History Lessons for teachers

Thanks to a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Queens College will be able to provide training to history teachers in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn through two new programs.
Queens College is teaming up with the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to provide the first program, &#8220Inventing the People,” which will provide professional development for teachers of grades 7 through 12. It will help to develop &#8220innovative teaching methods” through the use of archived materials, interactive website tools and presentations and workshops with historians and educators.
&#8220Textbooks only offer bare-bone summaries of events, but don't address why the events happened - which could explain historians' distrust of them,” said David Gerwin, an education professor at Queens College. &#8220‘Inventing the People' encourages students to broaden their perspectives and learn history by going beyond the memorization of facts to think, explore and inquire.”
Also with the new funding, the program &#8220Learning History Together: The Content, Documents and Artifacts of U.S. History for the Elementary Grades” has been created. For this program, Queens College has partnered with the New York and Brooklyn historical societies.
Targeting elementary schools in Region 4 that are low-performing, through the &#8220Learning History Together” program, Queens College will develop lesson plans, training materials, teaching activities and classroom strategies. During the year, teachers will take part in four sessions focusing on different topics in history.
&#8220With all the emphasis on funding funneled into improving literacy and math skills, social studies - particularly professional development - often gets pushed aside,” said Beverly Milner Bisland, a professor at Queens College and director of &#8220Learning History Together.”
&#8220Very few elementary school teachers have a deep knowledge of history, which makes this first-time grant at that teaching level all the more important. The benefits to the teachers, and ultimately their students, are direct, substantial and long-lasting,” Bisland said.