Sowing the Seeds of Freedom in the Rio Grande Valley will serve two southwestern New Mexico school districts with significant Hispanic, Mexican and Native American cultural influences; based on a 2010 needs assessment, a significant number of elementary and middle school teachers in these districts lack an adequate academic background in American history. Each year, 12 teachers will travel to Colonial Williamsburg to participate in a summer teacher institute. Other activities will include sponsoring additional colloquia and professional development workshops at museums and historic sites, establishing professional resource libraries at each school, and creating artifact bags that align with the historical content. The project will serve 30 teachers and five mentor teachers each year plus an additional 100 teachers each of the last three years through the Sowing the Seeds Conference. The professional development program will focus on major themes in American history based on the New Mexico Content Standards. The teachers will receive training in (1) using primary and secondary resources; (2) formulating questions through inquiry; (3) analyzing how historians use evidence/artifacts; (4) developing differing interpretations; (5) examining bias and points of view; (6) understanding historical debate/controversy; (7) examining how causation relates to continuity/change; (8) discovering interrelationships; and (9) learning that understanding of the past requires understanding of the assumptions and values of the past.

A large majority of history teachers in these New Jersey districts expressed interest in having professional development opportunities to interact with historical experts, enrich their content knowledge and integrate primary sources into classrooms. In this project, 45 middle and high school teachers will engage in a 5-year examination of the major ideas, people, events and developments in American history from a constitutional perspective. Each year, the focal point will be an 8-day summer seminar at Princeton University to address content and make teachers aware of the relatively recent emphasis on social history. An additional 3.5 days of after-school professional development will be conducted each year to focus on content, curriculum and pedagogy. At least 85 teachers will be recruited, with 45 selected randomly as the experimental group and approximately 40 constituting the control group. Content time periods were selected because of the dramatic and polarizing debates that decisively shaped American political and constitutional perspectives for succeeding generations. These historical developments demonstrate the evolution of freedom and democracy as well as constitutional norms and understandings. Attention will be given to developing pedagogical skills to guide teachers and their students in gathering, examining and organizing historical data to make historical explanations, with particular emphasis on historical writing. Participating teachers will receive New Jersey professional development credit hours and may also receive graduate credits from the College of Education at Ashland University in Ohio upon payment of tuition. The project Web site will feature video recordings of the scholarly lectures and examples of lesson plans and other materials developed by the teachers.

Based on a needs assessment, American history teachers in these New Jersey districts are dissatisfied with their lesson plans, particularly the lack of emphasis on primary sources. In this project, 45 middle and high school teachers will engage in a 5-year examination of the major ideas, people, events and developments in American history from a constitutional perspective. Each year, the focal point will be an 8-day summer seminar at Princeton University to address content and make teachers aware of the relatively recent emphasis on social history. An additional 3.5 days of after-school professional development will be conducted each year to focus on content, curriculum and pedagogy. At least 85 teachers will be recruited, with 45 selected randomly as the experimental group and approximately 40 constituting the control group. Content time periods were selected because of the dramatic and polarizing debates that decisively shaped American political and constitutional perspectives for succeeding generations. These historical developments demonstrate the evolution of freedom and democracy as well as constitutional norms and understandings. Attention will be given to developing pedagogical skills to guide teachers and their students in gathering, examining and organizing historical data to make historical explanations, with particular emphasis on historical writing. Participating teachers will receive New Jersey professional development credit hours and may also receive graduate credits from the College of Education at Ashland University in Ohio upon payment of tuition. The project Web site will feature video recordings of the scholar lectures and examples of lesson plans and other materials developed by the teachers.

Teachers in these New Jersey school districts recently expressed an interest in receiving more U.S. history professional development, interaction with historical experts and collaborative opportunities to develop new lesson plans and teaching strategies. In this project, 45 middle and high school teachers will engage in a 5-year examination of the major ideas, people, events and developments in American history from a constitutional perspective. Each year, the focal point will be an 8-day summer seminar at Princeton University to address content and make teachers aware of the relatively recent emphasis on social history. An additional 3.5 days of after-school professional development will be conducted each year to focus on content, curriculum and pedagogy. At least 85 teachers will be recruited, with 45 selected randomly as the experimental group and approximately 40 constituting the control group. Content time periods were selected because of the dramatic and polarizing debates that decisively shaped American political and constitutional perspectives for succeeding generations. These historical developments demonstrate the evolution of freedom and democracy as well as constitutional norms and understandings. Attention will be given to developing the pedagogical skills to guide teachers and their students in gathering, examining and organizing historical data to make historical explanations, with particular emphasis on historical writing. Participating teachers will receive New Jersey professional development credit hours and may also receive graduate credits from the College of Education at Ashland University in Ohio upon payment of tuition. The project Web site will feature video recordings of the scholarly lectures, examples of lesson plans and other materials developed by the teachers.

A recent survey of teachers in these New Jersey school districts revealed an interest in interacting with historical experts and participating in professional development regarding primary source development, integration and investigation. In this project, 45 middle and high school teachers will engage in a 5-year examination of the major ideas, people, events and developments in American history from a constitutional perspective. Each year, the focal point will be an 8-day summer seminar at Princeton University to address content and make teachers aware of the relatively recent emphasis on social history. An additional 3.5 days of after-school professional development will be conducted each year to focus on content, curriculum, and pedagogy. At least 85 teachers will be recruited, with 45 selected randomly as the experimental group and approximately 40 constituting the control group. Content time periods were selected because of the dramatic and polarizing debates that decisively shaped American political and constitutional perspectives for succeeding generations. These historical developments demonstrate the evolution of freedom and democracy as well as constitutional norms and understandings. Attention will be given to developing the pedagogical skills to guide teachers and their students in gathering, examining and organizing historical data to make historical explanations, with particular emphasis on historical writing. Participating teachers will receive New Jersey professional development credit hours and may also receive graduate credits from the College of Education at Ashland University in Ohio upon payment of tuition. The project Web site will feature video recordings of the scholarly lectures, examples of lesson plans and other materials developed by the teachers.

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.

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.

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.