The MMSD has been awarded a three-year, $1 million "Teaching American History" grant from the US Department of Education. This grant will support a teacher professional development program that will impact roughly 3,200 students in each year of the grant and thousands more in subsequent years.

Called "Building Informed Citizens," this new program partners with UW-Whitewater, the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.

This program fills a major gap in MMSD, where teachers have not had a professional development program in teaching history over the past three years and where only 4% of elementary teachers and 15% of middle school social studies teachers have a major in history.

Through this program, teachers at all grade levels will:

• increase their knowledge and understanding of key concepts, people, and events in American history;
• increase their ability to create history-focused, content-rich lessons that draw on age-appropriate historical sources (e.g., historical documents, primary sources, artifacts and identified historical sites in the local community).

Teachers will participate in three summer institutes and a series of academic year workshops built around core topics in American History (democracy, immigration, America's place in the world). Participants will receive a "Teacher's Bookshelf" of resource materials to help enrich classroom instruction. In addition, the program will be supported by an online repository of resources, standards-based lesson plans and professional development presentations.

Over the course of three years, the program will create a cadre of Teacher Leaders who will provide leadership for further professional development in teaching history, at their school and throughout the district, beyond the grant period.