Looking Forward in 2010

So, we're almost three weeks into 2010, and it's past time for the Clearinghouse staff to send very best wishes to everyone for a happy, productive teaching year.

Most of us work on college campuses—George Mason and Stanford Universities—and today winter break officially ends, classes rev up, and our campuses are again filled with students. In the interim, Clearinghouse staff worked at home and on the road. We conducted workshops at the TAH Project Directors meeting in Washington, DC and you'll see videos of that meeting under TAH Grants on the Clearinghouse site shortly. Clearinghouse staff also presented workshops and poster sessions at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) in San Diego and conducted a focus group with San Francisco Teach for America group. And, we've spent the quiet time looking ahead and working on new design and content for the Clearinghouse.

What's ahead? The National History Education Clearinghouse will get a new look in 2010! (The image at the top of this post is the prototype.) We're adding new videos, front and center on the home page, including What is Historical Thinking and introductory tours of the website for elementary, middle, and high school teachers. You'll also find exciting new content that many of you have requested such as Beyond the Textbook—a feature designed to examine how textbooks cover specific topics, what historians have to say, and what perspectives we uncover when looking at related primary sources.

Over the course of the next few months, you can also look forward to special materials about teaching American history in the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom and more video interviews featuring classroom teachers talking about how they teach various curriculum units—including integrating digital technologies into the curriculum. The Issues and Research section will feature roundtable discussions where groups of educators will present multiple viewpoints on various issues surrounding history pedagogy and content and the state of history education.

We look forward to seeing you at conferences and presentations throughout the year. And we always welcome your comments and suggestions (email us here: info@teachinghistory.org). So again, very best wishes for 2010.