These districts serve the Colorado Springs metro area, which has seen recent influxes of new teachers and students; many are new to the United States and lack awareness of the country's history and what it means to be an American. The project will take a four-step approach: (1) grade-based learning teams with mentoring support, (2) summer and school-year professional development tracks, (3) a virtual network, and (4) resources (e.g., books, professional memberships in history organizations). Whichever track participants choose, they can earn academic and/or state continuing education credit. Every cohort will propose a presentation for the National Council for History Education annual conference, and four teachers will attend (one from each district). Five 1-year cohorts, each consisting of 40 history, civics and government teachers, will work in professional learning teams. Each cohort will commit to the school-year program, the summer program, or both; teachers may continue after 1 year, based on availability and need. Stories and Histories will pursue the theme of integrating thinking skills into history teaching. Inquiry questions will guide study of pivotal events, people, documents, legislation and judicial cases, as well as their local, state and national significance. Training will focus on helping teachers use digital storytelling, look at history as a historian does and apply such strategies as Understanding by Design and collaborative coaching. Every teacher will develop and use either a digital storytelling project or a primary source activity for the classroom; along with students' digital products, these materials will be posted on the Web for other teachers to find and use.

This project will focus on schools that serve continuation, correctional and alternative education students, who tend to be high need and low performing; many in this area south of Los Angeles come from families in poverty. Because teachers at these schools often teach more than one subject, they may lack deep content knowledge and want to learn more about American history. University faculty will provide expertise in content and historical methodologies, and K-12 teachers will lead training in pedagogy at the kick-off institutes and monthly follow-up sessions. Participating project teachers will work together to create a standards-aligned curriculum. The project will include a strong strand of developing teacher leadership and building learning communities. In Year 1, the main cohort will have 24 teachers divided into 12 teams to develop curriculum. These teachers will be joined by 12 additional teachers in each successive year, so each team will have four members during the final year of the project. At the end of each year, a separate cohort of 10 teachers will customize the curriculum developed by the main cohort so it can be used for independent study. The project's underlying theme will be emphasizing the history of American citizenship to develop students' critical thinking and academic literacy and to prepare them to participate in a democratic society. The project will employ lesson study as its main curriculum development and instructional tool, and project leaders will support the process through coaching and mentoring. Lesson plans and other materials will be available on the project's Web site.

This large and diverse California district has a majority of students (70%) eligible for reduced-price meals, and many middle and high school history teachers work outside of their major fields. Each year, the project will offer six after-school seminars and a summer seminar, in addition to lesson study groups. An online professional development component—PD OnDemand—will begin during Year 2; learning sessions recorded during Year 1 will be available, as will teacher-created lessons from Year 1. Two tiers of professional development will be offered: Tier 1 will engage 75 teachers in a 3-year, 200-hour commitment; and Tier 2 will offer online access to events, guest speakers and products to all district history teachers. When the initial Tier 1 group concludes, recently hired teachers will be recruited for Years 4 and 5; some teachers who participated at the Tier 2 level earlier may also join this cadre. C.O.R.E. stands for content, organizations, reflective practice and experiences—the conceptual framework for this project. History content will be aligned with school level, so middle and high school teachers will study topics appropriate to their teaching assignments. Historian-led seminars will focus on key issues and events in American history, as well as ways to deliver instruction that supports higher level student thinking. Ongoing lesson study groups will be led by a specialist and will engage teachers in creating, teaching, observing, reflecting and refining as they develop classroom lessons. These lessons will become part of the PD OnDemand Web site, making classroom-validated resources widely available.

This Arizona district is extremely diverse, and the large majority of students are first- or second-generation Americans. During the first three years of the project, 30 teachers will attend quarterly reading and conference sessions at Phoenix-area museums, six Professional Learning Community meetings and three summer study trips, including visits to historic sites in Arizona, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York City. They also will attend the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference. In the final two years, the same 30 teachers will study biographies and primary sources. Teachers will be selected based on their willingness to change the way they teach U.S. history, their existing historical knowledge and their commitment to full participation. Each of the largest high schools will be represented by at least one teacher, who will become a peer coach and trainer for others at the school. The project will emphasize parallel and divergent developments in American and Arizona history, highlighting areas where historians disagree. The teachers and their students also will take part in the Arizona Centennial celebration. The teachers will learn to use primary sources, including texts, art, artifacts and multimedia resources. In addition, they will learn strategies for planning classroom activities and delivering rich content; assigning and scoring student reading and writing projects that align with state and national core standards; and introducing content and materials that integrate the colonial and territorial history of the Southwest, especially Arizona, with the typical scope and sequence of U.S. history courses. A project Web site will house lessons and resources developed by the teachers.

This northern Arizona consortium is located in a geographically isolated area. Half the students are minorities—mostly Native Americans—and 44 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The project will offer three-credit elective graduate-level courses that include content seminars, hands-on workshops, field study research, grade-based professional learning communities, lesson study sessions, online discussions and one-on-one mentoring. The courses will be taught at Northern Arizona University over six days during the school year and three days in the summer. The courses will explore pivotal events, people, legislation and judicial cases; the concepts of local, state and national significance; and the intersection of native and national storylines. Teachers may pursue two paths. An intensive 2-year track will help teachers partially complete their master’s degrees in history; in addition to the regular content, these courses will feature 3-day field study trips, online discussions and small group studies. This master's track will involve two cohorts of 15 teachers: Cohort A from summer 2011 to spring 2013, and Cohort B from summer 2013 to spring 2015. Cohort A teachers will be encouraged to continue participating after spring 2013 and serve as teacher leaders with the project and in their schools and districts. In addition, two biannual cohorts of 15 teachers will pursue a less-intensive professional recertification track. The project's key strategies are the "learn, do, teach" and "local-to-global" approaches that focus on primary sources, historical scholarship, local significance and engaging instructional strategies. Teacher-created lesson plans, activities, annotated primary sources and book critiques will be posted on a Moodle site.

The project will serve public schools on the five islands of American Samoa, where all students qualify for free school lunches. A needs survey demonstrated that 96 percent of history teachers had not majored in history and that student achievement in history needs to improve—58 percent of fourth graders, 36 percent of eighth graders and 38 percent of twelfth graders scored below average on the history cluster of the 2009 SAT-10. Through this project, two cohorts of 25 teachers will participate in 480 hours of American history instruction and professional development regarding classroom-ready teaching techniques. This training will include (1) 10 day-long symposia on American history content, six core content-related teaching practices and response-to-intervention implementation; (2) a 3-day summer institute and field study focused on topics that align with grade-level curriculum content, including training in teaching strategies, standards review and lesson development from the field study; and (3) teacher networking through after-school meetings held twice monthly to review student performance and develop intervention strategies. Cohort 1 (Grades 5-8) will receive training in the first 3 years, with Cohort 2 (Grades 9-12) following in the final two years. After the summer institutes of 2012 (for Cohort 1) and 2015 (for Cohort 2), the project teachers will travel to the mainland to visit historic sites most have only read about. They will learn to use content-related teaching methods, including primary source documents, artifacts, fine art, illustrations and maps to translate newly mastered content into their classes. The project will post online curriculum developed by the project, best practices and other materials.

Defining America is a combined effort of two regional educational service agencies—one in northwestern Wisconsin and the other in northeastern Minnesota. Together, they serve 55 mainly rural districts plus several Native American schools and have a total of 10 schools in need of improvement. Project activities will provide opportunities for history teachers to work directly with master teachers, curriculum experts, and archivists. Face-to-face experiences will include 5-day summer colloquia and one and a half-day retreats and seminars of various lengths. Online activities will include creation of a Moodle site where project staff and participants can share ideas and practices and conduct online discussions. When project staff select the 40 teaching fellows, their priority will be on recruiting teachers from schools in need of improvement. The theme of Defining America is examining critical eras when, at the national level, the meaning of "America" was created or significantly redefined. History content will include the relevant national events and people, and will also make connections to local and Native American history. Teachers will learn to identify historical resources, incorporate historical thinking into teacher-created lesson plans and classroom activities, and use best practices in instruction. When teaching fellows complete their 3-year Defining America experience, they will have a pool of lesson plans to share with other teachers and will be a resource for colleagues in their districts to improve history instruction across all schools.

Located in the eastern mountains and Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, the eight county-wide districts involved in Framing Our History have 20 middle and high schools that have not made Adequate Yearly Progress for one or more of the past three years, and many teachers in these schools are not highly qualified to teach history. The project will address participant needs through colloquia, institutes, field studies, and other activities that promote greater content knowledge, build pedagogical skills, and create a Professional Learning Community. The project also will provide interventions to nonparticipants at struggling schools and conduct a research study in one district on the project's long-term effects. A total of 40 teachers will participate for the full 5-year period, 30 of whom will be selected from low-performing schools and 10 of whom will be teacher-mentors, who will participate in all project activities. Framing Our History aims to develop teacher-historians who make history relevant to today's students by instilling historical thinking skills and habits of mind. During the summer colloquia, teachers will interact with historians, master teachers, learning/curriculum specialists, and preservice teachers from the higher education partner to explore content as professionals and develop pedagogical skills such as action research. All activities will integrate educational technology and emphasize the use of a variety of resources and delivery media. Teachers will create instructional guides and problem-based learning modules to be published on the state department's Teach 21 Web site. These resources will help other history teachers improve their classroom practice.

This capital city district serves students who are overwhelmingly minority and who receive special education services at a higher than average rate (20 percent). The district has never made Adequate Yearly Progress, and five middle schools and three high schools are underperforming. The Teaching American History Academy II (TAHA II) will offer two 3-year professional development pathways: (1) the master's track, in which 15 teachers will complete courses worth 30 graduate hours, plus workshops, an annual 1-day field trip, and an annual 4- to 7-day summer trip; and (2) the professional development (PD) track, which will provide 50 to 60 teachers with 100 or more hours of training in meetings during the school year and a 4- to 7-day summer trip followed by a 3-day institute (15 PD track teachers will participate in extra technology training). When cohorts are recruited, priority will be given to history and special education teachers who teach American history in the underperforming schools. TAHA II will focus on building collegiality among teaching colleagues and university historians. History content and instructional strategies will be delivered by historians, museum curators, and National Park historians, and retired mentor teachers. The master’s track teachers will earn a master's of education in curriculum and instruction for history and social studies from the University of Richmond; professional development track teachers will prepare curriculum materials to be posted on the project Web site. Over the course of the project, leaders anticipate that several teachers will attend and present at regional and national conferences.