Teacher Historians

"This program has reinvigorated my desire to teach U.S. History." -2010 teacher historian

2012-2013 Teacher Historians (PDF) 

Teacher Historian Benefits and Expectations  

In partnership with Rice University, Fort Bend ISD and Spring Branch ISD will develop, implement and strengthen programs to teach traditional American history as a separate academic subject within elementary and secondary curricula. Thirty teacher historians will be selected to participate and will commit to a year-long program. Three cohorts of teachers, for a total of 90 participants, will benefit from our program. The consortium aims to connect secondary educators to traditional American history scholarship and provide intense seminar learning opportunities to delve more deeply into specific materials content.

Through graduate seminar-style classroom learning coupled with experiential field study opportunities, the districts strive to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of traditional American history among our social studies staff and by extension improve instruction and raise student achievement. Content-intensive seminars will provide teachers an opportunity for scholarly discussion with experts so they may become fluent enough to serve as program ambassadors presenting content and materials at professional conferences and district in-services.

Additionally, participants will create thought-provoking lesson plans focusing on traditional American history, which will be uploaded to a digital library accessible to history teachers nationwide, ensuring a lasting impact for products developed through the professional development endeavor. The curriculum writing component will encourage our teacher historians to think of themselves as historians as they delve into historical archives and conduct their own historical research. Our digital materials library will serve as a national model of excellence, a place where educators can go for academically rigorous, thoughtful, stimulating, and reliable resources and lessons on traditional American history.

Project Objectives  

Through both face-to-face and online formats, our project will achieve the following objectives:

• Objective 1: To increase and deepen the traditional American history content knowledge of our teacher historians and to increase their use of high quality instructional materials and practices.
• Objective 2: To increase the number of teachers receiving strong and focused professional development in traditional American history.
• Objective 3: To improve the availability of high quality traditional American history curriculum resources for history teachers in our districts and nationwide. We will create a digital library of thought-provoking lesson plans for teaching American history, which will be accessible to history teachers nationwide, ensuring a lasting impact for products developed through the professional development endeavor.
• Objective 4: To improve American history academic achievement in students of teacher cohort historians.