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.

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 project will concentrate on a combination of public schools and the public charter schools that were established in the wake of two events in 2005: the Louisiana Board of Education's takeover and restructuring of New Orleans Public Schools and Hurricane Katrina. Although student achievement has approved dramatically since 2005, data still indicate high failure rates on fourth, eighth, and eleventh grade social studies tests. Each year of the project, teachers will participate in 10 colloquia that focus on the key issues, people, ideas and events in American history; a weeklong summer field-research workshop hosted by the Historic New Orleans Collection; and five staff development workshops in which scholars engage teachers on background information, current approaches and possible lessons. The project will recruit 50 new teachers each year. All 50 will participate in the colloquia and staff development workshops, while 20 will attend the summer workshop. The topics will explore the changes and continuity in American democracy, including ideas, institutions and controversies. The teachers will study the most up-to-date research, visit presidential libraries and other archives, and become familiar with American history Web sites and other technology resources. The teachers will have opportunities to study with Loyola University historians and distinguished visiting professors, receive stipends, and obtain continuing learning units. They will create traveling exhibits and History in a Box kits on various topics, featuring introductions, timelines, primary documents, teaching strategies, posters for classroom display, interactive CD-ROMs and DVDs.

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.

In this Kansas City metropolitan district, budget cuts have significantly altered teaching assignments, resulting in more American history teachers who need better preparation. For each semester during the three years, the same 20 teachers will participate in eight semester-long colloquia, three 3-day lecture series, and three 5-day travel research workshops led by faculty from the University of Kansas history department. Over the course of the project, the teachers will conduct independent research, create lesson plans and attend 10 professional development sessions for additional training on historiography, pedagogy and local American history resources. Instructional resource teachers will provide feedback to the teachers through classroom observations. The project will explore continuity and change in American history by examining how the founding fathers drafted the Constitution to facilitate changes, recognizing that the nation was not yet perfect. It will also examine the economic, social and political factors that shaped the meaning of "We the People" over time, tracing the causes and effects of the events that have pushed the nation toward becoming a "more perfect union." Participating teachers will learn how to locate and use evidence in primary and secondary sources to interpret the past and explore different perspectives and points of view. They can earn 19 hours of graduate credit through the University of Kansas or receive professional development points through the district. A Web site will feature all the project products and resources, including faculty lectures, classroom videos of teachers and students, lesson and unit plans, electronic field trips, book reviews, and course and workshop syllabi.