Elementary teachers in this diverse Florida district—the nation’s sixth largest—have a significant need for professional development in American history. Each year of the project, 50 teachers will participate in (1) an intensive summer institute; (2) Saturday workshops, which immerse teachers in content and interactive instructional strategies and which develop six master teachers; and (3) book talks led by subject experts. In addition, 25 teachers in Year 2 and 25 teachers in Year 3 will participate in field visits to local museums and intensive content studies at historic sites in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York. Teachers in schools identified for improvement will be actively recruited for participation. Six teachers will become master teachers, serving as mentors for other participating teachers and content experts for all elementary teachers in the district. The specific events, people and topics were selected for their unique relevance to elementary students and teachers and the district's diverse population, particularly the foreign-born students who have not had a lifetime of firsthand experiences in this country. Teachers will receive training in differentiating the curriculum, creating authentic and engaging writing assignments, and infusing research-based reading strategies into their pedagogy. The project Web site will feature lesson plans, an American history discussion forum for all district teachers, primary sources, virtual field trips, educational blogs and academic games. Participants also will create educational videos that demonstrate effective teaching strategies and that model academic rigor.

This project will serve the Florida Keys—1,700 islands spread over 120 miles. A 2010 survey determined that only two percent of upper-elementary and middle school American history teachers in this district feel qualified to teach their subject; 77 percent have not had training in historical thinking skills. The project will build on a new series of advanced U.S. history courses being introduced into middle schools. Each year, 20 teachers will participate in (1) history content seminars, guiding them through readings and assignments; (2) content presentation workshops in the schools; (3) history teaching workshops, focusing on specific historical-thinking skills; (4) professional learning communities, and (5) immersive summer institutes, featuring travel to historic sites. The project teachers must participate in nearly 100 annual hours of professional development. The themes will intertwine primary sources and historic sites, including visits to Massachusetts; Philadelphia; the Washington, D.C., area; and selected locations in the Keys. The strategies involve teachers in planning, using sound approaches to historical content, paying attention to pedagogy and active learning, emphasizing historical thinking skills, and promoting collaboration to help teachers address appropriate assessment methods. The key principle is that content, pedagogy and historical thinking should be interwoven and related to classroom experience. Every participating teacher will create one content-based lesson plan, which will be vetted; the highest rated plans will be uploaded to the project Web site as models. Teachers will also develop additional lesson plans and materials to share with their students and colleagues.

As it neared the end of a Teaching American History grant for teachers in Grades 8, 11 and 12, and as the state completed a new social studies curriculum, this north-central Florida district recognized the importance of addressing vertical alignment and acted to add professional development for teachers in earlier grades. Each cohort will participate in six days of concentrated, content-focused seminars; field studies at historic sites, including historical reenactment, document study and instructional materials; workshops and mentoring on the use of primary documents, historical simulations and other strategies; quarterly meetings of the professional learning community; online discussion forums that include history scholars; training in lesson planning; and classroom modeling and mentoring to support implementation of content and strategies. Each year, a new cohort of 22 fourth and fifth grade teachers and three seventh grade teachers will participate. Over the five years, teachers from all elementary and middle schools will be represented, and they will be mentored by project staff and teachers involved in the previous grant. To move away from passive learning activities, the project will strive to actively involve teachers and students in American history education. Teachers will be included in the district's curriculum mapping activities, which will prepare them for the instructional design assistance, resource materials and collegial support they will receive to design and implement hands-on instruction that integrates American history with reading and writing activities. Strategies will include problem-based learning and other inquiry-based approaches. As teachers complete their year of professional development, they will provide support to colleagues in their schools, expanding the project's reach.

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.