Local history teachers will soon be getting the education they need thanks to a $1 million grant.

The Teaching American History grant, titled What is an American, was recently awarded to the Carl Junction School District in partnership with Missouri Southern and the Southwest Center for Educational Excellence. This is the fifth Teaching American History grant Southern has received.

The primary focus of the three year What is an American program is to improve the teaching of history in local schools.

“Part of what we try to do with these grants is fix an imbalance in the preparation of teachers,” said Dr. Larry Cebula, associate professor of history. “Teachers in this country have too many classes about pedagogy and classroom management and not enough classes about what they’re going to teach.”

Local public and private school teachers will sign up for the program and come to Southern during designated weekends. Teachers will learn the development of effective lesson plans and attend weekend reading seminars. Previous grants have allowed such historians as T.J. Stiles to give lectures on campus.

Teachers will also take summer trips to historical sites throughout the country. The trips will be guided by Southern faculty and will include such places as Colonial Williamsburg, Va. and Montgomery, Ala. Teachers will be able to gather pictures and artifacts to use in their classrooms.

“Through the quarterly professional learning communities, teachers will increase their knowledge, resources, and networking access to other history teachers,” said Anne Shadwick, curriculum consultant for southwest center for educational excellence. “This program will emphasize teaching literacy using history content and can make the classroom a ‘living history lab’ for teachers and students.”

According to Shadwick, this grant is an important step in improving the understanding of a topic that has become overshadowed by other classroom subjects.

“Especially at the elementary level, American history is overlooked for communication arts and mathematics which are NCLB (No Child Left Behind) requirements,” she said. “And accountability in these subjects is tracked not only by local school districts but by the state and national authorities also.”

“With these requirements, it is easy to put American history on the back burner.”

The grant will provide participating teachers with stipends and Southern with classroom resources. According to Cebula, past grants have provided internships for history majors, electronic resources and computers for faculty members. He hopes that this new grant will continue to improve the quality of local history education.

“Over the course of five years, we have done tremendous things for history education in this part of the world,” Cebula said. “I mean, just tremendous.”