Application Narrative - Grant Experts



-----------------------

ABSTRACT

Western Heights School District, in partnership with three high-needs Local Education Agencies (LEA’s) and the University of Oklahoma, is requesting grant funding to implement and sustain a state-of-the-art professional development program that will improve the classroom effectiveness of 50 Oklahoma City history teachers – and that will raise the academic achievement levels of over 7,600 public school children in the state and national content standards of American History. The LEA’s that will participate in the grant serve some of the most impoverished, disenfranchised children within the country. Seventy one percent of our students live in poverty; 33% of our students failed the US history component of the state core curriculum/end-of-instruction assessment last year; 10% of our students do not speak English as a primary language; and 15% will drop out of school by the 12th grade. Although our consortium enrolls what most would call a “high-risk” population and despite the fact that the urban community in which we serve is infiltrated with crime, violence, and a culture of illiteracy and under-education, Oklahoma City is enriched with museums, library archives, and a legacy of heroic pioneer leaders who helped to settle the land and frame our state history. It was therefore only fitting to entitle our TAH grant: Pioneers Conquering History! (Pioneers for short). The purpose of Pioneers is to ignite a passion for learning and teaching US History among our students and teachers. Pioneers will accomplish this by strengthening the fundamental academic programs, curriculum, and instruction of the consortium LEA’s so that traditional American history is effectively taught as a stand alone academic subject in grades 5 and grades 8 through 12 (as mandated by the state curriculum framework). The primary goals of Pioneers include:

IMPROVE THE CONTENT KNOWLEDGE OF TEACHERS in the key events, eras, and turning points of US History by not only studying the words and deeds of the people who shaped them, but also by researching and understanding primary and secondary sources and documents;

SUPPORT TEACHERS’ WORK IN MEETING THE HISTORICAL THINKING BENCHMARKS of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Council for the Teaching of Social Studies;

DEVELOP A HIGH QUALITY CURRICULUM for students that is infused with state/national history standards, historical thinking, inquiry, historical research and information management – and that is enriched with assessment; and

CREATE A COMMUNITY OF HIGHLY QUALIFIED & EFFECTIVE HISTORY TEACHERS with the expertise to step into leadership roles at the school level and who have the demonstrated skills to integrate historical thinking, primary and secondary sources, and historical research skills into their US History classrooms.

The content of the Pioneers’ professional development activities is designed to spiral around the overarching theme “Encounters and Biographies that Shaped US History” as teachers study the country’s founding up to the twenty first century. As will be coordinated by a team of historians, scholars, and content experts from our partners at the University of Oklahoma, over 100 direct training hours a year will be dedicated to delivering a series of content-based summer institutes, school year content-based institutes, history book discussion study groups, pedagogy workshops focusing on historical research and technology, mini-sabbaticals, an annual conference, the modeling and assessment of teaching with primary and secondary sources in the classroom, practitioner coaching, and a website that will allow for the posting and downloads of all training materials, Pioneer lesson plans, and assessments tools (rubrics, surveys). All of the Pioneer training activities will culminate in classroom transfer and the refining of the curriculum of the participating school districts.

Pioneers will produce many positive outcomes over the next three years, including: 50 history teachers will have a deepened understanding of the content they teach and the significance of our founding documents; teachers will be better prepared to teach US History as a stand-alone course that is separate from world history and social studies; unit-specific lesson plans and curriculum materials that integrate state standards, historical thinking, and technology will be available to hundreds of classrooms throughout Oklahoma City and the nation; student interest and content knowledge of history will deepen as teachers incorporate an improved curriculum in the classroom; a greater percentage of students will score in the proficient range on the state history assessment compared to this last year’s baseline results; professional bonds among colleagues will be developed and teacher leadership opportunities in schools will be presented and filled; and the professional pride, passion, and enthusiasm of our teachers and students to explore traditional US History will rival that of the early pioneers who laid stake in Oklahoma. A rigorous quasi-experimental evaluation study will determine, first, if these outcomes are accomplished and to what level. It will then assess the strengths and weaknesses of the various training services offered by the program, particularly in terms of its impact on student achievement. Summative and formative evaluation findings will be presented to an Advisory Committee, regularly, so that refinements to Pioneers can be made and used to shape a model program that is worthy of statewide and national replication.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download