History Department partners with Alameda County for professional development of teachers

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A second U.S. Department of Education grant will benefit eighth and 11th grade students.

  • September 7, 2010

For a second time, the ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, East Bay History Department is partnering with the Alameda County Office of Education on a $1 million Teaching American History Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant is one of 14 received by California counties this year

The History Department will cooperate with ACOE and the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University on "Words That Made America," a professional development program for eighth and 11th grade U.S. history teachers focusing on interpretation and pedagogical use of original historical documents. Teachers throughout the county will be eligible for the 30 core positions, but priority will be given to candidates from the three partnering districts – Hayward, San Leandro and San Lorenzo.

CSUEB history faculty will continue assisting teacher-teams in acquiring the history content and skills they need to help students meet the California state standards and in exploring major themes in American history through the key concepts of freedom, equality and democracy in seminars, lecture series and summer institutes.

"The History Department faculty gained substantial knowledge of the challenges facing K-12 history teachers in the previous grant, which included cooperation on two major summer tours, one of the Civil Rights South and the other of key sites in the history of abolition and feminism,” said Dee Andrews, history professor and content coordinator for “Words that Made America.”

“We expect that our participation in the new grant will be equally rewarding and exciting,” Andrews said.

"The interaction between the Department of History and the regional teachers is just one example of the way the University enriches the East Bay region," said Kathleen Rountree, interim dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. "This valuable collaboration between professors and public school teachers benefits everyone, especially the students."

Information about the CSUEB History Department is available online at the CLASS Web site.