The district is partnering with the University of California, Irvine's Department of History, History/Social Science Project and Humanities Out There Program to offer all American history teachers a professional development program encompassing traditional U.S. history content, a history proficiency assessment, student literacy needs, support for English language learners, and instructional skills. Activities include a 3-week invitational leadership institute on "Notions of Citizenship," a year-long academic seminar series, quarterly workshops on classroom technology applications, and development of collaborative networks/learning communities designed to sustain the program. Seminars address cooperation and conflict in the 1600s and 1700s; colonial America; the Depression and New Deal; 19th century racial history; American Women/Womenhood in the 19th and 20th centuries; and the civil rights movement.

The LEA 's Liberty Under Law program aims to ensure that American history becomes a core discipline in the district's schools. The program will provide 24 days of professional development for American history teachers in grades 5 and 8 in U.S. history content and teaching strategies that integrate the arts with technology. Project partners include the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Loyola Marymount University, Pepperdine University, and the Skirball Cultural Center. The program includes an intensive 2-week summer institute for 3 cohorts of 40 teachers each year. In preparation for the institute, participants will attend history workshops, after-school study group meetings, and monthly literature discussion circles with historians, observe classroom demonstrations, and study history standards and assessments. Learning activities fulfill California standards in American history for all grades K-8. Content covers: beginnings to 1607, colonial heritage 1607-1753, movement for independence 1754-1783, forming a new nation 1784-1819, western expansion 1820-1869, Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877, and industrialization, immigration and reforms 1878-1914. Periods will be studied through the lens of the U.S. Constitution.

Partnering with National Center for History Education, Galef Institute, and Loyola Marymount University, the district will work with a core group of 40 5th, 8th, and 11th grade U.S. history teachers. There are four teachers from a K-12 Learning Center, year-round professional development aimed at improving content knowledge and instructional skills. Charged with mentoring 200 additional teachers, the core group will attend 3 annual history institutes, 6 school-year seminars with historians and master teachers, interact with historians, curators, and archivists, receive coaching on "Different Ways of Knowing" teaching strategies, and develop models of teaching American history as a separate academic subject. Other partners include Huntingdon Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Content will focus on the Galef Institute's American history module, "Choice, Chance, Change" and Joy Hakim's History of US textbook series covering notable Americans from all walks of life.

This professional development program targets 8th and 11th grade U.S. teachers in low-performing schools in a 143,000-student district. Its thematic framework-"what does it mean to be a good citizen in different periods of American history?"-is based on The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life, by Michael Schudson (Harvard Univ. Press, 1998). Two summer institutes each year and 8 academic sessions during the school year dealing with content knowledge and instructional skills are combined with creation of teacher teams and opportunities to observe colleagues' classrooms. The LEA's partners are the University of California, San Diego's Department of History and California History-Social Science Project CREATE, Preuss School, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Public Library, and Center for Civic Education. Content covers the American Revolution to the early 20th century, and continuity and change in the 20th century, including civil rights, the World Wars, industrialization, and immigration.

A district-wide effort to improve teaching and learning in American history, the Voices program covering history content and instructional strategies is available to all American history teachers in grades 5, 8, and 11, but will focus initially on building expertise of new teachers. Summer institutes and coaching/mentoring for participants will benefit from partnerships with the California History-Social Sciences project at the University of California, Davis, History Alive! Teachers Curriculum Institutes, Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, California State Archives Library and local history museums. The 3-year project will build a cadre of expert teachers to provide training in the future. Creation of CD-ROMS on exemplary teaching strategies and Internet exchange of model lessons expand the reach of the professional development program.

Through a partnership between the school district, the Area 3 History and Cultures Project, and the University of California, Davis, the E Pluribus Unum program will address teacher subject matter preparation, coordination needs between 2 grade levels of U.S. history teachers, and student literacy needs and achievement rates in grades 8 and 11. The program features mentoring by coaches and historians, teaching strategies for English learners, reading instruction for American history texts, and coaching in methodological strategies for analyzing historical sources.

The school district is partnering with the University of California-Berkeley's history faculty and Bancroft Library. The district will send 90 5th and 11th grade teachers to workshops, conferences and summer institutes to improve content knowledge and classroom practice. State standards will be applied to the school-based instructional program during the training sessions. There will be lesson study sessions and teams of teacher-as-researchers undertaking special projects, which will impact the level of the instructional program.

The LEA works in partnership with Azusa Pacific University, the Historical Society of Southern California and the National Council for History Education to serve 138 local school teachers in grades 5,8,11, and 12. Features of the project include a series of spring and summer colloquia on various historical topics and themes and the development of specific lesson plans and history classes based on the learning that arises from these sessions. Academic historians will lead the sessions; learning specialists and master teachers will work with teachers to help them integrate the topics and themes into creative classroom presentations that engage student interest.

This large urban district plans to use a teacher-of-teachers model in which 45 fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade teachers are taught to be teacher trainers. They in turn will help carry out on-site and summer institute professional development with an additional 385 teachers in the same grades. The emphasis is on content training, with a secondary emphasis on instructional delivery. The partners in this project are the California State University Long Beach and the Long Beach Community College.

This southern California district is will provide professional development to 90 of the 120 history teachers in the district. They will partner with Occidental College, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Autry Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of History, and the Huntington Library. The teachers will learn how to gauge their students' work as indicators of the success of the content and teaching strategies. The teachers will get hands-on curricular presentation training that will better equip them to reach and engage their students. The teachers will work on research projects and learn methods to stimulate high-quality research efforts from their students that will be directed toward participation in National History Day.