April 12, 2004

UA History Department/College of Education Team Wins Major Federal Grant for Teaching of U.S. History

Left to right: Becky Brown, Dr. Greg Dorr, Elliott Harris

Dr. Greg Dorr (center), assistant professor of history and TAHP project director, and two local history teachers Becky Brown of Brookwood High School (L), and Elliott Harris of Northridge High School, stand in front of UA's Foster Auditorium, site of one of the Civil Rights Movement's watershed moments, which will be included in the program's institute this summer. (photo: Rickey Yanaura)

Left to right: Jolene Stanford, Mitzi Lee, Dr. Liza Wilson, Cathy Collins, Elliott Harris, Becky Brown, Dr. Greg Dorr

TAHP Advisory Council Members (L-R): Jolene Stanford, Alabama Consortium for Educational Renewal (ACER); Mitzi Lee, Woodland Forrest Elementary School; Dr. Liza Wilson, UA professor of secondary curriculum, teaching and learning; Cathy Collins, Collins-Riverside Middle School; Elliott Harris, Northridge High School; Becky Brown, Brookwood High School; Dr. Greg Dorr, assistant professor of history. Not pictured: Susan Gates Austin, Westervelt- Warner Museum: The Art of Young America; Marjorie (ZuZu) Freyer, TAHP coordinator; Joan Barth, UA Institute for Social Science Research; Laurie Fowler, Tuscaloosa County Schools; Randy Mecredy, UA Museum of Natural History; and Missy Stephens, Tuscaloosa City Schools.

by Suzanne Dowling

The University of Alabama department of history and College of Education, in partnership with the Alabama Consortium for Educational Renewal (ACER) and the Tuscaloosa City and County School systems, recently won a grant totaling more than $800,000 from the U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History Program (TAHP). TAHP is a grant supported research program which is investigating ways to improve teachers' and students' knowledge about American history.

Additional project partners include the Alabama Museum of Natural History, Gorgas House, and the Westervelt Warner Museum of Young America.

"Very little has been offered in the past for staff development in this area," said Marjorie "ZuZu" Freyer, TAHP grant coordinator. "How and what we teach in U.S. history can have a profound effect on the way our students decide to live their lives, serve their country, and act as citizens. We have the potential to teach some 2,000 students over a period of three years in the Tuscaloosa City and County Schools," said Freyer, who will be coordinating TAHP activities and providing administrative oversight and fiscal management.

The UA project, entitled "Southern History as American History: From Civil War to Civil Rights and Beyond," will serve local teachers of American history in grades 5, 6, 10, and 11. Teachers from the Tuscaloosa City and County School systems will be randomly selected within each grade and school.

"Our civil rights have a much longer history than the familiar images of the struggle of the 1950s and 1960s to achieve equality often suggest," said Dr. Greg Dorr, assistant professor of history and TAHP project director.

"A more complete, accurate understanding of civil rights in American history begins at least in the Colonial era and continues to modern times encompassing race, gender, age, religion, and occupation. An understanding of the Southern past provides insights into larger currents in American history, and vice versa," Dorr said.

The interdisciplinary approach in this project allows for UA's history faculty and education faculty to work simultaneously to improve both the content of American history classes and the teaching of the subject matter.

"A principal aim of the program is to foster two-way interactions between teachers and academic historians, because there is much that we can learn from each other about how best to convey historical knowledge to students of varying abilities, backgrounds, and interests," said Dorr. "The program should also allow us, at least on a small scale, to promote a more seamless transition from primary to secondary to undergraduate and graduate education in history," he added.

Dr. Liza Wilson, professor of secondary curriculum, teaching and learning, is also working on the project. "My role is similar to Dr. Dorr's except that I will be working on the classroom instruction side, although we will both be addressing U.S. history content and innovative teaching practices in our work with the teachers and students," Wilson said. "We hope that intensive study of U.S. history as well as the demonstration of innovative teaching practices by local teachers will assist in this effort."

Project activities include a two-week summer history institute and in-service workshops whose context is American history from the Civil War to Civil Rights, spotlighting Alabama and the southern United States.

"Over the next three years, we will have three summer institutes, a series of workshops, support from, collaboration, and networking with other U.S. history teachers, UA history and education faculty and graduate assistants. Teachers who participate will be part of a national project whose goals are to research ways to increase teachers' knowledge of history content and increase their use of primary materials, local history resources, and technology in history instruction," said Freyer.

In addition to course credit and a cash stipend, participants will receive a "history kit" of materials such as atlases, books, CDs, videos, and lesson plans; technology training, and access to special field trips and "museum trunks" provided by the project's museum partners.

Becky Brown, a history teacher at Brookwood High School and a member of the TAHP Advisory Board, hopes to be one of the teachers selected. "This is a great opportunity to concentrate on the content area in which I teach, and interact with the history department at UA," said Brown.

She said she also likes the aspect of having graduate students assist with her class. "In public education we are so bogged down with paperwork and the management side of education that we are often limited in the amount of time that we have to do research, find primary documents to use in class, and having the graduate assistants to help us in these endeavors is invaluable," Brown said.

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