A $1 million, three-year State Department grant will unite the resources of the University, historical resource organizations and the University's College at Wise to improve grade school American History education in Southwest Virginia.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded the grant -- dubbed the Foundations Project -- to the Southwest Virginia Public Education Consortium in partnership with the University-based Virginia Center for Digital History.
The SVPEC is "a state-funded education consortium that serves 16 southwest Virginia public school divisions," SVPEC Executive Director Barbara Willis said.
William Thomas, director of the Virginia Center for Digital History, said the project concentrates on three historical eras. They include colonial and revolutionary America, 19th century America with a focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction and the 20th century with a focus on the Cold War and Civil Rights movement.
"We focused on those areas because they were of the most interest to the teachers in Southwest Virginia," Thomas said. "They were also areas in which we had strong digital projects and resources to support that kind of professional development."
Willis said the 11th Grade Standards of Learning scores for SVPEC districts in the 2001-2002 school year was 39.7 percent passing. Fifty-four percent of the students in fifth grade passed and 66.8 percent passing in third grade.
All scores were below the Virginia state average.
The SVPEC, based at the U.Va. College at Wise, and the University-based VCDH will have many partner organizations.
Partners include the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Miller Center for Public Affairs, the Woodson Institute for African-American Studies and the Center for Liberal Arts. The University's History department and history resources from other colleges, including Virginia Tech and Emory and Henry College, also are involved.
VFH Associate Director Andrew Chancey said the grant is part of the Teaching American History initiative passed two years ago by Congress.
"Sen. Byrd from West Virginia sponsored legislation to award up to $1 million apiece to entities across the nation for teaching American History," Chancey said. "Up to $50 million was awarded last year and again this year."
Chancey said the VFH, based in Charlottesville, will help implement new initiatives for the Foundations Project as well as offer resources from programs that VFH already has established.
"We already have an African-American Heritage Program, an African Folklore Program, and we're preparing for 2007, the 400th anniversary of Jamestown," Chancey said. "We're involved in those sort of programs on an ongoing basis."
Thomas said the goal of the Foundations Project is to improve Virginia SOL scores in American History by improving the content base and delivery methods of teachers in fourth through 11th grades.
"In all of our workshops, seminars and classes we hope to have a combination of content and methods of delivery, and we also allocated a great deal of money in the grant for materials," Thomas said. "So if a teacher takes a class or workshop, they will develop a project for a history unit and can walk out of that workshop with projects and materials to use in the classroom."
Chancey said the Foundations Project is geared toward producing a wider knowledge base for teachers and for designing more interactive classroom learning experiences for students.
"In this day and age, students desperately want interactive, tech-based learning," Chancey said. "Teachers are frantically trying to find those things."
Southwest Virginia has received funding in the past to install advanced technological resources, but lacks enough training for the school systems to fully implement their resources, Chancey said.
"For a fairly isolated part of the state, they're fairly well-connected," Chancey said. "They're looking for the expertise of people who use technology every day in the classroom to mentor teachers-in-training and help them use the research tools."
Chancey added that although the Foundations Project's Advisory Board will convene in the near future, the programs will not begin immediately.
"We got the grant only four weeks ago," Chancey said. "While the grant period may be starting soon, there will be a lag time before the programs begin."
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