The Utah Charter Schools Consortium includes 52 schools all across Utah and serves students of all ethnicities, from rural to inner-city communities. Its annual rate of student population growth is 7%. Many consortium students are at risk, while others are advanced learners; both groups have turned to charter schools for an education that accommodates their learning needs. Many of these schools have history teachers who serve as "one-person" social studies departments, and many are not considered highly qualified. Through the project, teachers across Utah will be connected in their efforts to better understand and teach American history. Their students will understand the connection of history throughout the past and present as well as curricula in other areas. Classrooms will be transformed into communities of active and engaged historians.

GSD serves 68,039 students at 87 schools and is Utah's second largest school district. Unfortunately, 29 of the district's schools did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress. A large number (177) of 5th grade teachers have little or no coursework in American history and government, and of the 145 secondary-level history teachers, 52 are not highly qualified. The goals of the project are to increase subject knowledge, expand pedagogical technique, improve higher-order thinking skills, integrate historical inquiry/skills of historians, and engage in civic participation. Diverse training sessions that vary in intensity, duration, and frequency will give teachers the knowledge and understanding needed to confidently create and implement in-depth American history curriculum units of significant value to student learning. Trainings will be college-level quality, ensured by the utilization of expert instructors, embedded impacting pedagogical methods, integration of quality resources, and focus on up-to-date history research.

As the population served by the school district continues to grow and diversify, it is escalating to near crisis. Influxes of new teachers (many new and inexperienced in teaching American history) and students (many new to the U.S.) lack awareness, interest, and understanding of how America came to be, what it means to be an American, and how all of this affects the history that is being made today and tomorrow. The Teaching American History Academy will connect teachers to valuable materials to support them as professional history educators, including memberships in professional history organizations. Participating teachers will be required to complete various assignments, such as a curriculum unit, research project, online reflections, study guides, and a portfolio. The project ultimately will create a community of historians comprised of teachers and students actively engaging in historic inquiry.