This suburban district, east of San Francisco and Oakland, has high percentages of schools not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress standards. Nearly 20 percent of students are English Language Learners, and state history-social science test results show 30 percent of 8th grade students and 28 percent of 11th grade students scoring below basic. Each year, American Democracy in Word and Deed will have professional historians, scholars, and educators lead four 2-hour afterschool colloquia, a weeklong summer institute and four daylong colloquia. Activities will include discussions, lectures, and opportunities to develop, teach, evaluate, and revise a lesson each year. Two cohorts, each with 25 teachers from Grades 4 and 5 (early American history) and 25 teachers from grades 8 and 11 (19th- and 20th-century American history), will participate for either two or three years. The project's theme will focus on the words and deeds that gave birth to, nurtured, and tested democracy in American history. Teacher interaction and engagement with content experts will be aimed at helping teachers develop enthusiasm, creativity, and confidence around content knowledge, historical thinking skills, and discipline-specific approaches to reading and writing. The practice of Lesson Study will help teachers become more collaborative, reflective, and effective in their classroom instruction. Each year, every teacher will create and refine a lesson, so the project will produce a collection of activities to share with history district-wide teachers.

Eighteen schools in four districts on the central California coast have been identified as in need of improvement. Many teachers in this multi-ethnic region have said they need more support for teaching American history. The Equity project will provide support in the form of workshops, study groups that meet in person and online, mentoring, book studies, and summer academies that include field studies at local, regional, and national historic sites. Historians and master teachers will lead sessions and field trips, and teachers will identify and gather classroom resources as part of the activities. The project cohort of 50 teachers will blend grades and school levels, with the aim of giving teachers a vertical perspective and within and cross-grade interactions. The Equity project theme of exploring history in a scholarly way will be reinforced by contacts with professional historians throughout the 5-year project. Content will be selected to meet the needs of elementary and middle school teachers, who want chronological surveys of content, and the needs of high school teachers, who want in-depth exploration of specific topics. Content will include findings from current research, primary source analysis, and review of historiographic issues. Instructional strategies will focus on how to design inquiry-based instructional activities that incorporate primary sources, help students build context or background knowledge, and make connections to the present, as well as integrate multiple perspectives. Equity teachers will develop lesson plans and compile classroom resources to help them create rich learning environments and to share with other teachers on the project Web site.

The ALL Americans districts are on the California coast near Los Angeles. Across the districts, 8th grade student achievement in history is low, especially among Hispanic students and English Language Learners, who are 48 percent and 26 percent of the student population, respectively. Each year's activities will include nine seminar/workshop events (content, pedagogy, book/film club), several hours of individual coaching, and a summer institute with a field study trip. Teachers will be recruited to participate as fellows (40 per year), who commit to regular attendance, and associates (20 per year), who attend on an event-by-event basis. Fellows apply annually and may stay for more than one year. Within its theme, the project will help teachers examine American history through the lens of immigration and internal migration, looking at the interactions of peoples, cultures, and ideas. In response to teacher-defined needs, the project will present content related to immigrants in U.S. history; Mexican-American and California history; and the basics of significant documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Teachers defined three areas of pedagogical needs: improving student engagement, closing the achievement gap, and making the curriculum accessible to English learners. Strategies to support these needs will include training on affirming different cultures in the classroom; using Marzano's Classroom Instruction That Works; and using digital pictures, video, audio, and text to integrate into multimedia classroom presentations. At the end of each year, teachers will share multimedia presentations, units, and lessons on the project Web site.

Led by the Fresno County Office of Education, a five-county consortium in central California will target schools most in need of improvement for participation in The Liberty for All Fellowship. Nearly a third of these schools have not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress for multiple years, with nearly a tenth undergoing restructuring and four percent of history teachers teaching with emergency or intern credentials. Fellows will have access to at least 18 days of professional development each year: a 2-day fall colloquium, a 1-day fall field study, a 2-day winter colloquium, a 2-day spring workshop, a 1-day spring field study, a 5-day summer institute, a 5-day field study trip, and face-to-face and online history book club meetings. Additional activities will be open to all teachers in the consortium; some activities are for master teachers. During Year 1, services will be provided to 35 fellows, including 5 master teachers who will deliver turnkey trainings; additional teachers will be added in subsequent years. Fellows will research and study the political, economic, legal, social, and ideological contrasts found throughout American history. Classroom instruction will incorporate reading strategies, Binary Paideia teaching strategies for helping students analyze history, and resources from CICERO. ThereNow's IRIS (a sophisticated Webcam-like system) will allow coaches and peers to give feedback to teachers as they deliver lessons. Video recordings of workshops and teacher-produced historical narratives, lessons, and activities will be posted online.

The Elk Grove Unified School District serves culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse students in southern Sacramento County and Elk Grove. Twelve of its 22 secondary schools are not achieving Adequate Yearly Progress, and on the California Standards Test, 48 percent to 68 percent of eighth and eleventh-graders score below "proficient" on questions related to American history. Teachers who participate in American Citizen: A Study of Liberty and Rights (American Citizen) in Years 1-3 will take one or more professional development pathways: Mastering History (an intensive, 2½-year master's degree program in history that includes evening and weekend classes and reading seminars); Talking History (an annual series of six scholarly lectures, including two book studies); Doing History (four 2-day workshops); and Living History (four 2-day colloquia, a week-long summer institute at a historic site, and collaboratively developed units). In Years 1-3, 16 teachers will participate in the master's degree program, 50 in Talking History, and 25 each in Doing History and Living History. In Years 4-5, American Citizen will expand its reach through district-wide extension activities: a learning collaborative, monthly professional development trainings led by master teachers, participation in National History Day, continuation of Talking History and Living History programs, and possibly a master's degree program for a second cohort. The unifying theme will be the liberty and rights of the American citizen. Teachers will learn strategies for differentiated instruction, primary source analysis, historical writing, historical inquiry, document-based questioning, and the effective use of biography and multimedia. A program Web site will publish lesson plans and enable history teachers to share ideas for improving instruction.

This large district in the San Francisco Bay area has 11 high schools, six of which are in improvement. Only 35 percent of high school students tested at or above proficient in American history in 2007, and about half of the students speak a primary language other than English at home. The East Side Teaching American History Project will present six content seminars each year. To make them accessible to teachers, seminars will be presented once in the northern part of the district and once in the southern part. Additional activities will include a 5-day summer institute focused on pedagogy, strategies, and lesson plans; a 1-day summer field study at a local historical site; and two history book studies. An annual cohort of 33 teachers will participate, with some staying for more than a year. The project goal is to achieve systemic change, making American history a viable and relevant subject. During summer institutes, teachers will learn how to present the content studied during the seminars. Methods will include using research-based frameworks and adapting lessons to different learning styles and for English Language Learners. Approaches will include increasing empathy for events and figures in history, using multiple perspectives to teach the same event, and using stories to bring home the personal impact of events. A portion of institute time will be dedicated to developing lesson plans. Each year, every participating teacher will create at least two new lesson plans, which will be available for all high school history teachers to use in their classrooms.

The six rural counties—three in northwestern California and three in southwestern Oregon—involved in the Wild Rivers Program have many American Indian students and many low-performing schools. To help teachers build their knowledge and skills, the project will offer each cohort 150 hours of professional development, consisting of eight Saturday workshops, two Friday workshops, a 7-day summer study trip, a 3-day archives study trip, a 2-day literature camp, and a 2-day summer curriculum workshop. The final semester, when all cohorts come together, is designed to build collaboration, curriculum, and sustainability. Three cohorts of 35 teachers, each participating for three semesters and all participating in the final semester, will be organized as follows: Cohort 1 will consist of elementary teachers, Cohort 2 of middle school teachers, and Cohort 3 of high school teachers. To make American history more engaging and relevant to Wild Rivers Program students, the project will connect American history with American Indian history and incorporate American Indian case studies. A rigorous schedule of graduate-level lectures, discussions, and book studies will introduce content and support exploration of classroom strategies. Study trips to archives and historical sites will introduce primary documents and research strategies. As teachers focus on blending academic understanding of history with good teaching practices, they will build connections within their groups and between themselves and the historians working with the project: this learning community will help sustain the project's work after the grant ends. The instructional units teachers create during the project will be made available to all teachers in the region.

Fresno County, in the San Joaquin Valley halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, includes many rural areas where teachers have few professional development opportunities and students come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The region's students tend to score below average on the state history test. Reflecting on Our Past offers three components: (1) the Teaching American History certificate program, which will offer teachers opportunities for advanced study to earn a certificate; (2) the colloquium series, with six 2-day events each year that cover both content and pedagogy; and (3) the summer travel study and curriculum history institute, a 5-day, content-driven, scholar-guided event. These components are designed to different levels of complexity, and the colloquia and summer institutes will be organized around each year's topic area. The 50 teachers who participate in the year-long colloquium series will be recruited from the appropriate grade level and from schools with the greatest needs. During the grant period, two cohorts of 15 teachers (30 total) will complete the 2-year certification for teaching American history. The summer travel study and curriculum institute will accommodate 50 teachers, who will be drawn from both groups. Reflecting on Our Past aims to restore American history teaching and learning to the elementary classroom. Teachers will learn about integrating language arts and history instruction, so both receive the classroom time they deserve. Teachers, and then their students, will be able to comprehend and analyze expository history texts, use primary sources, and apply historical thinking skills. The project will produce a cadre of teachers who can assist their colleagues.

America's Story: Forging Identity Through E Pluribus Unum (America's Story) involves three urban, K-8 districts in east San Jose, California. Many students in these ethnically diverse schools (40 languages are spoken) are English Language Learners, and teachers want support with history teaching in general and with teaching to English learners specifically. Annual project activities will include both content and academic literacy instruction during four school-year colloquia, a 5-day summer institute, and grade-level groups supporting teachers. The participant cohorts will contain 12 teachers each year; they will be supported by three academic literacy coaches and two teacher advisory team members. America's Story will examine how American identity has developed over time through people's words and deeds, successes and setbacks in nation-building, and immigration and migration. Elements of this theme will be matched with specific state content standards. American history coaches will lead professional development and facilitate lesson creation, using the Backward Design approach for framing lessons and driving student inquiry. Academic literacy teacher facilitators will provide leadership for implementing strategies in the schools, using the UC Berkeley project's academic literacy program, which develops students' reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. The project will result in a collection of teacher-designed instructional units to be posted online, plus information and resources about the project that can be used to replicate the training with other teachers.

California as America will increase teacher knowledge, improve effective instruction, and build a sustainable model that encourages teachers to become life-long students of traditional American history by interweaving California and the West into national themes and historical outcomes. The project will include 1) formal professional development to each of two cohorts of teachers that provide direct interaction with scholars of traditional American history and access to rare book, manuscript, photographic, and other archival material; 2) small learning communities of grade-level peers led by a doctoral student to help access/integrate materials appropriate to California U.S. history standards into lessons; and 3) a richly programmed two-week East Coast tour of American history and five-day courses led by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Each session will be planned carefully to reflect content-based instructional mandates of the California Standards and the breath and depth of pertinent Huntington archival holdings. Scholar leaders will explore the holdings to pull appropriate materials for discussion and examination. They will then prepare content packets for teachers, which will include one or two scholarly articles on the topic or theme under review, a theme-related secondary source bibliography, a theme-related primary source bibliography, and an annotated description of the items drawn from the collections. Course content will include topics such as Jamestown, Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the Cold War, among others.