History WORKS: Working On Rigorous Knowledge for Students, is a three-year professional development program for middle and high school teachers of American history in Columbus Public Schools. The project is funded by a federal Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
The History WORKS project has three main components: monthly seminars, summer workshops, and a web-based resource center. The seminars and summer sessions focus on intensive content, introducing teachers to the latest scholarship on a variety of topics. Yearly sessions of History Alive! training help the teachers connect this content knowledge to their classroom experience and support innovative teaching.
All History WORKS activities relate to one of six core themes: Faces and Places: American History through Ohio Biography, Turning Points: The Constitution and American Democratic Institutions, The United States in the World: American Foreign Relations, Migration and Immigration: The Peopling of America, Common and Uncommon Cents: American Economic History, and Differing Perspectives: Social Movements and Social Change.
The seminars are led by faculty members from the Ohio State University Department of History, which has earned a national reputation for scholarly and teaching excellence, and supplemented by other experts who are specialists in their fields.
The participants in History WORKS have access to the wealth of primary materials available at the Ohio Historical Society for use in the seminars and their classrooms. The full-time Project Archivist identifies collections related to the six core themes and makes the materials, including documents, photographs, maps, diaries, posters, and archeological artifacts, available to the teachers. Under the guidance of the Project Archivist, the teachers then use these resources to connect local events to national themes, invigorate the classroom experience, and encourage the development of their students' critical thinking skills. The materials are available not only during the seminars, but in one-on-one sessions or in small groups with the Project Archivist. In addition, most of the OHS materials used in the History WORKS project will be digitized and made available on this website.
History WORKS reinforces new state standards in Ohio and helps to create new unit plans and curriculum guides for use by all Columbus teachers. Teachers can also share the curricular materials they create with their colleagues in the program on the website.
Approximately 30 to 35 teachers participate in History WORKS each year. After three years, we will be able to reach all of the district's middle and high school American history teachers. In addition, the website and the collaborative ties the project fosters will benefit teachers and students for years to come.
A full-time Project Director and a full-time Project Archivist coordinate the History WORKS program. At the end of the first summer session, we will select six Teaching Fellows to assist the Project Director and Project Archivist for the remainder of the program. The Teaching Fellows will deepen their content knowledge by becoming experts on one of the six core themes under the direction of an OSU faculty member. Partner Liaisons, representatives from each partner organization, provide day-to-day oversight, and broad strategy is set by an Advisory Board. |
