Students in the Grant Joint Union High School District are going to be better U.S. history scholars, thanks to $1 million in teacher training being delivered through UC Davis' History Project.

Using a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Sacramento school district will be working closely over the next three years with the UC Davis Area 3 History and Cultures Project. The idea is to boost the skills and knowledge of Grant teachers and, through them, raise student literacy and achievement in history.

"Much has been given in terms of grants and funding to literacy, mathematics and science, but there have been few opportunities to fund professional development in the social sciences," said Pat Newsome, associate superintendent of educational services in the Grant district. "These funds will afford my teachers the means to deliver high-quality instruction to students."

The funded proposal is called "E Pluribus Unum: Reading, Thinking and Writing in American History." Seasoned secondary teachers have been asked by the UC Davis History Project to plan all of the training and to identify opportunities for campus historians to contribute their expertise.

The grant will serve 65 teachers who instruct more than 10,000 students in the 8th and 11th grades within the Grant district. This work represents an extension of the Grant district's partnership with UC Davis through the School/University Partnerships Program.

Located in the Del Paso Heights community, the school district is an urban, high-poverty area, less than 10 miles from the State Capitol. Nearly 20 percent of its 12,320 students are English learners, an increase of 44 percent since 1996. This population speaks 29 different languages, with large numbers of immigrants from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Most students come from low-income families with 96 percent of Grant district students eligible for the federal Free/Reduced Lunch Program.

According to Pam Tindall, co-director of the History Project, Grant teachers will receive two main benefits from this training: They will deepen and broaden their knowledge about U.S. history, and they will learn how to deliver a more rigorous, standards-based curriculum to their students that engages while building literacy.

A series of monthly workshops have already begun at the California State Archives in downtown Sacramento. UC Davis historian Karen Halttunen and a team of nine middle- and high-school history teachers from throughout the region planned the series, which parallels the state content standards.

Workshops tackle standards-based topics just before they would typically be addressed in the classroom. All of the American historians in UC Davis' history department will be presenting at the workshop. Each lecture will be paired with practical model lessons, classroom applications related to the same standard, presented by the team of secondary teachers.

In addition, the grant will support an institute on discipline-specific literacy skills for all students including English learners called "Building Literacy Through History" in June and an intensive two-week summer history institute in August. Both will be held at UC Davis.

The grant comes at a good time for area teachers, Tindall said, since this is the first year that California secondary students taking tests for history and social science will be held accountable for knowing the state standards.

"The state history standards can appear to be an overwhelming list of unrelated names, facts and events," said Tindall, a former high school history teacher. "The university faculty can help connect the dots, find the connections and identify unifying themes."

Improving student reading and writing among the Grant students will be a major goal. In particular, Grant teachers will learn strategies for teaching U.S. history to English learners and other students who struggle in reading and writing.

The UC Davis History Project will receive $733,300 of the grant to run the professional development program, while the Grant district will use $266,700 to fund release days and stipends for Grant teachers to attend the summer and year-round training program.

"When this content area is taught well, students gain a deeper understanding of life, government and why certain beliefs, traditions and actions have shaped our country and world today," said Grant administrator Newsome, herself a history major. "The quality of the training and speakers for this program is outstanding, and I look forward to participating in a few of the sessions with my teachers."

In addition to the Grant district, surrounding school districts will be able to take advantage of the training program by sending their teachers to the workshops, classes and summer school for a fee.