U-46 Roadmap of American History Project 2008-2011
The U-46 Roadmap of American History Project is a three year professional development program funded by The U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History grant program. The project is designed to improve student achievement by enhancing teachers' knowledge of traditional American History through intensive, ongoing professional development in both content and research-based teaching strategies.
The project continues through 2011, and features partnerships with four organizations: The Illinois State Historical Library at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Elgin Area Historical Society and Old Main Museum, Northern Illinois University, and the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. The project will also include seminars by professors from Northwestern University, The University of Wisconsin, and DePaul University.
Each year, the partnership involves teachers from all five high schools in the district in a series of academic year seminars and summer institutes designed to support the fourteen content titles of the new teacher-created “Curriculum Roadmap” for U.S. History. The project focuses on instruction that engages students, especially those representing diverse backgrounds. Grant funds provide these individualized seminars from experts who specialize in each historical era of the new curriculum, significant resources for teachers to use when designing lessons, and professional development opportunities for teacher participants in the grant.
In addition to providing professional development opportunities for the teacher participants, the project also seeks to harness their expertise in a constant process of reflection and feedback with regard to the U-46 Curriculum Roadmap. This district-wide curricular framework was created by teachers, and this project seeks to provide continued support for its success by ensuring it remains a living document that supports the teaching of American History in U-46 classrooms.
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The American History Partnership 2004-2008
The current project builds upon a foundation of professional development and three successful partnerships established by a previous project also funded by the Teaching American History grant program. The project, entitled The American History Partnership, engaged dozens of U.S. History teachers from the elementary, middle, and high school levels in a series of seminars throughout each school year and at annual summer institutes.
This successful project established our current relationships with The Illinois State Historical Library at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Elgin Area Historical Society and Old Main Museum, and the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago (CRFC). One of the goals successfully achieved by the partnership was to revise the U-46 social studies scope and sequence to better fit the Illinois State Standards for Social Studies. This process played a major role in facilitating the successful “Curriculum Roadmap” teacher collaboration process that eventually produced the curricular framework around which the current project is built.
In addition to this invaluable articulation, the American History Partnership developed a three-unit curriculum package using the Elgin Watch Factory as a case study to localize and bring alive the industrial revolution. The lessons were developed by the CRFC in conjunction with the Elgin Area Historical Society and Museum (EAHSM) and the history scholars serving the project. EAHSM has an extensive collection of documents and artifacts on the Watch Factory, which played an important role in the early history of the community. These units are directly related to the new U-46 Curriculum Roadmap, providing curricular touchstones that integrate important historical content with local history and will be experienced as a legacy of the project’s impact in classrooms across the district for years to come.
Much is owed to Dr. Steven Klein from U-46 and Kathy Bell from CRFC who worked in tandem to design and execute the 2004-2008 project. Without the strong foundation they established with The American History Partnership, the current project would not be possible.
