Working collaboratively, the Bath County Historical Society and Bath County Public Schools will undertake a professional development initiative to promote excellence in history education in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. Historians and curriculum specialists will work with a cadre of lead teachers in the summer of 2007 to provide the professional development in content and methodology that is necessary to support educators as they develop competence in the practice of historical inquiry. Teacher scholars will deepen understanding of local and regional history and apply this content knowledge to the design and drafting of inquiry-based instructional materials that incorporate primary sources from the Society’s collections. In June 2006, the Trustees of the Virginia Hot Springs Preservation Trust approved the Society’s request in the amount of $12,927 to fund the June 2007 three-week institute for the project’s lead teachers.
During the 2007-2008 school year the lead teachers will field-test the draft lessons; reconvene in the Society’s library for an additional two days of professional development; and keep a project journal, detailing needed revisions, topics for further study, and strategies for coaching colleague teachers. The revised and published lessons will be disseminated during a countywide in-service program to be held at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. The lead teachers will coach other teachers in their school during the year. The 2008-2009 focus of the project is supporting colleague teachers as they introduce their students to new ways of thinking about the past. This grant proposal requests funding in the amount of $5,077 for the second and third years of the project, August 2007 through the end of the 2008-2009 school year in June 2009.