Project LOCAL
For more information, see http://ase.tufts.edu/local

Project LOCAL (Learning Our Community's American Lore) will train teachers to incorporate the local history of their communities into the teaching of traditional American history. In partnership with Tufts University, the communities of Everett, Medford, Revere, Somerville, and Winthrop will engage in a series of day-long intensive professional development workshops following a "train-the-trainer" model. As members of the Shore Educational Collaborative, these communities have an existing relationship that supports teachers in sustained collaborative opportunities. The initial workshops will focus on providing participants with access to:

• experts in American history,
• area sites with community, regional and national historical significance,
• related primary resource materials, and
• appropriate teaching strategies that foster higher-order thinking skills.

Subsequently, the participating site leaders will employ the resources and skills to provide a series of professional development workshops within their respective communities. To that end local historical societies and historic sites will support the individual community effort. To provide a lasting resource that will support the growth of American history studies in each participating community, a library of teaching strategies, discussions and models will be created and stored for dissemination at a website hosted by Tufts University. Combining video and text, the library of video-based teaching cases will document Project LOCAL and provide a means of evaluating and further implementing the developed resources. In the three years of the grant life, Project LOCAL will directly involve approximately 75% of the teachers of American History in each district. Project LOCAL will also have an impact on approximately 964 students per district (over 4,800).