Collaboration is Key

John Dichtl

College classrooms are not the first or last venue for teaching about history. They are one stop on a long road. Students who arrive on the college campus already instructed by skilled teachers--who themselves regularly talk with historians and keep up on recent scholarship--are much more likely to find their professors engaging. History education is a holistic system in which each of the parts--precollegiate teachers, public historians, college and university historians--reinforces the others. Two conferences this summer explored the new and well-funded attention that some joint teacher-historian projects have been receiving.

On 26-28 June OAH cosponsored the Innovations in Collaboration Conference in Alexandria, Virginia, that brought together 320 participants from high schools, colleges and universities, middle schools, state departments of education, museums, government, and state humanities councils. The AHA and the National Council for the Social Studies were the other primary cosponsors of this moment to discuss models for enhancing K-16 history teaching and to measure progress in the Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) program. TAH projects were showcased, along with other model programs created by teachers and historians years in advance of the recent $150 million TAH initiative.

Following the plenary by past OAH and AHA president Eric Foner and the first slate of sessions, the conference hallways were abuzz with voices eager to share ideas and experiences about how historians and teachers are finding common ground. Some wanted logistical specifics on building joint teacher-historian projects; others wanted to hear more about historical content and primary sources. "It's interesting what Rutgers and local high schools are doing with conflict resolution in the classroom, but I want to know how they set up a program like that in the first place," said one curriculum specialist to me over lunch. Conference participants were serious about borrowing ideas and using the models back home.

Project leaders from old and new programs emerged, like isolated missionaries brought together for the first time to re-energize each other, share strategies, and inspire new converts. As one university professor whispered to me, "100 percent of the Americanists in my department are now involved in our program with local high school teachers. I'm seeing more and more of the names of my friends from graduate school appear in connection to efforts around the country that bring teachers and college faculty together." Then she added, "In fact, there is a kind of cachet now that goes with being able to say, 'I work with high school teachers and understand the history standards situation in my state.'" Are college faculty finally realizing they can have an effect on the quality of their future students by working with local teachers? My university informer noted, "I always tell historians, that if you don't get involved, you don't have license to complain."

On 10 July OAH participated in the second of the White House's "Innovations in Education" conferences, this time presented by the Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement. Secretary of Education Rod Paige opened the afternoon by emphasizing the complexities and multiple perspectives of the past and how stories, like that of the Amistad, can grip students. Paige urged his listeners to hold themselves, their students, and the American public to high standards, declaring, "Everyone should be competent in our own history . . . and not as a subset of a lot of social sciences."

There was strong unanimity among the three panelists, Cynthia Mostoller, a middle-school history teacher from Washington, D.C., Ruben Zepeda, the director of the Los Angeles American History Institute in the L.A. Unified School District, and Michael Serber, a veteran history teacher from New York and the education coordinator for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Each echoed the same core themes. College faculty should make themselves knowledgeable about what teachers must teach and what their state history standards are. Partnerships between historians and teachers should be mutually respectful and voluntary. The panel moderator noted that David McCullough once said the best step that government could take to improve history education would be to link prominent historians with young teachers, to help "give them the history bug." Students need to hear about American history in all twelve grades, not just at one or two levels. If they are going to catch the history bug, it must be a recurring subject in primary and secondary school, reinforced outside the classroom and, hopefully, taken to new heights in the college classroom.

Both conferences called on all history educators to recognize their self interest in working in unison. Together, we can invigorate history education with good stories, challenging scholarship, and new approaches. Collaboratively, historians and teachers can encourage students--and the general public--to become critical and avid consumers of history.

John Dichtl is deputy director of OAH.