Science, Social Studies & Mathematics

AZ Republic Article - TAH Grant Award & Summer To Learn

  The Teaching American History (TAH) grants awarded to Mesa Public Schools in the fall of 2008 and a second in the fall of 2009 entitled, East Meets Southwest: Traditional American History for Mesa Public Schools Teachers, are a three- year professional development program for elementary and secondary teachers at Mesa Public Schools. Each grant award totals nearly $1 million to be used in the course of three years. It immerses district socials studies specialists and 24 grade 4-8 teachers from eight of the districts’ most disadvantaged and underachieving schools in a program focusing on traditional American History content and content-based teaching strategies. Teachers receive training in historical thinking grounded in the following elements:
1) using primary and secondary resources;
2) formulating questions through inquiry and determining their importance;
3) analyzing how historians use evidence and artifacts;
4) understanding how historians develop differing interpretations;
5) examining how causation relates to continuity/change;
6) discovering interrelationships among themes, regions, time periods; and
7) learning that any understanding of the past requires and understanding of the assumptions and values of the past.
The overall project goal is to improve teacher knowledge of traditional American history content so that they can offer effective instruction in their classrooms.

This project involves the following partnerships: 

  •  Arizona State University
  •  Arizona Historical Society
  •  Heard Museum
  •  National Council for History Education
                        (NCHE)
  •  Colonial Williamsburg Foundation  
  •  Center for Civic Education
  •  Gilder Lehrman
  •  National Archives
  •  Bill of Rights Institute

  Through these partnerships, teachers will learn content and content-based teaching strategies that link the East to the Southwest through American history, thus creating greater relevancy for students. Teachers will be immersed in professional development using a variety of teaching formats including, but not limited to, lectures, peer discussions, independent study, research, electronic field trips, travel, investigating local and non-local museums, and role play.

  Teachers are reinforcing and rounding out their experiences through participation in Professional Learning Communities. Participants will be meeting regularly to further the goal of vertical and horizontal articulation within MPS. Discussion in these meetings will focus on content, best practices, and integration into the classroom. The program will have far reaching effects, benefiting not only students and teachers actively involved in the program, but all those in Mesa Public Schools.