The Teaching American History grant program is administered by the United States Department of Education, funded under Title II-C, Subpart 4 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The program was initiated in 2001 out of an impetus to "support programs that raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American History."
The stated goal of this federal program is "to demonstrate how school districts and institutions with expertise in American history can collaborate over a three-year period to ensure that teachers develop the knowledge and skills necessary to teach traditional American history in an exciting and challenging way."
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This Teaching American History project represents a partnership between Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, Portland's largest school district and a consortium of districts in Washington County, Oregon, including the Beaverton, Hillsboro and Forest Grove districts. This project directly addresses challenges in the teaching and learning of U.S. history in a state in which history falls under the umbrella of social studies by focusing intensely on the core values of historical scholarship and innovative tools of historical inquiry.
Project Goals:
The goal of the project is to provide rigorous history content and historical inquiry tools to social studies/history teachers thereby increasing knowledge, understanding and appreciation of traditional American history. Components of the project include (1) in-depth historical content training; (2) pedagogy grounded in historical thinking; (3) analysis of primary source documents; (4) incorporation of interactive historical inquiry tools including drama, geography and internet tools (including Google Earth); and (5) development of mentoring and leadership-building within and between districts. The project format involved Winter and Spring graduate-level history courses delivered through PSU’s History Department and a summer institute.
Project Objectives:
During three consecutive Teaching American History USDOE grants (beginning in 2002), teacher participants, working directly with a team of historians, a dramaturge, geographers, and a curriculum specialist, created innovative curricular materials that covered 24 national historical topics.
In teams, teachers created practical classroom instruments that provide background material, activities, and resources for a specific subject area. The materials highlight historical inquiry tools and are designed to assist teachers in integrating the "historical imagination" into their lessons. Examples of materials include (1) background narratives that provide foundational information and highlight a historical perspective; (2) key documents (primary and secondary), maps, graphs/charts, and other historical artifacts; (3) classroom activities including historical dramatic scripts, DBQ exercises, and historical geography exercises; Google Earth and GIS projects and (4) annotated bibliographies.
The use of innovative historical inquiry tools and pertinent primary source material - including maps, data, documents, images, and other artifacts - are designed to bring American history to life for students, to generate critical thinking, and enhance students’ knowledge, understanding and interpretation of major themes, events, and decisions in U.S. history.
Curriculum units can be downloaded from the <Curricula> page.
The Google Earth projects can be downloaded from the <Historical Geography> page.
Summaries, linked resources and other historical data gathered for the topics can be accessed through the <History Topic> page (each topic can also be accessed on the side menu bar).
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