Federal grant to Montgomery benefits area school districts
By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY – Approximately 40 teachers from six school districts studied colonial America at the Montgomery Upper Middle School media center last week, thanks to a nearly million dollar grant that was awarded to the Montgomery Township School District in June to administer the regional program.
Nov. 1 marked the first day of the professional development program, sponsored by the federal Nathanael Greene Liberty Fellowship that is providing kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers an opportunity to earn five graduate-level credits in history by participating in a series of classroom sessions and activities over a three-year period.
A combination of history graduate school professors, social studies-certified teachers and other history educators lectured Thursday and Friday on a variety of topics, including the nation’s English roots, natural law, common law and a multi-textbook approach to teaching the French and Indian War.
The course, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History discretionary grant program, has the goal of deepening teachers’ comprehension of American history through the use of primary sources; the study of historical events, issues, personalities and turning points; and the study of modern historiographies. All participants are expected to research historical narratives, create lessons and generate Web-based history activities based on the state’s social studies standards.
”I’m looking forward to bringing back a lot of the things I learned here to my classroom,” said Laura Dempsey, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at the middle school. “It’s been a really valuable use of our time. The common law and natural law lectures have been really applicable to my subject area.”
Teachers in other disciplines who participated in the program also took home knowledge they anticipate incorporating into their class curriculums.
”It’s been fabulous,” said Karen Vail, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at the middle school. “It really has been inspiring. The speakers have done an excellent job getting the heart of democracy. They explained to us how democracy came to be and how important it is to communicate that to our students so democracy can continue.”
She added, “The reason I’m here is because we’re revising the language arts curriculum this year. We would like to have a unit where we’re connecting history with literature.”
Rick Miller, the social studies specialist at the Princeton Regional School District for kindergarten through the eighth grade, said he appreciated the in-depth background the speakers provided. Mr. Miller brought four fifth-grade social studies teachers from the Princeton public school system to participate in the program.
”I viewed this mostly as an experience for people to expand their history knowledge,” Mr. Miller said. “The professors are extremely knowledgeable and it’s really interesting to hear them put the pieces together.
”We already have background, but the more we know the more creative we can be with it in what we’re doing in the classroom,” he added.
Educators from Bridgewater-Raritan, Washington Township, Franklin Township and Lawrence Township school districts also participated in the program.
Montgomery would not have been eligible for the grant without the other school districts’ involvement, because of the size of its student body.
”What we’re attempting to do in Montgomery is establish connections with other school districts so that in the future we can combine more resources,” said Carl Cooper, a co-director of the program and eighth-grade social studies teacher at the Montgomery Upper Middle School.
Approximately 20 of the program’s fellows teach in the Montgomery school system and Holly Houston, the school district’s director of humanities, co-directed the program.
”The educational level of the teacher is important because there is a correlation between graduate-level work and classroom level performance,” Mr. Cooper said. “We’re trying to provide education in American history to inform teaching in the classroom.”
The impact of the program on student understanding will be evaluated based on assessments of students from various school districts, he added.
The next session will run from Feb. 12 to 14. During the first year of the program, teachers are studying the history of colonial America through the constitutional convention. The second year’s curriculum will include the Civil War and other historical events from the 19th century. The third year will cover the 20th century, focusing on World War I, World War II, the Cold War and the war on Islamist terror, according to the Nathanael Greene Liberty Fellowship.

