This northern Nevada district covers 6,600 square miles and includes extremely rural to truly urban areas. A population boom, growing ethnic diversity, a large transient population and lack of education funding all contribute to the need for teacher professional development. For this project, teachers will divide into three strands with different levels of participation. The vertical history team (20 teachers from Grades 5 to 12, full three years) will have quarterly full-day meetings plus quarterly school-level team meetings, a summer field study experience, and workshops in conjunction with the history cohort strand. Three history cohorts (20 teachers each year from Grades 7 to 12) will have two full-day meetings, two book club meetings, two primary source workshops and two Saturday dialogues. Other teachers will participate in 7-day summer institutes (25 teachers in Year 1 and 20 in Year 2, Grades 5 to 12). These events will help teachers examine how the principles of freedom and democracy have shaped the nation's struggles and achievements. Content studies will be based on recent scholarly work related to the theme of American freedom. Teachers in the vertical history strand will work on aligning the Grades 5 through 11 history curriculum to state standards and to broad history themes. Teachers will learn to use a data-driven dialogue model, in which they will conduct action research based on a collaborative and reflective process that requires analysis of student data to improve teaching practice. A project Web site will house teacher-created standards-based lessons, presentation materials, newsletters, a discussion forum, links to resources and project-related information. Project participants will provide professional development to schools in 11 rural districts and two Indian reservations.

Missouri certification requirements include minimal study of American history, so many teachers in these St. Louis-area districts lack deep content knowledge in the subject area. Teachers will engage in a variety of lectures, workshops and site visits to historic places. These will range in length from a few hours to five days, and many will include both content and pedagogical instruction; follow-up activities, often online, will range from research to video conferences to using Moodle. With support from the lead historian and the instructional coach, teachers will work in vertical articulation teams to determine how each Charters of Freedom document will fit into the curriculum and to determine the depth of knowledge to which each will be taught and assessed. After establishing an understanding of the documents, teachers will work in grade-level teams to apply learning about the documents to pivotal periods in American history. Participants will explore the events that sparked and surrounded the creation of our country's charters of freedom. Through intensive content knowledge training, teachers will understand how the documents both influenced, and were influenced by, American presidents during pivotal periods in American history. The project will introduce and implement the research-based instructional strategies identified by Advanced Placement and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, and participants will use the lesson study process to perfect the application of those strategies to American history teaching. The project will develop a Web site of resources that can be used by teachers and students, and it will establish vertical teams and school-based content experts who can sustain the project.

Located in southwestern Missouri, the participating districts—mainly small, rural and disadvantaged—have all been targeted for improvement. Each fall and spring, the semester will begin with a 6-week online course that includes reading, analysis and dialogue. This will be followed by a weekend seminar that combines lectures with discussions of readings and teaching strategies; lectures will be open to the public and to all teachers as in-service professional development. The year will conclude with a 5-day summer institute, during which teachers will visit historic sites and use primary sources to conduct research and prepare instructional materials. Each year, 30 elementary and secondary teachers will participate; they will work in cadres of three to five to prepare lesson materials, observe one another presenting the materials, and analyze lesson delivery and content along with associated student work. Through looking at decisive moments in American history, teachers and students will explore "who we are" as a nation and "why we are the way we are." Traveling America's Cs is designed to address identified gaps in teachers' knowledge. The project will introduce historical thinking skills; the revised Bloom's taxonomy; 21st century skills and research-based strategies, such as inquiry-based teaching, that help students take charge of their learning. Lessons will be reviewed by students to help teachers refine them for interest and effectiveness. Products will include electronic teacher portfolios, lessons, assessments, resources and ideas, and traveling trunks that will be available to all teachers in a 48-district consortium.

In Mississippi schools, students do not learn about post-1877 U.S. history prior to the 11th grade, and few teachers know about or teach the important role Mississippi played in major events like the Civil War, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. In this project, nationally known and local historians will lead teachers in 2-week summer institutes. Teachers also will attend four workshops each semester and meet once per week (online or in person) to engage in critical dialogue around content and pedagogical understandings and challenges. The project will involve two cohorts of 25 teachers (Years 1-2 and Years 3-4). In Year 5, five new teachers will join 20 teachers from the first two cohorts. Teachers from area districts also can attend open workshops. The content will increase teachers' knowledge of significant turning points in U.S. history and how these events have reflected, influenced or contradicted principles of freedom and democracy. The teachers will explore how the project themes connect with Mississippi history. In addition to broadening their content knowledge, teachers will engage in hands-on classroom activities to improve historical inquiry, critical thinking, cross-curricular connections and reflective practice. The strategies will be built around school-based inquiry, continuous improvement and critical dialogue. Teachers will work in professional learning communities to examine content critically and to evaluate their lesson plans, pedagogy and student work in the light of authentic assessments. A Web site will host teacher-developed products, including field-tested primary source activities and lesson plans.

A needs assessment of these 16 districts in the greater Boston area indicates that the teachers are interested in taking graduate-level courses and working with the museum and higher education partners involved in this project. Each year, a new cohort of 35 teachers will participate in a week-long summer institute with full-day workshops at the partner sites; immersion experiences at places like Gettysburg, Antietam and Washington, D.C.; training to incorporate technology nto history instruction; the Using Primary Source for Critical Thinking and Understanding course; graduate-level colloquia; and online professional development courses. In addition to the five 35-teacher cohorts, 100 new teachers per year will attend graduate courses—taught by Suffolk University faculty—to develop core content knowledge in American history and historical thinking skills. The overarching project focus is to examine how America's founding documents have defined freedom and democracy and to trace these ideals and the lived realities for different groups of Americans over 300 years. The content will explore the evolving struggle for human rights and justice, emphasizing the essential framework of American democracy, 19th-century social movements that challenged constitutional guarantees of freedom, the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction with regard to these freedoms, and 20th-century challenges to human rights at home and abroad, including the civil rights movement. The teachers will work together in district-based teams and develop Web-based teaching resources. At the conclusion of the coursework, participant teams will create a comprehensive unit that will be disseminated across the consortium districts and beyond.

This district—the largest in Maryland—includes more than 1,000 American history teachers, many of whom have little or no background in their subject matter or in specific strategies for teaching history and historical thinking skills. Each year, the project activities will feature a 1-week summer institute for separate cohorts of 20 elementary teachers. A 2-week summer institute, beginning in Year 2, will serve annual cohorts of 30 secondary school teachers. In addition, all teachers in the district can participate in six annual events during the school year: four content-based visits to historic sites in the Washington, D.C., area, and two skill and application workshops that integrate technology and reflective practice. Teachers who have participated in 1 year of the project will be allowed to return for a second year. Returning teachers will attend more advanced workshops on historical thinking skills and share what they have learned through presentations at their schools, meetings or state or national conferences. The project strategies will focus on historical thinking skills (such as close reading, assessing reliability and sourcing) and include practice with online resources and primary sources, biographies, autobiographies and other historical narratives. Returning teachers who demonstrate refined skills will be filmed in their classrooms, and the videos will be used in discussions regarding best practices. The Center for History and New Media will develop an open-source, open-access Web site to share project materials, including primary source activities, the classroom videos of teachers, podcasts of site visits and workshops, and workshop materials, such as bibliographies, teaching strategies and recommended Web sites.

These rural Maryland districts front both sides of the Chesapeake Bay; all have pockets of poverty, and several have growing populations of children who speak English as a second language. Teachers want professional development that increases their knowledge of American and local history and that builds skills to help students find relevance to their lives. Annual activities will include 15 topical seminars that are one to three days long and that enroll no more than 10 participants; each teacher will attend four seminars a year. A 2-day fall conference will bring all teachers together; seminars and conferences will be instructed by various partners, depending on the topics. The project will develop five master teachers for each participating district, so 35 teachers will engage in the 3-year professional development program. The project uses the Chesapeake Bay as its unifying theme for exploring pedagogical goals and content areas related to the four topics. Because the Chesapeake was home to an early European settlement and has been an important region in the country’s history ever since, this project will examine the connections between local and national history. Teachers will learn strategies that help to improve student performance, including use of primary and secondary documents, active learning strategies (such as concept models and peer teaching), observation and interviewing, teaching with historic places and local resources, works of art and historic artifacts, and active questioning techniques. The project will produce a Web site that contains sample lesson plans and blogs from field experiences; materials intended for use with students will be available in English and Spanish.

This northern Kentucky district has some of the state's lowest student achievement scores; educators have spent two years rewriting the K-5 social studies curriculum to embed American history at every grade level. We the People will support implementation of this new curriculum by providing four content seminars each year, 3-day summer institutes, online and face-to-face discussions, visits to historic sites and explorations of primary source materials. Scholars, historians, curriculum specialists and instructional leaders will convey content and support lesson creation and planning. The project will involve 20 elementary and middle school teachers each year, many of whom will participate for multiple years. The project will explore annual themes (see topics above) drawn from the preamble to the U.S. Constitution to help teachers consider how important documents, events and people have influenced the preservation of a democratic republic. Teachers will examine texts and primary sources as they explore Kentucky and American history from colonization to the present. Strategies for improving teaching will include lesson study, and this process will be used as teachers collaborate to develop and refine lessons for classroom use. A public Web site will house products and resources, which include presentation notes, podcasts and video recordings; teacher-produced lesson plans and samples of student work; and a collection of primary source materials and related digital toolboxes, stories and historical scene investigations.