Miami-Dade County has many students from immigrant or first-generation families and many teachers who feel underprepared to teach American history. Teaching American History activities will address these needs in a variety of ways. Elementary teachers will meet for six Saturday workshops, a one-week summer institute, and two online workshops on using Web lessons. Intensive study teachers will have seven 2-day workshops, and master teachers will complete a 3-year program to earn 30 graduate credits. The three types of cohorts will be constructed as follows: elementary cohorts will include 30 teachers, with a new group participating each year of the project; intensive study cohorts will have 30 different teachers each year for four years; and the master teachers cohort will consist of 20 teachers who participate for three and a half years. An overall goal of the project is to build capacity within the district, and the three types of cohorts will enable both immediate improvement in the classrooms and long-term support for history teaching. During elementary workshops, everything will be structured around essential questions: historians will present content and discuss its application in the classroom, and then participants will complete project-specific assignments. During five intensive study workshops, teachers will focus on content; the remaining two workshops will address instructional strategies. The master teachers program will include 10 graduate-level courses and an original research paper. In Years 2 to 5, scholar-guided travel will take 20 participants to national historical sites for five to seven days. The Professional Learning Communities that develop among cohort members will contribute to sustaining and expanding the project's impact.

Lake County School District in central Florida includes 42 schools, 12 of which have been identified through Florida's Differentiated Accountability Model as in need of improvement. Since 2001, Lake County's population has increased by more than 38 percent, and the district has hired hundreds of new teachers in response to increased student enrollment. Inheriting a Legacy of Freedom will target schools in need of improvement and address district-identified gaps in teachers' content knowledge and qualifications through a program of interrelated activities: 8-day summer academies that focus on document-based questioning strategies, school and district-level Professional Learning Communities that meet throughout the grant period, technology-based learning that includes monthly book study sessions and podcasts of historians' lectures, and action research that encourages participants to examine their teaching practices. Four separate cohorts of 35 teachers will receive professional development, and lead teachers will be chosen from these cohorts each year to coach other teachers of American history on topics such as meeting individual student needs and integrating technology into classroom practice. Lead teachers will also model effective teaching practices for American history teachers at schools in need of improvement. Inheriting a Legacy of Freedom will incorporate several overarching themes, including constitutional interpretation and American identity, culture, and religious development. The primary instructional strategy employed to convey content will be document-based questioning, which develops students' skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking. Teacher participants will create museum-like interactive exhibits, accompanied by curriculum support guides, for use by educators across the district.

Brevard County, Florida, is home to the Kennedy Space Center and a range of technology industries, yet the district has never made Adequate Yearly Progress. More than half of Title I schools are in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, and few teachers have adequate history backgrounds. Becoming an American historians and scholars will support teachers as they research and discuss history during summer colloquia and workshops. Field experiences will immerse teachers in living history, and academy coaches (secondary teachers from a previous project) will mentor the participants. Early in their experiences, teachers will take online courses; by completion, they will be qualified to conduct such courses. Two groups of 40 elementary and middle school teachers will participate for three years (overlapping in Year 3), and selection criteria will favor teachers from schools with the greatest needs. The project theme is embedded in its name—Becoming an American: Continuity Through Change—and it will address the five turning points in American history named in the topics above. The project will focus on instructional strategies that include project-based learning, using technology and practicing differentiated instruction. Teachers will learn to identify historical patterns, establish cause-and-effect relationships, find value statements, establish significance, apply historical knowledge, weigh evidence to draw conclusions, and make defensible generalizations. The project's continuing impact on history teaching will come from its products, including a quasi-experimental study measuring student gains, teacher-created lessons on the project Web portal, classroom instruction that incorporates online lessons or virtual visits, mentoring of other history teachers in the district, and a teacher-designed standards-based student history assessment.

Florida Virtual School, the first and largest statewide Internet-based public high school in the United States, serves 64,000 students across Florida. It has been charged by the state legislature to give priority to minority and rural students and students in low-performing schools. Teachers will be recruited for Turning Points in American History (Turning Points) through an application process that incorporates a needs assessment as the main selection tool. Each year, participating teachers will engage in a 3-day, face-to-face National Council for History Education colloquium; online professional development and networking that includes readings, workshops, book discussions, and lesson development; and 3- to 5-day field study academies at historical sites and museums. All American history teachers in Florida Virtual School will have access to WebLessons, an online lesson development resource. A cohort of 30 teachers will receive services throughout all five years of the program. Project coordinators will identify a subgroup of 10 lead teachers who will provide ongoing professional development to all Florida Virtual School history teachers; six of these teachers will be eligible to attend a national history conference each year. Turning Points will explore watershed events that have changed American history—political and cultural revolutions, social and religious changes, new technologies, and explorations of unknown places. Teachers will learn to integrate primary documents, art, and thematic connections between literature and U.S. history into their instruction, as required by Florida’s new state social studies standards. Teacher-created lessons and enrichment activities such as podcasts and virtual field trips will be shared through the Florida Virtual School Web site.

Windham Public Schools is collaborating with a regional education service center (EASTCONN) in rural northeastern Connecticut to implement Themes of History. Windham Public Schools has been identified as a district in need of improvement, and 10 middle schools among the other participating districts have also been so identified. The program's core professional development activities include a week-long summer institute, three evening presentations by guest historians (open to all educators in northeastern Connecticut), and three full-day workshops. Supplemental activities include three seminars on content-related pedagogy and three evening lesson-planning sessions based on the Lesson Study approach. Participants will also receive in-class support from master history teachers, participate in an online Professional Learning Community, and attend the annual conference of the state's Council for the Social Studies. Fifty history teachers will participate for all three years of the program. Also, each year, five graduate students who are preparing to teach history will be invited to participate. The thematic focus of Themes of History is on helping students see and understand recurring patterns and themes in American history, with an emphasis on significant events, people, documents, and turning points. Participating teachers will learn to incorporate primary and secondary documents, artifacts, and historical materials as they use inquiry-based instructional strategies in developmentally appropriate ways. Exemplary history lessons will be posted online, and work accomplished through the program will contribute to the development of a stand-alone American history curriculum for statewide use.

In the Shelton, Trumbull, and New Haven Public School Districts, secondary school students have scored well below average on Connecticut's reading and writing exam, and in New Haven, only a third of the students who took the 2008 U.S. history exam scored at or above proficiency. To strengthen the quality of instruction in U.S. history, Democratic Vistas will offer eight history forums each year, supplemented by two follow-up workshops on pedagogy. Other activities will include several day-long field trips to regional historic sites, a week-long summer institute, online networking, classroom observations, and coaching. Over five years, Democratic Vista will serve at least 320 teachers. Annually, up to 160 teachers can participate in one of three ways: (1) participate in all activities and create a unit plan for graduate course credit or a stipend and Continuing Education Units; (2) participate in individual activities and study instructional strategies; or (3) participate in the summer institute and receive graduate course credit or a stipend and Continuing Education Units. The program will challenge history teachers to increase student interest and knowledge in traditional American history by making connections between the past and present, Connecticut and U.S. history, and history/culture and the arts. Instructional strategies will focus on concept-based teaching and development of historical thinking; the lesson design frameworks of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (Understanding by Design), and differentiated instruction. To sustain a Professional Learning Community of teacher leaders, the three partnering districts will create an online space for blogging, networking, and sharing curricular units, projects, assessments, and other resources.

The 12 central Connecticut districts in American Voices cover rural, urban, and suburban areas, and include the state capital of Hartford. Many students in the region come from families where English is not the primary language. Voices will address both history and literacy by connecting teachers to members of the university history department and the education school's reading and language arts faculty. Each year, teachers will meet regularly in a study group where they will discuss readings with historians, identify materials to use with students, compare and assess classroom materials and strategies, and select topics for the summer institute. During the week-long institute, teachers will meet with scholars, visit museums, and develop artifact kits and classroom materials, including "historical scene investigations," to engage students. Voices will explore the theme of Community, Conflict, and Compromise to deepen knowledge about American history from colonization to the Civil War. Instructional strategies will emphasize integrating history with literacy, creating Web-based lessons and resources, and encouraging active learning through student investigations with primary sources. Content will introduce primary source materials and other resources related to local and national people and events in history. The classroom-ready lessons and historical investigation units created by Voices teachers will be available to the public on the project’s Web site.

The Making History project serves Connecticut's largest city, where 13 percent of students are English learners who come from 70 language groups. In 2009-2010, one year of American history is being added to Grade 7 and a semester to Grade 10, meaning that teachers who have never taught American history will need extra support. Teachers will receive 50 hours per year of professional development delivered in five stages: (1) a summer colloquium, (2) content-focused seminars, (3) a field trip, (4) workshops on pedagogy, and (5) practica for implementing innovations in the classroom. Annual cohorts of 80 or more elementary, middle, and high school teachers will learn together, share content knowledge, and instructional strategies, and support one another in implementation. Making History will focus on the human elements of history, especially presidents and other "history makers" from the Revolution to World War II. Teachers will explore the "history of history" as an academic discipline. Seminars will include sessions such as "Picturing American History," where teachers learn about interpreting pieces of art as historical artifacts. Instruction will include learning historical habits of mind, using document-based questioning, and initiating student research and presentation. At the end of the project, the district will have a group of eight to 10 key lead teachers who are history specialists and advocates and a standards-based curriculum. All activities, lessons, and/or units of study created during the project will become Assured Experiences—things all district teachers are required to teach—and will be included in the electronic curriculum.

Grant partner Yale University currently manages another TAH grant for middle and high school teachers. Building on this experience, this grant will serve the elementary teachers in the urban and urban fringe districts in south central Connecticut. Here, several schools are in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, and large achievement gaps are not uncommon. Each year, participating teachers will be engaged in developing curriculum units to share with other teachers and post on the project Web site. Other annual activities will include a summer institute/field trip and eight seminars provided by noted historians who will organize lectures around concepts, themes, and primary sources that underlie the development of American liberty. Project leaders estimate that about 65 teachers a year will participate in selected activities. Because participants will determine their own level of engagement, staff expects 35 teachers each year will attend at least 75 percent of activities, and the goal is that these will be the participants recruited from the schools with the greatest needs. With Liberty and Justice for All aims to help students be engaged with the story of our nation and contribute to the ongoing story of American liberty. To support greater student engagement, grant activities will include instruction that helps teachers apply high-quality curriculum, critical thinking, close reading, and collaborative leadership skills. Outside the seminar settings, this will be accomplished through school-based coaching and technology training. The project will increase the quality and quantity of instructional resources available to all teachers and build an online collection of instructional units for all teachers to use.

Centennial BOCES in north central Colorado includes schools that are diverse in size and demographic composition. Fabric of Freedom will serve four districts that include 16 schools in need of improvement. Professional development provided through the program will be guided by five focal points: standards-based U.S. history, historical investigation, primary source enrichment, incorporation of local stories, and framing of history as a historian. Each year, the program will deliver a 10-day summer academy, six day-long professional learning team workshops, interactive online discussions and presentations, intensive technology training, and one-on-one mentoring and coaching. Participating teachers will be eligible for graduate credits, acquire libraries of durable learning goods to support instruction, read and review historical nonfiction, and receive paid memberships in professional history organizations. A cohort of 30 teachers will enter the program each year, and cohort members can continue some activities after their year of training ends. Year 1 and Year 3 participants will continue as teacher leaders beyond the life of the program. All participants will investigate the pivotal people, ideas, events, documents, and legislation that have created and shaped American democracy since the 17th Century. They will learn about historical investigation, historical analysis and interpretation, and other instructional strategies that are effective and engaging for a wide spectrum of learners, such as the use of digital storytelling to support content delivery. A Web site will disseminate teachers’ digital storytelling products, curricula, and a "source book" that contains classroom exercises based on primary documents.