About Making American History Tangible

The Teaching American History Project: Making American History Tangible offers colloquia, seminars and summer institutes aimed at introducing new knowledge and new methodologies to middle and secondary-level faculty in history and the social sciences. Our research has shown that barely half of the region’s middle and secondary-level history teachers have an undergraduate or graduate degree in their subject area. In addition, few teachers have access to the advances scholars have made in understanding the events that create our nation's past.

Perhaps most importantly, research-based methods of teaching history have made only slow penetration into the classroom. The Teaching American History Project: Making American History Tangible exists to begin to remedy these problems, within the context of the Massachusetts Department of Education's History Frameworks.

Local schools and districts began meaningful participation in this program by selecting site coordinators to serve on the project's advisory board and providing us contact information for target faculty in local schools. The benefits of participation in this project are long and meaningful: