Changing Faces and Places: Exploration, Immigration, and Frontiers
Focusing on exploration, immigration, and frontiers will allow participants to analyze how communities, states, and nations change and grow over time. This theme will take CPS teachers through the exploration and colonization of North America, Ohio's frontier period, and the changing nature of the American frontier as it moved westward and then upward into space. They will investigate the revolution in transportation and its effects on westward expansion, settlement patterns in Ohio, the Old Northwest, and beyond, and historical geography as it relates to migration and environmental history. This theme also incorporates the "local frontier," especially relevant for the third grade curriculum, which focuses on local history, and will discuss how the frontiers of Columbus changed from its settlement in the early nineteenth century to its rapid expansion at the end of the twentieth century. History WORKS II: Building Foundations will explore the effects of diverse cultural groups such as Europeans, African Americans, Amish, Appalachians, Native Americans, and more recent immigrants such as Somalis, on the political and social history of Columbus and the nation.

Taking a Stand: The Power of Constitutional History
Focusing on Constitutional history will encourage participating teachers and their students to explore and appreciate America's rich democratic heritage. Cast broadly, this theme will encompass not only the political, social and economic context of the Founding Fathers' forging of the Constitution and the principles it outlined, but also other American democratic institutions, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and landmark Supreme Court decisions. CPS teachers will come to understand the Constitution as a "living document" and their workshops will discuss the process of amending the Constitution and how diverse groups of Americans have participated in this process. They will examine the Constitution and American legal history in the context of struggles for civil rights and will also explore the tension between a judiciary that leads the public and a judiciary that follows public opinion. From Marbury v. Madison to the Slaughter-House cases, Muller v. Oregon, Brown v. Board of Education, and Regents of California v. Bakke, participants will examine the history of judicial review and how the Supreme Court has interpreted and shaped the Constitution over the course of American history. The theme of Constitutional history will also allow participating teachers to explore the history of state government in Ohio and the Ohio constitution.