4:00pm | A four-year, $920,000 grant has been awarded to California State University Long Beach (CSULB) to support teacher development programs at Jordan and Cabrillo high schools in Long Beach, the university announced today. The grant will provide teacher training to expand knowledge, learn new strategies and refine instruction.

The money was awarded to the CSULB College of Education as well as the History and English departments – which will conduct the training during summer institutes and release days – by the California Post-Secondary Education Commission. Beginning in 2011, the grant covers three years of professional development followed by one year of data assessment, project co-director Dave Neumann of the CSULB History Project explained.

“We want to make the case that literacy ought to be seen in the broadest possible sense, which includes working with sophisticated concepts, developing verbal communication skills, reading challenging texts, and learning to write persuasively,” he said in a press release. Neumann believes that the key areas for the grant to focus are English-language arts and history-social science courses.

“Ideally, history teachers instruct with a learning outcome that is more focused on historical thinking as opposed to memorization of facts and dates,” said Tim Keirn, the grant’s principal investigator.

The grant is an Improving Teacher Quality grant, which is designed to increase student achievement through the enhancement of teacher effectiveness. Why Jordan and Cabrillo? The high schools were highlighted as the Long Beach schools where the achievement gap is greatest.

“These two campuses demonstrate great need in terms of academic performance; yet, they also demonstrate great potential,” said Carol Zitzer-Comfort, a CSULB assistant professor of English and liberal studies who will be one of the professors assisting the high school teachers. “It is important to all of us who are collaborating on this grant to work where students really need strong teaching.”

Zitzer-Comfort reiterated Keirn’s idea that teachers move away from fact-memorizing and teach based on critical thinking skills.

“We’d like to see evidence that improvement is sustainable,” said Neumann. “We want to know that after the grant is over, they continue to teach that way because they recognize its effectiveness.”