Turning Points in American History will serve 70 public schools and 27 independent schools in rural northwestern Vermont; based on a survey, many of the teachers in these schools have a limited knowledge of American history. This professional development program will provide opportunities for long-term partnerships with local and regional historical organizations by centering activities around local museums. Events will include (1) three scholar-led seminars per year to build teachers' content knowledge and chronological-thinking skills; (2) book and primary source study groups, which will focus on one historical era per year; (3) summer field studies at national sites and local historic sites and museums; and (4) teacher leadership institutes, which will encourage teachers to discuss content and pedagogy through shared experiences and the new digital classroom. This model will (1) create inquiry-based study groups for teaching content and historical thinking, (2) add existing knowledge for best practice for creating digital learning communities, (3) produce new lessons around teaching with historical sites, (4) institute new policies around peer-to-peer professional development, and (5) build strong school-museum partnerships. The teachers will pre-read historical materials and attend lectures followed by small-group discussions with the scholars, learn to analyze and interpret primary sources and develop writing assignments to exhibit historical-thinking skills, and post their interpretations to a digital classroom for peer feedback. The project will create a Web site that features exemplary activities, lectures and other resources created by the project; in addition, it will produce new curriculum resources, including lessons, units, streaming video of study groups, historical writing assignments and benchmarks.

Many students in this Utah district come from multigenerational, low-income families in rural communities spread across a large geographic area, including an American Indian reservation. Each year, project teachers will participate in monthly symposia, featuring lectures and reading assignments that examine key concepts, issues, questions and primary sources; monthly lesson study groups, focusing on pedagogy, research, assessment development, presentations and the historical investigation process; and studies of online collections and on-site field research at local sites. Four teachers also will attend the annual conference for the National Council for the Social Studies. In Years 3 and 5, all teachers will participate in a 5-day regional capstone field study. Annually, the project will serve 20 history teachers (half elementary and half secondary), each of whom may participate for up to three years. In addition, the history lectures and instructional resources will be open to all district teachers. The project's themes will be based on common threads across the Utah History Core and an assessment of teachers' needs. The strategies will include using expert historians and master history educators, embedding impactful pedagogical methods, and using local and national resources. The trainings will be supplemented with effective strategies that entwine continuous learning into teachers' daily routines, including professional learning communities, lesson study, one-on-one mentoring/coaching and virtual networks. Teachers also will have an opportunity to earn professional and master's degree credits. The teachers will create high-quality products, including standards-based curriculum units, mini-research projects involving primary sources and benchmarks, and common assessments for the new Utah History Standards.

Schools in this district serve students from some of Utah's most disadvantaged communities. More than 40 percent of the students are minorities, and 24 percent are considered limited English proficient. This project will build on the success and momentum of an existing Teaching American History grant. Each year, the project will include a 2-week teacher academy, which features content taught by historical experts, the modeling of best practices in instructional methodology, and hands-on research and group work; quarterly school-year workshops to ensure that participating teachers know the Utah History Core, can assess student learning and can modify their instruction to meet student needs; and quarterly collaborative study groups to help teachers identify needs, brainstorm and prioritize appropriate solutions, and implement those solutions. To address the needs of its diverse population, the project will extend professional development to 40 teachers per year; based on their needs and performances, teachers may participate for up to three years. The highest selection priority will be given to teachers who are not highly qualified, have taken few academic history courses and/or have not recently attended history-related trainings. The content will explore questions and enduring understandings of traditional American history that transcend all time periods, focusing on pivotal issues, events, turning points, documents, legislation and judicial cases. The project will integrate cross-curricular and life-skills strategies, engage teachers in lesson study and develop peer mentors/coaches. Participants will create high-quality resources, including primary source kits, integrated language arts lessons, history unit plans and in-service units, and comprehensive elementary history curriculum maps and benchmarks.

In this high-poverty area of southeastern Tennessee, approximately one-third of all high school students fail to attain proficiency in American history, and their teachers have no history professional development program. All participating teachers will receive at least 280 hours of professional development, with high implementation (HI) teachers receiving about 400 additional hours during three years of colloquia and practicums as well as several summer study trips. Of the 90 teachers involved, 20 will be designated as HI teachers; they will receive in-depth training, including Web-based courses, to become history leaders for the district. Another 20 partner teachers will participate in professional development and be mentored by HI teachers. The remaining 50 consortium teachers will receive professional development. The project's underlying theme is making connections—teachers will connect to one another, to professional historians and to historic sites and events, thus bringing heightened levels of knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching. All professional development sessions will deliver content related to the topic for the year, with the goal of helping teachers learn to practice history as historians do; readings will be a mix of factual and fictional, selected to provide insights, perspectives and teaching tools. Instructional strategies will include using historical habits of mind, primary sources, backward mapping, authentic assessment, content-area reading, research and interpretation. Project-generated best practices, evaluation tools and lessons will be reviewed by history professors and state history specialists, then posted on three Web sites, including the Gilder Lehrman site, and promoted at professional conferences.

Like adjacent counties, this area of southeastern Tennessee is high poverty; many students leave high school with poor understandings of American history, and their teachers have no professional development program. All participating teachers will receive at least 280 hours of professional development, with high implementation (HI) teachers receiving about 400 additional hours during three years of colloquia and practicums as well as several summer study trips. Of the 170 teachers involved, 30 will be designated as HI teachers; they will receive in-depth training, including Web-based courses, to become history leaders for the district. Another 30 partner teachers will participate in professional development and be mentored by HI teachers. The remaining 110 consortium teachers will receive professional development. The project's underlying theme is making connections—teachers will connect to one another, to professional historians and to historic sites and events, thus bringing heightened levels of knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching. All professional development sessions will deliver content related to the topic for the year, with the goal of helping teachers learn to practice history as historians do; readings will be a mix of factual (e.g., Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers) and fictional (e.g., Arthur Miller's The Crucible), selected to provide insights, perspectives and teaching tools. Instructional strategies will include using historical habits of mind, primary sources, backward mapping, authentic assessment, content-area reading, research and interpretation. Project-generated best practices, evaluation tools and lessons will be reviewed by history professors and state history specialists, then posted on three Web sites, including the Gilder Lehrman site, and promoted at professional conferences.

The northern Rhode Island districts involved in A New Birth of Freedom: Developing Historical Thinking in American History make up one-third of the state's districts. When some teachers who will be affected by the project took an Advanced Placement U.S. history test, their average score was about 47 percent. Every year, academic and public historians and educators will introduce content and teaching strategies through 1-day fall and spring workshops, a series of after-school sessions, and a 5-day summer institute with field experiences. Leading New England scholars will initiate substantive work with project teachers to increase content knowledge and create excitement for American history. Project leaders will encourage teachers to build horizontal and vertical relationships among schools and with historians as the partnering organizations. Separate cohorts of 60 teachers each year will participate; priority will be given to teachers with the fewest opportunities for history professional development. The project will stress the themes of communication and flexibility while working toward building a statewide learning community. Content will focus on the ideal of "freedom" and how this concept has been expressed by influential figures, founding documents and landmark cases that have transformed American history. Teaching strategies will focus on using primary sources, differentiated instruction, document-based questioning and performance-based authentic assessments to help students develop historical, critical and reflective skills. Teachers will be able to earn graduate or continuing education credits for their participation as long as they complete unit plans that consist of several lessons. Model lesson plans and student work will be posted on the Web site to help other teachers find materials and learn from colleagues.

Nine of this project's 13 districts have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress, and few teachers have better than scant knowledge of American history. Three colloquia and a summer institute, totaling 11 days, will be offered each year, and sessions will be led by historians, instructional experts and master teachers. An annual book study will require reading, writing and discussions with professors and education specialists. Teachers will keep multimedia journals and compile collections of resources for classroom use. A cadre of 50 teachers will be recruited, with the goal of retaining all for the full 3 years to build an enduring, history-based professional learning community. By studying American history chronologically through the historian's academic lens, teachers will see the powerful cause and effect relationships and push/pull factors that have impacted our history. Teachers will engage in discourse and experiential learning with the goals of (1) developing historical reasoning skills, along with the ability to engage student learning and critical thinking; and (2) becoming trainers of colleagues in their schools and districts. Specific instructional methods will be introduced each year, and the historical reasoning approach will build a foundation for acquiring historical knowledge. Strategies will be bracketing history; E.Q.U.A.L., a strategy to study primary documents; and the Great Parley, in which students study events from multiple perspectives. All project work will be published on the Southern Oregon Education Service District Web site, and student- and teacher-created video resources will be posted to TeacherTube.

Of the 223 elementary history teachers in these mid-Hudson Valley districts, only one has an undergraduate degree in American history and none has a graduate degree in the field. And although professional development in reading, math and science is readily available, this is not true for history. An American Story: Struggles and Triumphs will engage teachers in U.S. history through lectures and discussions during week-long summer institutes, monthly workshops and other traditional approaches. It will take a notably 21st-century approach—teachers will learn to use multimedia software to create an interactive virtual museum that will be curated by project staff, partners, teachers and students. In Year 1, 40 teachers and three teacher coaches will participate; in Years 2 through 5, nine teachers and the three teacher coaches from Year 1 will continue, and they will be joined by annual cadres of 31 new teachers. Institute topics will explore the thesis that the American story is one of continual struggle toward an ideal—freedom to pursue and equal opportunity to achieve the "American Dream." Content will focus on local, regional and national events and people, making use of primary sources available through partner organizations and nearby historic sites. For example, the New York Historical Society will offer workshops titled "Nueva York" and "Revolutions! America, France and Haiti." Participants will visit the Erie Canal, the Tenement Museum, and the Vanderbilt Mansion. The project will produce the virtual museum, a variety of classroom materials and a cadre of teacher leaders who can support their colleagues in building American history expertise.