Center for Texas Studies awarded $50,000 to conduct Teacher Education Workshops

In November 2002 the Amon G. Carter Foundation awarded the TCU Center for Texas Studies a $50,000 grant to conduct Teacher Education Workshops for local school districts.

The U.S. and Texas History Teacher Workshops are education outreach programs aimed at enhancing teacher instruction preparation. They will support programs to raise students' achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of traditional U.S. and Texas history.

Understanding U.S. History is of critical importance to the American educational system; history education provides a basic understanding of American political, economic, and social systems, and this knowledge becomes increasingly important as the U.S. becomes more ethnically diverse with peoples from different cultural backgrounds. It is through this academic framework that many students secure their only knowledge about the American past and how that past has shaped our present and will shape our future. U.S. and Texas History teacher education workshops will work to raise students' achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history.

The Center will use TCU and other university history faculty to conduct these programs. The professors will provide pedagogical and methodological guidance, as well as instructional and resource materials that can be taken back into the classroom. The Center will also provide continued instruction through an e-mail list-serve for interested teachers. As a result, interested teachers will be able to improve continually their understanding of changing pedagogy and historical interpretation and pass that along to their students.

Workshops will begin in January 2003 and run through the 2004 calendar year. For information concerning dates of workshops, see the "Events" Page.