The American Democracy in Word and Deed (ADWD) project is based upon a formal partnership between the Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD), the University of California, Berkeley History Department (UCBHD), the University of California, Berkeley History-Social Science Project (UCBHSSP), and the Oakland Museum of California (OMC). This grant builds upon the lessons learned from Mt. Diablo’s 2006 Teaching American History (TAH) grant as well as five other TAH grants awarded in partnership with UCBHSSP. Representatives of the MDUSD, the UCBHD, and the UCBH-SSP will oversee the planning, implementation, and fiscal management of the ADWD project.
The Mt. Diablo Unified School District is one of the twenty largest districts in California. It is a suburban district east of San Francisco and Oakland with over 35,000 students. The district has grown increasingly more diverse (Hispanic 30.9%, Asian 7.6%, African American 5.6%) and the number of English learners approaches 20% having grown 83% over the last ten years according to California Department of Education 2008 Dataquest.
The five-year project outlined in this proposal will increase teachers’ knowledge of traditional American history and improve their ability to translate this knowledge into classroom instruction that advances student understanding and knowledge of American history. The impact of this professional development program will be measured by Dr. Rebeca Diaz of WestED, a nonprofit educational research and development agency, in order to address the existing educational inequities in American history learning in MDUSD. An achievement gap exists between proficient and non-proficient English learners, who are often economically disadvantaged, and the district’s English- speaking population.
Guided by the California History-Social Science Content Standards and the professional development benchmarks designed by the American History Association (AHA), the partnership puts into practice a fundamental component of professional development for history teachers: “Professional development for teaching history must include interrelated and integrated parts: content, pedagogy that includes student learning, and habits of mind for thinking historically.” Thus, ADWD is a five-year professional development program designed to increase teacher appreciation of traditional American history while achieving the following goals:
- Measurable improvement in teacher knowledge and understanding of traditional American history.
- Measurable improvement of teacher knowledge and understanding of how to use historical inquiry and historical thinking to deepen student knowledge and understanding of traditional American history as a separate subject within the core curriculum.
- Measurable improvement in teacher knowledge of how to integrate reading, writing, and history into lessons designed to improve students’ academic and historical literacy skills.
- Measurable improvement in participating teachers’ ability to develop lessons that translate increased content and pedagogical knowledge into effective classroom history instruction.
The work of this project will also be informed and deepened by what was learned and achieved during the implementation of Teaching American History for All (TAH for All), a Teaching American History grant awarded to MDUSD in 2006. Expressly, this proposal builds upon a committed cadre of American history teachers who have begun to increase their content understanding and their students’ achievement in American history as seen in Appendix B. Because less than one third of MDUSD eighth and eleventh grade teachers and less than 10 % of fifth grade teachers participated in this grant, many more teachers are yet to be served.
ADWD will provide two cohorts of 50 fourth, fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade teachers with high quality, traditional American history content. The project staff will target the MDUSD elementary, middle, and high schools with the largest percentages of underperforming students[1]. Over the five-year project period these hundred teachers will reach almost 18,000 students. Professional development models employed by the partnership are summer institutes, colloquia (for content knowledge), and lesson study (for strategies, coaching, and lesson development). |
