institute and learn to integrate newly learned content as well as develop tools to evaluate existing teaching materials and student work. By attending the summer institute, teachers will earn three graduate credits from the State University of New York College at Cortland. They also will participate in hands-on field experiences and in a teaching fellows program. Each year, the project will organize four content teams of six teachers, paired with a project historian and master teacher. These teams will develop content-specific curriculum units using the Understanding by Design framework. The project content will emphasize the impact of the nation's foundational documents and events on the lives of ordinary Americans. Highlighting these individual stories will help teachers appreciate the ways Americans have experienced significant turning points in history. Historians will share significant primary sources, identify valuable online archives, and model analysis and interpretation of the materials. The project also will help teachers engage students in critical analysis and higher level thinking. The products will include unit-level teaching materials, a project that superimposes the curriculum onto a U.S. map, and other teacher-created resources, such as the team-developed curriculum units, which will be reviewed for historical accuracy and field-tested to ensure alignment with learning objectives.

This large district represents a diverse cross section of students and faculty across New York City. Each year of the project, up to 32 teachers (some continuing for more than 1 year) will participate in (1) a 3-day staff development workshop, which will demonstrate effective methods for teaching American history through historic sites in Philadelphia, New York City and elsewhere in New York state; (2) two 3-hour summer and two 3-hour Saturday workshops, in which teachers will practice using multimedia equipment at the new DiMenna Children's History Museum; and (3) a 3-day summer and a 3-day Saturday workshop to help middle and high school teachers convey the proper historiography skills to prepare their students for participation in National History Day. In addition to the outlined topics and historic site visits, the participants will receive guided tours of these New York Historical Society temporary exhibits: "Life for a Child: Insulin"; "John Rogers: American Stories"; "Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York"; and "New York in World War II." The project will focus on using multimedia and news broadcasting to disseminate facts about historic events, conducting extensive research via public and museum library resources, and engaging students in debates on historical topics and time periods. The strategies will include historical instructional methodologies, differentiated instruction tied to content, and flexible approaches to address various student needs, such as using picture symbols to facilitate communication. Project products will be shared online; these will include lesson plans, alternative assessments, student portfolios and video productions of students and staff.

A Teaching American History initiative was implemented in three of these low-income East Bronx districts beginning in 2003. This new project builds on this earlier grant's success by extending the program to all teachers and schools in the Bronx. Each year, teachers will attend a 2-week summer institute, featuring a morning seminar with a nationally known historian; presentations by educators from the partner organizations; a study of how historical art and artifacts can illuminate content, including curatorial lectures, gallery walks and tours of exhibits and collections; and a history media training workshop. During the school year, teachers will participate in walking tours of New York City, lectures and film study groups. Five cohorts of 25 teachers will receive one year of intensive training in U.S. history content knowledge and aligned pedagogical skills that integrate historical art, artifacts and media into the classroom. Hundreds of other U.S. history teachers also may participate in ancillary program activities. In-depth case studies of New York City history will offer a lens for viewing national events and themes across U.S. history. Teachers will translate their knowledge and skills into original content-rich materials and improved practices. Collaboration through peer networks will help teachers share and develop common strategies for instructing all students. Once teachers complete the program, they will become teacher historians, continuing to develop their content knowledge and supporting other teachers. The participants will develop classroom materials, including lesson plans, activities using media, History in a Box artifacts and documents, and curriculum units.