Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Russell Olwell

You planned. You collaborated with local schools. You racked up mileage collecting signatures and letters of support. You wrote the narrative and computed the budget. Coffee and cookies were consumed, all in the name of the U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History Grant (TAH) program application. Despite these efforts, your grant was rejected.

Do not despair. There is life after rejection. As a two-time TAH rejectee, I can say that there are still many valuable activities to help improve K-12 education that history departments can do without $500,000 in federal money. This does not mean I wish I had been rejected, but I am struck by how much of the energy generated by writing a proposal for the program can be harnessed to create good--but lean--programs to improve K-12 teaching.

At Eastern Michigan University (EMU), we have followed up on the relationships that were built while planning and writing our grant and were able to implement some of the proposed programs. We learned these lessons in the process of scaling down and focusing our ideas:

1. Do as many of the proposed programs as you can afford.

The TAH program provides compensation for teachers, speakers, and administrators to participate in professional development activities. However, there are many workshops, conferences, and courses that can be developed with existing resources. Our grant-writing collaboration with our state's Council for History Education will lead to a statewide, three-day workshop this summer in Lansing on improving history education. It will be shorter than the two weeks proposed in our grant application, but remains an important component that our partners still want to do.

2. Use the opportunity to reconnect with local schools.

When grants pan out, often partnerships fall apart. This need not be the case. We met with several of our partners after the grant was turned down to debrief and listen to what they wanted to do next. Being responsive in this way helps us better plan, and gives our department a stronger sense of what school districts really need to improve history education.

3. Look at other sources of funding.

While our federal grant efforts were unsuccessful, we partnered with our local district, Ypsilanti Public school, to win a Michigan Department of Education "No Child Left Behind" teacher improvement grant. This grant will fund a program to help elementary teachers use trade books in social studies. This will be a great opportunity to work with local teachers and administrators on a worthwhile project.

4. Learn about the real struggles that teachers face, particularly new teachers.

Our grant application focused on helping new teachers of history. This year, we have taken time to work with new teachers, particularly recent graduates of our programs, to better learn about their struggles, including classroom management, standardized testing, and coping with low starting salaries. Learning about these issues helped us begin revising our history graduate program to make it more useful to teachers.

5. Get involved in state organizations to improve history education.

Through the grant writing process, we built a strong relationship with our state Council for History Education. Our department pays for students in our program to attend the annual conference, and several students have taken leadership positions in helping plan the conference.

6. Get your colleagues involved in the improvement of history education.

Historians certainly can gripe about the quality of students, but it is worth the time and energy to get them to see that if universities do not produce skilled teachers and provide support and professional development, the cycle of historical ignorance will never end.

7. Bring local teachers and administrators into your classes to review your program.

In this age of "top down" education reform, K-12 educators are never asked their opinions. If you bring in local educators to review your history education program and outreach efforts, you are not wasting their time. People in the field want to mentor novice teachers, speak to classes about district initiatives, and be able to share their experiences. We host a semiannual lunch to get feedback about our methods classes and teacher preparation, which has generated excellent ideas for improvement of our methods class.

8. Appreciate the people you have working with you.

The people involved in your project actually care about history teaching and about students' success. Keep them close and involved, and continue working to improve K-12 teaching.

The list above is not comprehensive, but represents our experiences at EMU. It does not mean to imply that you should not apply for a grant or should prepare in advance for failure. It does mean that while waiting for updates on the U.S. Department of Education website for new grant applications, there is much work waiting to be done on improving instruction and learning in the schools that surround our colleges and universities.

Russell Olwell is an assistant professor of history at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.