Collaborating with San Diego State University, the San Diego County Office of Education, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the South Bay Union School District, the Sweetwater Union High School District in Chula Vista, California will provide a focused, sustained professional development program over a three-year period for teachers from 34 elementary, middle, and high schools. Through summer institutes, the program will focus on the evolution of democracy in the United States, with particular focus on the Revolution and the Constitution. Teachers will learn to integrate vertical thematic content with state and district standards, by working hand-in-hand with university and curriculum experts. These experts from the field of education will help participants develop U.S history lesson plans that help children learn to use primary resources as a historian does. Historical documents will include letters, notes, paintings, speeches, cartoons, slave narratives, court cases, radio addresses, newspaper articles, and ballot measures. An Instructional Coach model will be used for the middle and high school teachers, who will receive 114 hours of professional development for participation in the program, while elementary school participants will receive 72 hours of professional development.

In partnership with University of California San Diego, Center for Civic Education, Constitutional Rights Foundation, and Huntingdon Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, school districts will provide summer institutes, monthly symposia, peer coaching, lesson study groups and online sessions on content to new and experienced teachers of American History in grades 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8. Summer institute participants include 50 teacher and 20 teacher leaders each year from the 6-12 districts expected to participate yearly. Themes of this effort to improve U.S. instruction include: Core Documents, Core Values of Justice and Liberty, Citizenship and Civic Responsibility, The Developing Nation, and Significant People. Content relevant to California standards covers events, individuals, and issues related to the U.S. Constitution, American Revolution, development of the American republic, Declaration of Independence, slavery, and Civil War.

Professional development for teachers of grades 5, 8, and 11 includes: development of lessons using the disciplined-inquiry model; historical research using primary source documents; field study in Boston, Gettysburg, and New York City; implementation of Interactive History Notebooks, and classroom support. Content includes: the struggle for equality (e.g., social, political, and religious institutions in colonial America; political and economic initiatives in the Jackson administration; and movements of women, Latinos, and Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s); differing perspectives over time about what constituted freedom and who is entitled to it (e.g., causes of the American Revolution, slavery, foreign policy during 1939-1941); democratic principles versus political reality (e.g., U.S. Constitution, McCarthy period); toward tolerance and acceptance of diversity (Native Americans and European settlers; abolitionist movement; Civil Rights Movement); and the power of individuals to make an impact on American life (e.g., Mercy Otis Warren, Daniel Webster, George W. Norris, Jane Addams, Narcissa Whitman). Partners are the California State University Department of History, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy.

This project unites three neighboring urban districts, including five large middle and high schools and a new charter high school, with Constitutional Rights Foundation, Pepperdine University, University of Southern California, University of California at Los Angeles, California State Universities in Los Angles and Long Beach, Loyola Marymount University, Skirball Cultural Center, and Autry National Center of the American West to promote historical scholarship, effective teaching, and outstanding learning experiences in traditional American history. Partners also include artist teacher coaches who are specialists in American history. Through 20 or more days of intensive summer and weekend institutes, seminars, workshops, field trips, classroom demonstrations, and small group cross-district grade-alike study, 40 middle and high school teachers per year will examine U.S. history-events, people and turning points-through the lens of the U.S. Constitution. Themes follow the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessment: Change and Continuity of American Democracy, Interactions of Peoples, Culture and Ideas, Economic Opportunity and Exercise of Freedom, and Expanding Role of America in the World.

Working toward a vision of strengthening every district school with two master teachers in grades 5, 8, and 11 to serve as American History instructional coaches for all history teachers, two teachers from six middle and six high schools will be trained in year 1, two each from 17 elementary schools in year 2, and two each from 16 elementary schools in year 3. The focus of 7-day summer institutes, 3-day colloquia, workshops, an interactive website, and follow-up meetings is U.S. Constitutional history with an emphasis on the Bill of Rights, evolution of state vs. federal authority, key Supreme Court decisions, and federal policies. Partners include Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, National Council for History Education, Council for Civic Education, and the Social Science Consortium.

This project serves 5th and 8th grade, alternative, and special education teachers through 3-day workshops and a one-week summer seminar, training in the use of key documents, partner teaching, in-service training, biography reading roundtable, and travel. Subject matter includes American independence (1774-1776), George Washington and his era, slavery, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, America between the wars, the Great Depression, World War II, and the American West. Partnerships include the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Constitutional Rights Foundation-California History Day, Humboldt County History Day, Humboldt State University Department of History and College of Professional Studies, and local historic sites.

In partnership with California State University Fresno, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the San Joaquin Valley History Project, the Fresno City and County Historical Society, and the Legion of Valor Museum, this project uses US History Alive! to deepen the content background of teachers of grades 5, 8, and 11. A seven-member History Leadership Team plans professional development each year. Professional development will be ongoing throughout the year, each session building upon previous sessions. Content includes pre-Columbian settlement, US history and geography through growth and conflict, and continuity and change in the 20th century. Content knowledge is combined with research-based pedagogy, supplemented by time for practice and coaching. Other activities include a series of monthly late afternoon seminars, a nonfiction book club, picture books in the content area, best practices in teaching American history, and a series of Saturdays devoted to computer-based technology.

The project provides a 2-week summer institute featuring content and pedagogical topics for 8th and 11th grade teachers, four school-year follow-up days, coaching, and a trip to Washington, D.C. to investigate historic sites. Year 1 content for both grades concentrates on the founding democratic principles of the nation, including the Civil War, the Declaration of Independence. Year 2 offers the first 2 weeks in Vallejo and the third in Washington, D.C. examining the development and role of democratic institutions in American history. Year 3 both grades focus on the roots and emergence of the United States as a world power. Project partners include Sonoma State University and Solano County Library.

Focus of this professional development program will be maintained on key figures and turning points with special emphasis on use of primary sources to instill the notion that history teachers and students need to think like historians. Partners include the California History Project at California State University Long Beach and Dominquez Hills and Southern California Library. Of participants in grades 5, 8 and 11 engaging in summer institutes, conferences and workshops, and receiving coaching/mentoring, 12 are designated teacher leaders responsible for sustaining assistance to history teachers. Advanced Placement teachers are targeted for special attention. A 3-day retreat will take place in summer 2005 to review progress and plan future activities. Summer institutes cover: Industrialism and Social Reform, Spanish American War/American Expansionism, Agrarian Reform, Progressivism, World War I, Great Depression, Cold War, Civil Rights, Vietnam War, Expansion of Supreme Court Powers, Rise of Sectionalism, Slavery, First Great Awakening, French and Indian Wars, U.S. Constitution, American Revolution.

Teachers of 5th, 8th, and 11th grades are participants. The 2-week summer institute for year 1 deals with topics that include: for the 8th grade, political parties, the Marshall Court, economic differences between North and South, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction; for the 11th grade, agrarian protest, industrialism and worker protest, the Federal Reserve System, and prosperity and depression. In year 2 the institutes deal with topics that include: for the 8th grade, women on the frontier and in the factory, mid-19th century immigrants, and the slave family; 11th grade, post-World War I nativism, the Great Black Migration, Harlem Renaissance, and the Great Depression. Year 3 deals with topics such as: for the 5th grade (added in the third year), European exploration, English settlement, slavery, and the American Revolution; for the 8th grade, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War; for the 11th grade, World War I and II, the Cold War and containment, and Vietnam. Partners for the project are: California History Project, California State University Long Beach, the Public Information Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Center for Civic Education.