As students returned to school last week, they weren't the only ones excited to share what they did over the summer. A select group of teachers from across the state will be bringing new materials for their students to use and ideas garnered from their participation in a new program offered by the National Humanities Center, developed in collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

Using online conferencing software, teachers took part in focused seminars devoted to specific topics in American history. Seminars, led by university scholars specializing in these topics, exposed teachers to primary source materials specifically adapted for classroom use and allowed them to share ideas with other instructors about how best to incorporate them into their instruction plans.

Response from teachers to this new initiative has been consistently positive, even effusive. "I love the [online seminar] format and the great dialogue," said Krista McGinnis who teaches world history at Laurinburg High School. "We were taught by an expert in the field, while we were able to share our own thoughts and ideas and learn from each other. The guided discussion was very beneficial for me." Another teacher, Regina Wooten who teaches English at Mary S. Mosley Performance Learning Center in Wilmington said "My thinking has been challenged on ways to integrate technology into teaching, opening up the classroom to conferencing and blogging, sharing primary sources with students and challenging them to think."

Since 2005, with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the National Humanities Center (NHC) has been attempting to find a way to make standards-based, content-rich professional development seminars routinely available to teachers of American history and literature in North Carolina. The Center tested a variety of face-to-face approaches, but none proved optimal. In the summer of 2008 it piloted a live, online seminar that brought together, in a virtual classroom, thirteen teachers from schools across the state and two scholars, one in Chapel Hill and another in Chicago, for a two-day exploration of Progressivism. This experiment proved so successful that in 2009 the Center offered three online seminars exclusively for North Carolina teachers. The success of these seminars suggests that the Center has found an economical and effective way to institutionalize seminar-style professional development in North Carolina.

The Center developed the seminar topics in collaboration with the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Most of the seminar materials—historical documents, literary texts, and visual images—came from online primary source anthologies developed by the Center. Statewide promotion by the Center and the DPI attracted teachers from twenty schools in fourteen counties, stretching from Lincoln in the west to Bertie in the east.

On June 16, eleven teachers studied the Federalist Period in "Defining a New Nation: 1789-1820," led by Scott Casper, NHC Fellow and professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. On June 17, fifteen teachers explored post-World War II social and political movements in "Moving America Left and Right: 1945-1990," directed by Nancy MacLean, NHC Fellow and professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University. In the final seminar on June 18, eighteen teachers compared the experiences of newcomers to the United States in "Immigration Then and Now: 1890-1920; 1964-2009," conducted by Gunther Peck, NHC Fellow and associate professor of public policy and history at Duke University.

This fall, the Center will offer a series of online workshops, similar in format to the seminars, but shorter in length (only 90 minutes compared to three-hour seminars). These workshops will also be led by leading scholars of American history, art, and literature; they will focus on a range of topics including consumer behavior in colonial America, art during the Civil War era, and the origins of the civil rights movement. Teachers can learn more about these workshops and sign up by visiting nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/.

According to Richard Schramm, director of education programs at the National Humanities Center, the North Carolina seminars have become models for statewide efforts elsewhere. "The online model allows us great flexibility for reaching teachers across the U.S.," he says, "and our fourteen workshops and seminars have already allowed us to reach over 170 educators from 29 states in the first half of 2009. We are also working directly with several states to develop offerings specifically for their curricula. This is not only cost-effective, but the live, online approach helps foster dialogue among teachers that probably wouldn't be possible otherwise."

The California History Social Science Project, a university-based program of teacher development, has approached the Center about providing online seminars to teachers throughout that state. In addition, as a partner in a U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History grant, the Center will collaborate with the Florida Virtual School, a state-sponsored initiative, to offer thirty-five online seminars to teachers in Florida over the next five years.

The North Carolina online professional development initiative is funded through 2012. In the fall the Center and the NC Department of Public Instruction will begin framing topics for the 2010 offerings.

About the National Humanities Center

The National Humanities Center, located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina, is a privately incorporated independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. Since 1978 the Center has awarded fellowships to leading scholars in the humanities, whose work at the Center has resulted in the publication of more than 1,200 books in all fields of humanistic study. The Center also sponsors programs to strengthen the teaching of the humanities in secondary and higher education and hosts regular public events to encourage greater public awareness and understanding of the importance of the humanities in American life.