Teachers and Students as Historical Thinkers: Second Annual TAH Symposium

Kelly Woestman

Over 135 people participated in the second annual TAH Symposium held March 28-29, 2007 in order to examine more closely the impact of over $600 million in federal grants on history education across the nation. Cosponsored by H-TAH, the H-Net discussion network for Teaching American History grants, and the Organization of American Historians, this gathering took a closer look at how these grants are affecting tenure and promotion in college history departments and discussed effective grant evaluation strategies as well as examined effective and ineffective collaboration approaches among grant partners. In addition to three panel-led discussions, H-TAH list members submitted topics for discussion during the Thursday morning roundtable discussions that ranged from conducting historical field trips to effective teacher recruitment.

During the symposium’s introductory session, H-Net Executive Director Peter Knupfer asked participants how the TAH program is changing not only in response to the outside evaluation report from an independent research and design firm, SRI International, but also the evaluations produced by individual grant programs. Another important point considered was whether or not historians are becoming more involved in the schools and whether TAH grants are developing enduring partnerships or merely short-term collaborations that will end when grant funding ceases. Are historians changing the ways they are teaching in response to their involvement in TAH programs? Knupfer posed these and other questions that laid the foundation for the audience centered discussions that followed.

Discussing the impact of TAH grant participation on tenure, promotion, and departmental mission statements, department chairs and recently tenured and promoted historians shared their insights before audience members discussed issues important to the larger profession. Kris Lindenmeyer, chair of the history department at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and H-Net president, along with fellow chairs Timothy D. Hall of Central Michigan University and Edward R. Crowther of Adams State University, explained how their departments had attempted to maximize their involvement in TAH grants and had incorporated their work in these projects into the broader context of their departments, including establishing graduate degrees specifically designed for teachers. Finding her work with TAH grants ‘intellectually stimulating,” Laura Westhoff of the University of Missouri-St. Louis documented her struggles to gain tenure often in spite of her TAH activities.

TAH coeditor Thomas Thurston chaired the discussion session focused on enhancing the collaboration among historians, teachers, and education experts. The panel included Tim Hoogland of the Minnesota State Historical Society, Dennis Lubeck of the Cooperating School Districts of St. Louis (MO), and Robert Vicario of the University of California-Irvine and the Santa Ana Unified School District. Hoogland emphasized the individual nature of TAH grants and pointed out that teachers are the “largest group of public historians in the nation.” Vicario emphasized the need for historians to come to the table to work with pre-K-12 teachers and Lubeck discussed how TAH grants have raised expectations for professional development offerings for teachers.

Researching and evaluating TAH grants was the subject of the third panel session chaired by H-TAH coeditor Rachel Ragland. Elizabeth Ashburn, formerly of the Battle Creek (MI) Area School Districts, Carol Lasser of Oberlin College, and Teresa Eckhout of the Lincoln Public Schools shared their experiences in the formative and summative evaluation of grants. Asburn asserted that if teachers think they are learning a great deal, they will come back to learn more, while Eckhout discussed some of the important details of conducting evaluations. Lesser shared her insights as a historian critically evaluating TAH grants.

Roundtable discussions centered on topics designated by H-TAH list members and focused on a wide variety of concerns among TAH grant personnel including teacher recruitment and graduate credit issues. Topics included: the treatment of teachers as fellow historians within the profession, understanding that teachers should play a role in determining historical content and pedagogical approaches that are applicable to their classroom settings, and effective dissemination of grant activities through online sources and existing professional development networks. Discussions also examined how integrating reading and literacy into TAH grants can widen elementary teachers’ impact, and other roundtables brainstormed effective workshop formats as well as book clubs and teacher learning teams. Discussion leaders posted summaries on the H-TAH listserv that can still be accessed via the network’s discussion logs.

Wednesday evening’s dine around organized by OAH staff also added another dimension to the networking that took place during this year’s TAH Symposium. Dinearound participants expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to network with colleagues in the informal settings provided by the area restaurants preselected by OAH staff. Due to the less formal setting, diners were able to ask specific questions about each other’s grants and interact on a more individual level.

Symposium keynote speaker Bob Bain assessed the role of Teaching American History grants in the broader context of history education asking, “What do we do with this opportunity?” Stating that “it takes a university to raise a history teacher,” he questioned the tie between teacher and student knowledge and implored the audience to “uncover and understand the logic” imbedded in teacher education to inform our practice of teaching students historical thinking skills. Bain also asserted that it would worth exploring the research that documents learning in other content fields—citing math as an example—to inform our own practice. Concluding the two-day event, Knupfer asked the audience to consider what questions we had not asked and what questions we should stop asking related to TAH grants. He noted, “TAH is about more than teachers—it’s about changing all levels of history education.” The third annual TAH Symposium will be held in conjunction with next year’s OAH meeting in New York City. Notes and transcripts from the TAH sessions have been posted to the H-TAH website <http://www.h-net.org/~tah>.

Kelly A. Woestman is the H-Net Vice-President for Teaching and Learning and coeditor of H-TAH <http://www.h-net.org/~tah>. She is a professor of history and history education director at Pittsburg (KS) State University and has been involved with implementing and evaluating twelve TAH grants throughout the country.