Bedford County Schools and six other divisions will receive about $750,000 as part of a federal “Teaching American History” grant, which offers additional training for American history teachers.
The grant will provide an opportunity for teachers to attend seminars, workshops and perhaps most important, visit historic sites that they teach students about.
“The plus of this grant is that it’s teacher oriented,” said Don Toms, Bedford County Schools instructional consultant. “Teachers benefit and they can bring that back to classroom.”
Divisions that applied for the grant, not part of the federal stimulus package, had to do so in partnership with another organization. Toms said Bedford partnered with the Woodrow Wilson Public Library in Staunton.
The library will host the seminars and workshops teachers will attend as part of the grant. The library will also work to get visiting professors to meet with educators.
Toms said trips to Gettysburg, Jamestown, Yorktown and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are also planned as part of the grant.
“It’s going to be work,” Toms said. “They’ll get six hours of graduate credit from UVa. They will work and trips will be fun, but they are seminars.”
The grant money will come to the school division over a three-year period. It will fund professional development for 25 elementary, middle and high school teachers in Bedford and six other school divisions.
Bedford will coordinate the program. The other divisions to benefit are Bath, Allegheny, Craig, Giles, Highland and Pulaski counties.
Toms said with the financial situations localities currently face, the money will be a real asset. Frequently, he said, history is overlooked in terms of additional money to strengthen offerings, and there is instead a focus on science or math.
“Budgets are so tight, we don’t have a lot of professional development,” he said. “Here’s an opportunity for social studies teachers to be involved with workshops and seminars.”
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