Discovering the Roots of Freedom in American History will strengthen teacher content knowledge, curriculum, and instruction that will lead to an increase in test scores and the development of a regional network of American history teacher-leaders. The project will address teachers' lack of historical content knowledge, historical analysis skills, and pedagogical knowledge of American history. Teachers will be provided with 1) model lessons that have been successfully used with students; 2) time to develop academic, standards-based lessons that connect American history content to research-based strategies; 3) a monthly e-newsletter highlighting exemplary websites and American history resources; 4) coaching by scholars, partners, and trainers; 5) standards-aligned benchmark pre- and post-tests to provide monitoring and feedback on student achievement and growth; and 6) student "Attitudes Towards History" surveys to be given at the beginning and end of each year. Content will be reinforced through regular in-services, academic readings, required coursework, and implementation of rich content-based curriculum in the participants' classrooms. Project format includes colloquia and practica days that focus on historical content and historiographic skills followed by curriculum development presentation activities, attendance at regional history conferences, and summer institutes. Project content includes the Constitution, the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, World War II, and civil rights. California and the nation's rich heritage will be examined through field trips to historic sites.

The American History Academy: Investigating the Past, Preparing for the Future will engage teachers in the process of historical investigation to deepen knowledge of traditional American history and develop understanding of the discipline of history. Teachers will gain the knowledge, resources, and strategies necessary to improve instruction and raise student achievement. Academic historians from the University of California-Davis and Solano Community College will provide content talks and lead source work to provide participants with a thorough review of the American history content outlined in California's standards from the Revolutionary period through the present day. Project teacher- leaders will demonstrate how to incorporate historical thinking and literacy-building strategies into historical investigations and will coach participants to develop similarly structured lessons. Participants will work in grade-specific groups over the course of two years, with eight grade teachers served in the first two years of the grant and eleventh grade teachers in Years 2 and 3. Each year of the two-year groups will have themes, with Year 1 focusing on developing content and disciplinary understanding and Year 2 focusing on fostering communities of practice. Teachers will participate in a pre-service gear-up seminar, a fall seminar, a spring seminar, and a summer institute for each of the two years. Content themes for eighth grade teachers include democracy in the early Republic, the Age of Jackson, and the Civil War, among others. Content themes for eleventh grade teachers include World War II and "Freedom on the March." Specific historical topics covered include New England Puritans, the War of 1812, Abraham Lincoln, the Depression, civil rights, and the Reagan Revolution.

The Frontier Liberty Fellowship has formed a consortium of 11 school districts in five states and the Virgin Islands to increase teacher knowledge of and student achievement in American history. Many of the districts are rural and isolated-in remote Louisiana parishes, farming country in Oklahoma and Mississippi, the California Sierras, and the Texas panhandle. Teacher Fellows selected for the project will attend 11 days of intensive colloquia and summer institutes exploring history content and teaching strategies and conducting historical research for the unit lessons they must create. Fellows will study the roots of American tradition including antecedent English documents and colonial charters, the American Revolution and its leaders, the Declaration of Independence and natural law tradition, the Federalist Papers and anti-federalist thought, the Bill of Rights, and constitutional leaders. Slavery, agrarian culture, the market economy of the North, the Civil War and Reconstruction will be other topics, along with Progressivism, World Wars I and II, up to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's Local District 7 is the highest need local district, with 14 of its 15 secondary schools in Program Improvement status. Since Local District 7 also struggles with high staff turnover, this project was structured to develop vital networks and the recruitment of on-going cohorts to help sustain involvement in the program and the schools. The overarching concept of this project is America's exploration of the meaning of democracy and freedom. Along with study of founding documents, course presentations will include the views of groups whose voices were less visible. Integrated with California standards, the content follows annual themes and includes examination of colonial society, the impact of the Enlightenment, the Constitution. the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights, John Marshall and the Supreme Court, lives of Black Americans, westward migration, Native Americans, the Civil War, immigration, reform movements, the Red Scare and attacks on civil liberties, the Civil Rights movement, and the Cold War, among others.

This project provides opportunity for 20 history/social science teachers and pre-service teachers to engage in master's level coursework, experiential learning, and individual research focusing on the impact of three American history eras on shaping the American character. Participants will disseminate findings at regional and national conferences and through professional journals. As a capstone, teacher participants complete a master's thesis or project dealing with an aspect of America's founding, westward expansion, or emergence as a world power from the late 19th century to the present. Course content explores the impact of colonial settlement on American Indians, the Revolutionary period of 1776-1783, creation and ratification of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, geographic expansion of the country and growth of a diverse population, the Second Great Awakening, the anti-slavery movement as represented by William Lloyd Garrison's publication of The Liberator. An intensive 40-hour seminar on the 1776-1831 period precedes scholar-led travel to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Year 2 study explores the Civil War and Reconstruction, westward expansion, immigration, and reform movements, in addition to impacts on Europeans and American Indians. Similar 40-hour seminars examine the role of expanding industry and technology on social change. Throughout the project, participants meet quarterly to share best practices, discuss progress, and interact with scholars.

The three school districts served by this project have a 67 percent student poverty rate and a large number of Latino, Hmong, and other Indochinese students, including many who are English language learners. The project will provide 11 days of training for 50 teachers per year, with half of each day devoted to learning American history, and the other half devoted to pedagogical training and using historical resources for planning lessons. In the first year, teacher "Fellows" will study the rift between the British Empire and its North American colonies by reading the work of philosophers and political leaders and studying the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. Year 2 Fellows will contrast the agrarian South with the developing market economy of the northern states during the 19th century. Topics will include slavery, major political leaders of the time, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the formation of the urban working class, immigration, and the United States' entrance onto the world stage. In the final year of the project, Fellows will contrast American societies with totalitarian regimes that the U.S. opposed in the 20th century. Fellows will study Progressivism, World War I, Wilsonian international liberalism, Russian and German socialism, Japanese imperialism, Italian facism, the Cold War, and the War on Terror.

This project will bring selected teachers together to participate in a variety of activities centered upon three specific themes in American history. In the first year, teachers will read Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom and examine the various ways in which freedom has been defined over the course of American history. This will equip them to help students understand, how religious freedom meant something different to John Winthrop and the New England Puritans than it did to Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers, and how the "Four Freedoms" of the New Deal generation evolved to the conservative freedom of the Reagan Revolution. The second year's theme, "Democratic Frameworks," will address the dynamic nature of democracy in America through examination of the republican frameworks of the American Revolution, the forging of the Constitution, Jacksonian democracy and its limits, the constitutional impact of the Civil War, the protracted struggle for women's rights, the role of government in American economic life, the Civil Rights movement, and ensuing issues regarding minority rights and majority rule. In the third year, "Americans and Their Dreams" will introduce specific documents and speeches considered integral in shaping America, including William Bradford's "City on a Hill," major presidential addresses, César Chávez's "Sí Se Puede," and other important works.

This professional development project in American history serves five counties suffering from high chronic unemployment because of decline in the timber and fishing industries. There are no four-year colleges in the area, and most teachers have little to no training in American history and are geographically isolated. Each year, the project will provide a different cohort of 30 teachers with 140 hours of graduate-level courses, extensive readings and lesson plan development, and conduct, in Years 1 and 2, a seven-to-ten-day study trip to the Columbia River basin, and in Year 3, a two-week liberty and civil rights multi-state summer study trip. Content will include, among other topics: cooperation and conflict between Indian nations and settlers, colonial struggles, the American Revolution, Constitutional Convention, Federalist/anti-Federalists, western explorations, the Civil War and Reconstruction, imperialism, immigration, industrialism, the Great Depression, World War II, civil rights, and the Cold War.

No Citizen Left Behind is designed to improve the teaching of 20th century American history to students largely under-served in conventional educational programs-students in juvenile hall, court, community schools, and continuation schools throughout the county. Because these students face major challenges of low literacy, limited personal/social support, learning disabilities, and limited English proficiency, teachers will learn to adapt curricular materials to encourage achievement. The project engages 25 teachers each year in seven-day symposia in Pasadena and seven days of field study in Chicago and Birmingham with a special focus on the rule of law, social justice, citizen rights and responsibilities, and the role of the ordinary citizen in shaping American society. Immigration content compares late 19th and early 20th century with post-1965 immigration. Court cases will reflect changing definitions of citizenship.

Diplomacy and foreign relations play crucial roles in American history, but few history teachers have any academic background in American diplomatic affairs. This project provides a cohort of 35 teachers with 90 hours of graduate-level U.S. history instruction, and up to 30 pre-service teachers with other professional development activities, for a total of 300 instruction hours. Focusing on the relationships between unfolding events in the U.S. and America's foreign relations, teachers will study economic threads that fueled expansion, such as the Grant-Sumner debate over the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo and the Alaska Scandal; moves to becoming a world power reflected in the Spanish American war through the Open Door policy; and compare the founding of the League of Nations with the founding of the United Nations. Other content deals with Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Latin America, Cold War diplomacy toward the USSR; the role of oil; environmental policy; the Cold War in Korea, Vietnam, and China; American foreign policy in the Middle East.