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Kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers in Humboldt County, California struggle with the same problems as do educators everywhere. There are few opportunities to collaborate with other teachers, for instance, or to talk with colleagues at colleges and universities. Many times, professional development options are limited and few programs exist to improve content knowledge. Thanks to two federal Teaching American History Grants, however, history educators are addressing these issues and learning valuable new lessons.
Through the Humboldt County Teaching American History Program (HCTAHP) and the Northern California Teaching American History Program (NCTAHP) nearly eighty local K-12 educators are able to participate in three-year graduate-level programs in American history. The goal of both programs is to increase teacher content knowledge to the level required by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and foster ongoing collegiality among teachers. In pursuing these goals, we designed the courses to prepare participants to teach California’s Social Studies Standards in fifth, eighth, eleventh, and twelfth grade by using a variety of pedagogical techniques. Participants are taught, for instance, how to incorporate primary source documents and clips from documentaries and feature films into classroom instruction. They are also encouraged to develop long-term, collaborative relationships with fellow teachers and with course instructors.
Setting up the HCTAHP and NCTAHP programs also taught us some very important lessons about collegiality, motivation, and the desire among teachers for professional development opportunities:
- Collegiality takes time to build.
Ongoing instruction is key to the success of the HCTAHP and the NCTAHP. Teachers meet five Friday nights and five Saturdays per semester. These meetings provide the opportunity for participants to get to know each other and their instructors and to see that they are not alone. In the words of one participant, “I never dreamed of calling other teachers in other schools and asking for help. Now I share ideas with teachers [in other schools] all the time.” Not only are teachers talking to fellow grade level instructors, but they are also calling and emailing the university history professors for feedback and ideas.
- Regardless of teachers’ grade level, common assignments build community.
In the HCTAHP and NCTAHP all participants, regardless of the grade level they teach, read the same historical texts and do the same assignments. All participants are required to read, evaluate and discuss texts such as Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), and David McCullough’s Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). While it might seem that the participating high school teachers (who were predominantly history or social science majors in college) would benefit most from studying these works, in our opinion, the elementary teachers have the advantage. The reason, we believe, is that so much of what is being studied is new to the elementary teachers. A survey of forty potential fourth- through twelfth-grade participants in the NCTAHP showed that on average they had taken less than two American history courses while in college.
- Teachers are hungry for high-level, ongoing professional development.
It took less than six weeks in September and October 2002 to publicize the awarding of the first TAH grant and to recruit forty participants. When teachers were asked why they agreed to commit to a three-year Master’s program, three answers predominated: they craved high level discourse with their peers; they wanted Master’s degrees, not only for higher pay, but for their own professional satisfaction; and they felt a Master’s program ensured quality instruction.
- High level professional development will lead to compliance with No Child Left Behind.
As mentioned earlier, the 2001 No Child Left Behind calls for “all students [to be] taught by highly qualified teachers by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.” While it has been left to the individual states to determine what “highly qualified” means, in California, it is being interpreted as possessing a bachelor’s or advanced degree in a content area, not just a bachelor’s in a general subject or waiver major such as Liberal Studies or Social Sciences. For some practicing teachers at the beginning of their careers (especially elementary teachers and social studies teachers whose university major was not history) this proposed requirement could prove difficult to meet, but not for participants in the HCTAHP and NCTAHP. Regardless of whether the participating teachers are pursuing a Master’s or just taking classes, the programs’ eighteen units of content and additional six units of pedagogy will satisfy the new federal requirements for teachers who are “highly qualified.”
Are the lessons we have learned and the model of high level ongoing professional development relevant beyond the bucolic setting of northwestern California? We believe they are. Anywhere teachers feel professionally isolated or unprepared there is a need for some kind of program to help them. The model we have piloted, one that builds collegiality and content knowledge, is helping teachers be better at what they d--that has to be the goal of all professional development.
Jack Bareilles teaches U.S. and European history at McKinleyville High School in Humboldt County, California. For the past two years he has also directed and participated in two U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History Grant programs. Prior to that he was an administrator and teacher at Arcata High school and an elementary school teacher in Oakland, California.
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