The CHARMS Collaborative in Massachusetts is instituting A More Perfect Union in consortium with selected school districts from the Bi-County and North River Collaboratives. The program will work most intensely in three districts located south of Boston that have not met annual instructional goals. Teachers who receive professional development through the program will do a significant amount of reading in the philosophy and pedagogy of history. Each year, they will participate in an 8-day summer seminar, a field trip, and four half-day meetings during the school year that address implementation of seminar content. Classroom implementation of teacher-created lesson plans will be facilitated by three coordinators and a pedagogical specialist. The same 45 teachers will participate throughout all three years of the program. They will explore the origins and evolution of America's fundamental political ideals, traditions, and constitutional institutions. Because the targeted districts include an increasing number of English Language Learners, A More Perfect Union will emphasize strategies that complement the Sheltered Instructional Observation Protocol. Also, teachers will learn to situate events within narrative frameworks and incorporate biography in their teaching. A project Web site will include the syllabi of the summer seminars and advice for their use in venues beyond the collaborative. The site will also house historical materials, essays, model lesson plans, and other teaching materials.

Teachers in five public school districts in Massachusetts—Burlington, Bedford, Lexington, Woburn, and Somerville—have identified professional development in American history as a "high need" as they serve many immigrant and migrant English Language Learners who lack a solid foundation in U.S. history. Making Freedom will offer professional development that features summer institutes, 3-day seminars, and 9-day study tours, with separate tracks for elementary and secondary teachers. Other activities will include a day-long workshop and two 3-hour after-school workshops annually on technology integration, continuation activities to ensure effective application of teacher work products, four history book groups a year, and collaborative activities that include a blog and participation in full-day conferences in Years 2, 3, and 4. Incentives such as stipends and college credits will be used to recruit an average of 90 teachers each year. After completing either the summer institutes or the core school year programs, participants can apply for a study tour, with the school districts’ goal being development of a pool of master teachers. Program activities will revolve around the people, perspectives, documents, and events involved in "making freedom." Instructional strategies will integrate differentiated instruction, historical thinking skills, and technology to develop students’ document analysis and inquiry skills. Teacher work products—reflective papers, research papers, discussion journals, book reviews, lesson plans, blog posts, and multimedia presentations—will be disseminated via the program Web site and at project conferences.

Boston Public Schools includes 143 schools. The 79 schools in the American Scripture project constitute the district's lowest-performing schools, where teacher turnover is high and student scores in reading and English language arts are especially low. To address student needs and teachers' weak American history credentials, the project will offer the following activities annually: a 5-day summer institute that includes exploration of Boston’s historical sites and research of manuscript collections; follow-up seminars during the school year to build a teacher-leader network and supply new content; teacher inquiry groups that incorporate Lesson Study; 3-day historical investigations led by Facing History and Ourselves; and summer content workshops. Three district history coaches will support participants' development as teacher leaders. The 3-year American Scripture program will provide professional development to 50 teachers in Year 1, another 100 in Year 2, and yet another 100 in Year 3 for a total of 250 teachers. Each annual program will focus on a different theme (liberty, equality, and constructing community) and will investigate enduring achievements and challenges of American national life that recur generation after generation. Instructional strategies will focus on using primary documents as a springboard for the development of historical thinking and writing skills. Students in all grades will write a multidraft essay in response to a district-wide common writing assignment in history. Lesson plans and videotaped lessons created during the program will be posted on the district's Intranet.

These northeastern Massachusetts districts have underperforming elementary and middle schools that need improvement, history teachers who need training for recertification, and high schools that need to increase the numbers of students who take honors or Advanced Placement history courses. Imagination, Invention and Innovation aims to meet these needs through annual week-long summer institutes, two full-day content workshops, two or three afterschool book discussions, one or more local field trips, and two technology seminars. Every year will offer a 4-day study tour of regional sites, and an annual conference will bring together a keynote speaker and teacher presentations based on work done during the year. The project has two tracks—elementary and secondary. In addition, 10 graduate students who are preservice teachers will also participate. As they work toward embedding current historical scholarship and strong pedagogical skills into teaching, elementary teachers will focus on U.S. history as it relates to historical and geographical topics, plus early settlement and state history. Secondary teachers will consider key themes, including colonization, the Revolution and early Republic, the Civil War and Reconstruction, immigration, and the development of modern America. Strategies will include using biography, historical fiction, and visual arts to enrich teaching, strengthening the use of instructional technology, and combining lectures and facilitated discussion with experiential, hands-on learning and self-discovery. These strategies will be modeled by academic historians during content workshops. After the grant ends, project impact will be sustained by a teacher-scholar network supported by technology, teacher-created resource guides focused on specific topics and adaptable for classroom use, and teacher-developed curriculum modules.

Prince George's County, the 15th largest district in the country, has a student population more than 95 percent minority—a reflection, in part, of its large African American middle class. The district is classified as in need of improvement and has a disproportionate number of inexperienced, unlicensed teachers at low-performing schools. Its proximity to the nation's capital and to some remarkable experiments in suburban living (e.g., the New Deal community of Greenbelt) makes visits to key sites accessible for experiential learning by teachers and students. Each 2-year program of American History at Home will include a 2-day introduction, six 2-day bridge sessions and three 5-day summer institutes, all of which will be integrated with pedagogy sessions that transfer the content knowledge into practice. For participating in these activities, teachers will earn six graduate-level history course credits and three graduate-level education course credits. The project will train two 2-year cohorts of 50 teachers each. Because of the great need among ninth grade students, the goal will be to recruit 30 percent of teachers from this grade level. American History at Home will explore two thematic questions: (1) How did depression, war, and postwar growth reshape local communities? and, (2) What role did science and technology play in the histories of the county and of the nation during this period? Beginning with assigned readings and writing tasks, teachers will explore several interpretive frameworks and historiographic debates (e.g., consensus vs. conflict, technological momentum, statism and anti-statism). Pedagogical strategies will include creating multimedia classroom activities and employing strategic historical thinking.

The Project PAST consortium includes both the regular and special education cooperatives for central Kentucky. They serve six districts that are in some phase of corrective action. Teachers in this rural region have had few opportunities for history professional development, and many would not be considered highly qualified to teach American history. Each year, the project plans to address a broad topic through six components: six historical encounters, a 3-day summer colloquium, a 2-day historical field institute, a mentoring and observation opportunity, three 5-hour online learning sessions, and two day-long curriculum institutes. Two cohorts of 50 high school teachers will participate; the first in Years 1 to 3 and the second in Years 4 and 5. As one strategy to achieve its goal of fusing immersion in content with training in practical classroom application, Project PAST will prepare the members of Cohort 1 to act as coaches to teachers in Cohort 2. All teachers will gain experience with using original documents, collaborating in grade-level teams, addressing the multiple abilities of students, and spiraling content to lead students from basic to critical thinking. Strategies will include theory-based instruction, creating standards-based lessons and authentic assessments, peer mentoring, and observation using a standard walk-through protocol, and integrating the fine arts and the humanities into history instruction. Project products will include a Moodle site—an Intranet-based learning platform that houses online lessons, discussions boards, curriculum, and interactive teaching resources—and a collection of standards-based lessons created by participants that will be available to all teachers in the consortium.

The Clio Project serves Iowa's capitol, where the student population is diverse and gaps in student achievement are becoming urgent in the middle and high schools. The district intends to redesign its history curriculum to include primary sources and historical thinking, along with a learner-centered approach to instruction. Clio will address student achievement through activities that strengthen teacher knowledge about increasing student engagement, providing experiences with primary sources in print, multimedia and digital formats, and studying artifacts, historical sites, and oral history with historians and scholars. During project activities, Clio teachers will contribute to redesigning the American history curriculum and developing authentic student learning assessments. The project will recruit teacher participation at three levels: Level I teachers will be core group members (35 each for middle and high school) and will work toward leadership roles to support implementing the new curriculum. These teachers must attend at least 80 percent of activities. Level II teachers will attend 75 percent of activities to receive professional development credit, and Level III teachers will attend sessions of their choice with no participation requirement. Clio, the Greek muse of history, serves as the project's thematic guide for deepening teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history. The instructional strategies for this purpose include developing historical thinking skills, working with primary sources, and using authentic research. Attention will be paid to differentiating instruction, teaching literacy in content areas, problem-based learning, and other research-based approaches. In addition to teacher-created lessons, the Clio Project will make an important contribution to the district's new curriculum and assessment tools.

The Monroe County Community School Corporation in southern Indiana is a comprehensive school district with a large research university in its midst. The district includes both high and low-achieving schools, and its students come from ethnically, economically, and socially diverse backgrounds. Teachers in Monroe County's lowest-performing schools will be targeted for recruitment to the History Education Project. In Year 1, professional development activities will include three weekend retreats that incorporate seminars and field trips, two evening book discussions, lesson planning consultations, a classroom observation, and a culminating spring conference. Years 2 and 3 will feature a 5-day summer seminar, spring and fall retreats, two evening book discussions, lesson planning consultations, two classroom observations, and a culminating spring conference. A historian-in-residence, along with master teachers, will assist each teacher in the development of 15 powerful lessons in American history. Up to 30 of the district's 133 history teachers will be recruited, and they will participate in all three years of the program. Each year's themes will be investigated through case studies of the period, with an emphasis on connecting Indiana people, places, events, and historical turning points to the larger American scene. The History Education Project will integrate four dimensions of instruction: thinking historically, utilizing primary resources, teaching big ideas, and posing multiple perspectives. The program will maintain an interactive Web site as a repository of field-tested U.S. history instructional resources.

Located in a rural town near Boise, the Kuna district is in its fifth year of improvement: only one of eight district schools made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2007-2008. In project Year 1, master teacher trainees will spend 175 hours in field studies, collaboration with partners, workshops, book studies, and design of summer institutes for subsequent years. Thereafter, teachers will receive more than 75 hours of research-based professional development as they participate in workshops, book studies, and summer institutes. Year 1 will develop four master teachers; Years 2 to 5 will bring in about 35 more teachers overall. The project goal is to develop 19 teacher-leaders and approximately 20 additional teachers with strong content knowledge, pedagogical background, and resources. The underlying purpose of the Struggles and Resilience project is to develop American history as a separate academic subject that is supported by resident historians and pedagogical experts. In Year 1, master teachers will participate in individualized and collaborative field study, primary source research, and intense learning sessions with local and national history experts. In the following years, the master teachers will work with historians and other educators to help participating teachers build their content knowledge and instructional skills. History content will draw connections between traditional American history and state and local histories. Pedagogy will be based on nine essential strategies outlined in Classroom Instruction That Works. Participating teachers will earn college credits and/or history endorsements or certifications. All district teachers will benefit from lesson plans created during project activities.

Within the districts in this northeast Georgia region, 15 schools did not make Adequate Yearly Progress in 2008, and 13 schools are in need of improvement. On the 2008 history tests for Grades 4, 8, and high school, 35 percent or more of the region’s students did not meet state standards. Teaching American History in Georgia's Classic Region will expand teachers' content knowledge and help them develop their pedagogical skills. Seminars, field studies, and summer institutes will be led by historians and master educators who will help teachers gain an increased appreciation of traditional American history. Professional Learning Communities, meeting both face-to-face and online, will collaborate to create lesson plans. A cohort of 60 teachers will include 30 from Grades 3-5 and 30 from middle and high schools; priority will be given to teachers from the schools most in need of improvement. Instructional strategies for this project include Understanding by Design and using historical thinking skills. Each year, these will be applied to content from the selected topic area/historical period. The project will produce technology-based collaborative instructional units that incorporate primary sources, local history resources, Web sites, and databases. All units will be reviewed by an advisory board and mounted on the project Web site to share with teachers in Georgia and across the nation. In addition, materials related to the book studies, blogs, podcasts, lectures, and presentations will be available online for all teachers in the project service area. In addition, teachers will conduct model demonstration lessons in their local schools and districts to sustain the project's impact over time.