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.

Missouri certification requirements include minimal study of American history, so many teachers in these St. Louis-area districts lack deep content knowledge in the subject area. Teachers will engage in a variety of lectures, workshops and site visits to historic places. These will range in length from a few hours to five days, and many will include both content and pedagogical instruction; follow-up activities, often online, will range from research to video conferences to using Moodle. With support from the lead historian and the instructional coach, teachers will work in vertical articulation teams to determine how each Charters of Freedom document will fit into the curriculum and to determine the depth of knowledge to which each will be taught and assessed. After establishing an understanding of the documents, teachers will work in grade-level teams to apply learning about the documents to pivotal periods in American history. Participants will explore the events that sparked and surrounded the creation of our country's charters of freedom. Through intensive content knowledge training, teachers will understand how the documents both influenced, and were influenced by, American presidents during pivotal periods in American history. The project will introduce and implement the research-based instructional strategies identified by Advanced Placement and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, and participants will use the lesson study process to perfect the application of those strategies to American history teaching. The project will develop a Web site of resources that can be used by teachers and students, and it will establish vertical teams and school-based content experts who can sustain the project.

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.

In Mississippi schools, students do not learn about post-1877 U.S. history prior to the 11th grade, and few teachers know about or teach the important role Mississippi played in major events like the Civil War, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. In this project, nationally known and local historians will lead teachers in 2-week summer institutes. Teachers also will attend four workshops each semester and meet once per week (online or in person) to engage in critical dialogue around content and pedagogical understandings and challenges. The project will involve two cohorts of 25 teachers (Years 1-2 and Years 3-4). In Year 5, five new teachers will join 20 teachers from the first two cohorts. Teachers from area districts also can attend open workshops. The content will increase teachers' knowledge of significant turning points in U.S. history and how these events have reflected, influenced or contradicted principles of freedom and democracy. The teachers will explore how the project themes connect with Mississippi history. In addition to broadening their content knowledge, teachers will engage in hands-on classroom activities to improve historical inquiry, critical thinking, cross-curricular connections and reflective practice. The strategies will be built around school-based inquiry, continuous improvement and critical dialogue. Teachers will work in professional learning communities to examine content critically and to evaluate their lesson plans, pedagogy and student work in the light of authentic assessments. A Web site will host teacher-developed products, including field-tested primary source activities and lesson plans.

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.

Teachers in this project's western Massachusetts districts noted that they are least knowledgeable about recent history, which also is the most likely historical period to be limited by time constraints at the end of a year; therefore, it will be addressed in Year 1 of the project. Each year will begin with an immersion field trip to visit monuments and historic sites; the Veterans Education Project will provide personal accounts of people who witnessed related history, and funding will help teachers create "archive boxes" of primary sources and artifacts for classroom use. During the school year, participants will attend four seminars that deliver content, pedagogy and historical thinking skills; they will also take part in after-school workshops that include book groups and technology training. The number of teachers participating each year (35) will eventually produce a cadre of teacher leaders who can support their colleagues and sustain the benefits of the grant. The theme of American democracy will serve as the medium through which the content of each historical period will be filtered. The content addressed during each 50-year block of history will be presented so as to align with state standards. Teachers will learn to use fiction and graphic novels for history teaching, along with differentiated instruction, primary sources and technology tools, such as wikis, podcasts, digital storytelling and Web-based archives. Grant activities and products will be posted on a Web site, giving all history teachers access to virtual museum tours, videos of activities and examples of classroom teaching, examples of student work, blogs, podcasts and more.

This district—the largest in Maryland—includes more than 1,000 American history teachers, many of whom have little or no background in their subject matter or in specific strategies for teaching history and historical thinking skills. Each year, the project activities will feature a 1-week summer institute for separate cohorts of 20 elementary teachers. A 2-week summer institute, beginning in Year 2, will serve annual cohorts of 30 secondary school teachers. In addition, all teachers in the district can participate in six annual events during the school year: four content-based visits to historic sites in the Washington, D.C., area, and two skill and application workshops that integrate technology and reflective practice. Teachers who have participated in 1 year of the project will be allowed to return for a second year. Returning teachers will attend more advanced workshops on historical thinking skills and share what they have learned through presentations at their schools, meetings or state or national conferences. The project strategies will focus on historical thinking skills (such as close reading, assessing reliability and sourcing) and include practice with online resources and primary sources, biographies, autobiographies and other historical narratives. Returning teachers who demonstrate refined skills will be filmed in their classrooms, and the videos will be used in discussions regarding best practices. The Center for History and New Media will develop an open-source, open-access Web site to share project materials, including primary source activities, the classroom videos of teachers, podcasts of site visits and workshops, and workshop materials, such as bibliographies, teaching strategies and recommended Web sites.

This project targets underserved populations in urban and rural areas of south-central Kentucky, where student test data for social studies have shown little or no improvement, especially in high schools. Each year, the project will provide 15 days of professional development for two cohorts of 50 teachers (overlapping in Year 3 of the project), including (1) historical encounter sessions, consisting of intensive visits to museums and historic sites, seminars, historical research and grade-level collaborative work to integrate content in the curriculum; (2) a 2-day summer colloquium hosted by the National Council for History Education; (3) historical field institutes, in which participants experience past times and deeds that relate to the yearly topic; (4) a peer-mentoring and observation program; (5) Web lessons; and (6) a teachers curriculum institute. Teachers also will attend lectures by professional historians and local historians. Participants will be recruited by district superintendents, the project director and the curriculum specialist, with preference given to teachers in schools in high-need districts. The project strategies comprise a combination of curricular resources, including an electronic resource notebook containing reproductions from the Kentucky Historical Society collections, access to intranet-based discussion boards and online lesson plans, membership in professional history organizations, and ongoing instructional support from the project director and Campbellsville College history professors. In terms of products, the project teachers will create interactive, hands-on, standards-based lessons and traveling trunks.

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.