Millersville University will serve as the lead educational institution for a partnership that recently received a $980,000 Teach American History (TAH) grant from the United States Department of Education. The partnership’s goal is to improve the instructional effectiveness of Pennsylvania teachers of American history.

Under the title of Project TEACH (Teaching Educators America’s Critical History), the partnership plans to meet its goal by developing programs for Commonwealth teachers that increase their content knowledge, their access to historical sources and materials, and their teaching skills. For much of the project, master teachers will work directly with historians to develop background essays and lessons on key topics relating to American history. Involved   will be 63 master teachers, 1,700 others who will participate in a sequence of four professional development workshops, institutes and courses, and about 2,000 who will access materials via the Web.  

For its work with the partnership, Millersville will provide credit for, and sponsor, content-driven workshops and graduate-level summer institutes for social studies teachers over a two-year period beginning in 2005.  The workshops and institutes will be tied to the innovative web resource, ExplorePahistory.com. Dr. Dennis B. Downey, MU professor of history, will be the lead teacher and coordinator for Millersville’s programs.  

–The workshops–offered in a variety of delivery formats–will attempt to develop in its attendees a deeper understanding of the patterns and structures of American national development, emphasizing the interrelationship of people, institutions and environments; material will cover the social, cultural and political patterns that explain the emergence of the U.S. as a modern nation state.  Scholars and faculty will work closely to direct the participating teachers toward a richer and more complete understanding of the principal forces that impacted the creation of the U.S., from earliest times to the present.

–The summer institutes, spanning four or five days each, will provide the registrants with an intensive graduate-level experience by scheduling nationally known speakers and scholars in the field of American history.  In addition, the sessions will present historical content in a more integrated thematic fashion, and involve small group work with peers in order to apply the strategies and concepts learned to actual classroom structure. 

Other partners include WITF and Pennsylvania Public Television, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the Ridgway School District.