Bullard High School (BHS) and California State University, Fresno (CSUF), one of the largest Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States, request a grant of $200,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for Crossing Academic Borders under the NEH’s new initiative, "Schools for the New Millenium."

Crossing Academic Borders has grown out of a developing relationship between Bullard High School and the University’s College of Arts and Humanities. It was given shape and direction through an NEH Planning Grant, out of which several important developments emerged:

• BHS teachers narrowed the project’s humanities themes to three -- The Immigrant Experience, Steinbeck’s America, and The Hispanic World -- that are highly relevant to the history, literature and demographics of California’s Central Valley.

• A core of Bullard’s humanities teachers had the opportunity to study these themes, to discuss them with their peers and participating scholars, and to conduct preliminary research on how these themes would be incorporated into Bullard’s curriculum.

• A core of teachers took part in technology training to prepare them for the project’s implementation phase.

• As a result of NEH’s Planning Grant, Bullard High School will become central California’s first "Humanities School of Choice."

• During the planning phase, BHS was awarded a major state grant to become a Digital High School, which, during the implementation phase, will include state-of-the-art technology infrastructure upgrades and extensive technology training for all Bullard teachers.

The project’s title – Crossing Academic Borders -- derives from the realization that contemporary learning requires educators to cross numerous borders. Intellectual borders divide academic disciplines. Cultural borders separate students and teachers of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Technological borders divide traditional pedagogy and the productive use of new technologies. Linguistic and national borders separate teachers and students from their

counterparts in other regions of the world. Professional borders separate university faculty from

high school teachers. Because this ambitious initiative aims to cross all of these borders, it has the potential to become a national model for teaching the humanities using new technology.

The implementation project will involve a substantial number of high school faculty, partnering with humanities faculty and technical support personnel, to develop a major technology initiative in literature, history, languages, and other humanities disciplines. By the end of the implementation period, Bullard High School will have in place a Humanities Strand of courses that will incorporate the three targeted themes. In the process, it will become the first "Humanities School of Choice" in central California.

This application is in response to the Presidential Directive in Executive Order 12900, which mandates federal efforts on behalf of educational excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Fresno is located in the central San Joaquin Valley in the geographical center of the nation’s most populous state. It is one of the fastest growing major cities in the state, but it is also the hub of an immense farming region that is home to four of the top five agricultural counties in the United States. Major crops include grapes, fruits, nuts, and raisins, among others. Because these particular crops require very labor-intensive harvesting, the Valley has always attracted huge numbers of agricultural workers, from mid-western farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, to waves of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, to over 50,000 Southeast Asian refugees (Hmong) following the Vietnam War. The immigrants have helped to make Fresno and the Valley one of the U.S.’s most diverse ethnic regions. Fresno is also one of the state’s and nation’s most economically depressed regions, with the highest unemployment figures in California (ranging from 14%- 17%, or about three times the state average and about four times the national average), the lowest median family incomes, the highest percentage of families on welfare, and the highest rates of children living in poverty.

These economic conditions translate into extraordinary educational challenges, among them the general lack of access to expensive high technology in schools and extremely limited opportunities for the development of high quality, innovative and sustainable humanities resources and curriculum that would appeal to both the majority and minority communities.

The NEH planning grant helped Bullard teachers and CSUF faculty develop a plan to increase technological literacy for humanities teachers and students. It also allowed them to explore core subjects in the humanities that have particularly promising potential for use in high school classrooms. Based on this planning, Crossing Academic Borders will focus on implementing three humanities units on the following themes.

In order to impact the greatest number of students and humanities teachers, these thematic units will be integrated into a new curricular strand in grades nine through 12.

Project themes were selected for several reasons. First, they are grounded in humanities disciplines and texts. Second, because they are relevant not only to the concerns of California, but also the region and nation, they have excellent potential to become national models. Third, they are likely to be taught in some form at both the high school and college levels, particularly in literature and history classes, so many high school and college teachers can make use of the materials and can tailor course materials to suit specific research and classroom needs. Fourth, study of these themes by humanities teachers requires interdisciplinary research, which demands collaborative planning and which stretches the normal expectations of instructional design and delivery. Finally, they have the potential to fulfill the NEH’s legislative mandate to pay "particular attention" to "our diverse heritage, traditions and history" while demonstrating the relevance of the humanities to "the current conditions of national life."

Crossing Academic Borders has three major goals: (1) developing a Humanities Magnet School at Bullard; (2) designing and implementing a national model for teaching the humanities using new technologies; and (3) providing BHS teachers with a more fertile environment for ongoing humanities study. Achieving these goals will require meeting several objectives:

• Integrating The Immigrant Experience, Steinbeck’s California and The Hispanic World into Bullard High School’s humanities curriculum.

• Initiating and sustaining a Humanities Strand in BHS’s curriculum.

• Initiating and sustaining a CSUF Young Humanities Scholars Program at Bullard.

• Engaging a minimum of 30 Bullard teachers and 10 CSU humanities scholars in collaborative study of the selected themes with humanities scholars.

• Engaging a minimum of 30 BHS humanities scholars in intensive technology training that will allow them to, for example, build educational WebPages on the three target themes, to develop on-line courses for students, to participate productively in subject-matter chat groups, to transfer curricular files and utilize available Internet sources, to construct and utilize PowerPoint presentations for classroom use, and to become proficient in other applications of new technologies.

• Building on existing higher education ties to establish three on-line "partnerships" focusing on The Hispanic World with sister high schools in Argentina, Mexico, and Spain.

• Researching, identifying and utilizing a dynamic database of texts, exhibit materials, websites, CD ROMs, chat groups, and other Internet/on-line sources to support the three targeted humanities themes.

• Critically assessing the degree to which the Bullard model can be integrated into the curricula in other high schools to enhance humanities study.

• Disseminating the results of the project through presentations at educational conferences, news releases, a printed report, press releases, newspaper articles, radio PSAs, WebPages and other dissemination vehicles.

The humanities themes of Crossing Academic Borders will form the intellectual centerpieces of the project. They will be woven into BHS’s curriculum by means of several components and methodologies:

• Infusing the themes into Bullard’s New Humanities Strand;
• Implementing a CSUF Young Humanities Scholars Program

• Conducting Summer Humanities Workshops for Teachers;

• Bullard Teacher Workshops

• Bullard and Other Teachers through Subject-Matter Projects

• Developing International School Partnerships

• Conducting Technology Training Workshops for Teachers
• Supported through State "Digital High School" Grant

• Involving Students in Designing Technology Components

The Humanities Strand will adhere to the California State Curriculum Frameworks, with special attention to The Immigrant Experience, Steinbeck’s California, and The Hispanic World. A thematic coordinator for each theme, in consultation with university scholars, will research and gather materials, prepare curriculum, and organize their classroom presentations around these themes, concentrating not only on traditional content and texts, but also on ways in which new technologies can be used to inform student research, access supplementary materials, and contribute to classroom presentations by both teachers and students.

Special study units and assignments will necessarily vary by grade and instructor, but all will focus on one of the targeted humanities themes and all will make use not only of humanities texts but also of new technologies to research, study, interpret and present these themes. Please refer to the Appendix for several sample student projects.

V. B. CSUF Humanities Scholars Program -- The BHS Humanities Strand, which will be open to all interested high school students, will be complemented by a college-level program open to all Bullard students who maintain an overall "B" average in their regular courses. The CSUF Young Humanities Scholars Program will offer highly-motivated Bullard students with an outstanding opportunity to study the humanities in significantly more depth than possible in regular high school courses. Students will have the option of earning college credit.

The faculty for the CSUF Young Humanities Program will be both CSUF professors and Bullard teachers, and the classes will be held twice each week at Bullard and the University. The curriculum will consist of eight humanities courses--one per semester over a four-year period--in classics, art history, music history, linguistics, philosophy, special humanities topics and humanities research. As with the Bullard Humanities Strand, special attention will be given to the three humanities topics identified in this proposal as well as on the use of technology. For example, a group of students might undertake a special project in art history comparing the work of El Greco and Goya. They would construct a website with a hot link to The Hispanic World as well as short, analytical essays comparing the two artists’ contributions to Spanish art, and additional links to related source materials to encourage further study.

These classes will utilize new technologies to the degree that these technologies facilitate research and contribute to improved or expanded learning opportunities. For example, students and teachers will use the Internet to communicate with one another on class assignments and related study. Students will also conduct research using the WWW, write and edit papers, create WEB Pages on course-related assignments, and undertake other activities that make use of new technologies to advance liberal arts studies.

The subject matter of these courses will be sufficiently rigorous to allow students to earn college credit, although they are not required to take the courses for credit. It will also contribute to students’ fundamental knowledge of many humanities disciplines and will provide a broad framework for their study of the target topics. Moreover, in the process of teaching these courses, university faculty and high school teachers will develop stronger working relationships, and both students and teachers at Bullard will become more adept at using new technologies.

Bullard students who successfully complete the entire sequence of college-level courses will be given special recognition at graduation as CSUF Young Humanities Scholars.

Having these subject-matter workshops adopt the same themes as Crossing Academic Borders will reinforce the thematic focus. It will provide Bullard teachers with more exposure to humanities scholars and to variations on these themes. It will also provide CRLP teachers with insight into the developments in Bullard’s curriculum, and will perhaps inspire them to adopt similar teaching strategies. Finally, as Bullard teachers master the subject matter, they will be invited to make presentations in collaboration with university scholars in Year 2001 and 2002 workshops.

V. D. International School Partnerships -- As its name implies, the World Wide Web truly is a worldwide communication and information gathering and disseminating network. Can it also be a worldwide tool for active teaching and learning that really crosses the current boundaries faced by educators? Crossing Academic Borders will address this question in a unique way by establishing on-line partnerships between Bullard High School, CSUF and three high schools in Argentina, Mexico and Spain. This initiative, revolving around the theme of The Hispanic World, will press at the boundaries of the new technologies while challenging students and teachers to explore the humanities in cooperation with students from three distinct Hispanic cultures.

The University will build on its current international outreach in these three countries to help forge the connections between high schools. CSUF currently has a cooperative relationship with Universidad e Guanajuato in Mexico that features faculty and student exchanges, joint conferences and other activities, and it is in the final stages of setting up a similar program with a university in Pamplona, Spain. In addition, the University now has a representative with a strong humanities background developing high school connections in Argentina, and it anticipates setting up student and faculty exchange programs there in the next several years. Between the time this application is submitted and the time the project begins, the University will utilize these connections to establish partner high schools capable (academically and technologically) of participating as equal partners with Bullard in developing The Hispanic World.

V. E. Technology Training -- Crossing Academic Borders will be implemented simultaneously with Bullard’s transition to a Digital High School, a transformation made possible by the recent award from the California State Department of Education of a major technology grant of approximately $1,000,000 over three years. That grant will fund the addition of four to six networked computers in every classroom. It will also upgrade the school’s fiber optic network and underwrite a comprehensive staff development program designed to increase all faculty and staff proficiency in technology. Staff development, beginning in 2000, will consist of a sequenced series of learning units aimed at high-technological competency.

The Digital High School grant requires specific skills to be mastered by all teachers, including, but not limited to: navigating the Internet to conduct research; using word processing; using e-mail; downloading and manipulating graphics; building and maintaining websites; developing PowerPoint presentations; evaluating and utilizing software for classroom use; learning basic video editing; and becoming conversant with using scanners, digital cameras, CD ROMs, smart boards and other technology tools.

One clear benefit provided by the Digital High School grant is that fewer NEH dollars will be needed for technological training. The equipment and faculty training provided by it will help assure that the end result will meet Bullard’s and NEH’s expectations.

V. F. Involving Students in Technology Development -- Project leaders believe that teaching and learning with new technologies will involve a truly different kind of relationship between teachers and students because in increasing numbers of cases students already demonstrate a higher degree of proficiency in technology than do many teachers. Crossing Academic Borders wants to capitalize on this situation by providing added incentives for students who become seriously engaged in studying the humanities and in developing learning tools using new technologies. To this end, each year of the grant a panel of faculty members, high school students, and CSUF faculty or staff will provide three stipends of $1,000 each to the individual student or team of students who create the most effective presentation on one of the humanities themes using new technologies. The criteria for selection will include:

• The quality of the humanities content. At a minimum, the presentation must be grounded in at least one primary-source humanities text and must demonstrate that the student(s) have researched and understood the topic studied and have attempted to interpret the material in a reasonably sophisticated manner.

• The effectiveness of the presentation. Was the material well organized? Was there too much information? Too little? Were the graphics visually clear and appropriate for the subject matter? Were colors, sounds or other enhancements used effectively?

• The use of a variety of new technologies utilized. Did they build a Website? Did the page make use of electronic linkages? Were the linkages useful in understanding the material? Did their presentation make use of large-screen projections? Did they use PowerPoint or other technologies to present their topics?

• The degree to which the site was likely to invite more students to use it or to inspire further study by students in other classes.

Bullard High School is one of six high schools in the Fresno Unified School District, the third largest district in California. It serves 2,550 students in grades nine through 12. BHS’s faculty includes 102 certified teachers, of whom over 30% hold advanced graduate degrees and certificates beyond the credential. Bullard has the largest Advanced Placement (AP) program in the District, offering 16 AP courses, including English Literature, English Language and Composition, Spanish Literature, French Literature, US History, American Government, World History, European History and Art History. In the last five years, Bullard has had 18 National Merit finalists and semi-finalists, and 36 commended National Merit scholar awards. Seven BHS students have received National Hispanic Scholar awards. BHS’s English teachers have been extensively involved in the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project and the California Reading and Literature Project. The strength of Bullard’s faculty and curricular offerings in the humanities makes it an ideal school site and ideal partner with CSUF for this project.

From a technological standpoint, Bullard is also extremely well positioned to carry out this grant, since it recently was awarded a major grant from the California Department of Education to become a Digital High School.

California State University, Fresno is by far the largest institution of higher education in the San Joaquin Valley. The Valley is the only region of the state not served by both a CSU campus and a University of California campus. Consequently, CSUF bears extraordinary responsibility for both undergraduate and graduate education in the Valley. Moreover, the university has developed special expertise in serving the growing numbers of minority students enrolling in its programs. The University now ranks 17th in the nation in the number of undergraduate degrees conferred on Hispanic students.

CSUF has especially strong colleges of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, which will collaborate on this NEH initiative. They have two largest FTE enrollments, respectively, and virtually all curricular and extracurricular offerings in literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, art history, and other humanities disciplines are provided through these colleges. In addition to coordinating "The California Reading and Literature Project," "The California Writing Project," and "The California History-Social Science Project," all of which include interdisciplinary humanities programs for high school teachers, these colleges house centers of excellence in Chicano and Latin American studies, Southeast Asian studies, and Armenian studies, to name a few. Over the past several years the College of Arts and Humanities successfully completed an NEH National Conversation project, and scholars from both colleges have been actively engaged in the NEH planning grant which led to this application.

CSUF has made enormous technological advances in recent years, to the point that its capability to provide teacher workshops and training in computer, Internet and distance learning usage is unrivaled in central California. These capabilities are described in the appendix.

In addition to the involvement of CSU, Fresno humanities and social science faculty, the University will coordinate the involvement of faculty from other California State University campuses as well. For example, representatives from the CSU, Monterey Bay Consortium on the Use of Technology for Humanities Pedagogy will also participate in the project, as will faculty from CSU, Sacramento. A team of presenters from the Consortium will present a workshop for Bullard teachers, and they will work with CSUF faculty and Bullard teachers to plan and implement statewide and national dissemination. Faculty from CSU, Sacramento will conduct an on-line course for Bullard teachers on the theme of immigration.

Project personnel include many of the most respected master teachers and humanities scholars from Bullard High School, CSU, Fresno, and other CSU campuses. The educational backgrounds of primary participants are summarized below. An expanded description of participants is included in the Appendix. These include biographical sketches of teachers and technology personnel as well as biographical information and curriculum vitae of scholars

Robert Knapp holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English Literature from California State University, Fresno. He has thirty years of teaching experience both at the intermediate and high school levels. He has served as a Master teacher and mentor teacher for Fresno Unified School District and was a finalist for the Excellence in Teaching Award in 1992. In 1994 he received the Educator of the Year Award at Bullard High School. He has served as a cadre member of the California Literature Project and the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project and is currently co-director of the California Reading and Literature project. Knapp will serve as Bullard’s administrative liaison with CSUF.

Cathy Cirimele-Hansen has an MA in Literature from San Francisco State University and an MA in Education-Reading from Fresno Pacific College. She has taught at the secondary level in Fresno Unified School district for 24 years, where she has served as a Master Teacher and Mentor Teacher. Her teaching experience includes teaching reading at the middle school, high school and college levels as well as advanced writing courses. She is also currently the advisor for Bullard’s award-winning literary magazine, Indigo. As the coordinator for the K-U component of the California Reading and Literature Project, she has presented at as well as planned seminars and institutes for secondary teachers in such diverse areas as teaching the English Language Learner and applying the new Language Arts Framework to the classroom. Cirimele-Hanson will serve as co-project director representing Bullard.

Dorena Koopman teaches German at Bullard High School. She has a double major in German and English and has taught both at Bullard since 1976. She has received three scholarships through the Goethe Institute in New York to travel and attend seminars in Germany, this in addition to several other study abroad programs. She has been a member of the executive board of the Central Valley Foreign Language Association, and has been a San Joaquin Valley Foreign Language Project Teacher-Leader for the past five years. Koopman will serve as a thematic curriculum coordinator.

Robert Scoville teaches Social Sciences at Bullard High School. He has worked in that capacity for 28 years with additional teaching experience with the Long Beach Unified School District. During that time he has taught eighth, eleventh, and twelfth grades in history, government, economics, psychology, and English. He holds a credential for both English and history, and he is presently teaching advanced placement government and economics. Scoville will serve as a thematic curriculum coordinator.

Linda Jacobson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and a California Secondary Teaching Credential in English Language Arts and Art. She taught high school and middle school, grades 7-12, English, humanities, and health in Australia from 1973-75. She has also taught part-time at California State University, Fresno while completing graduate studies in English and linguistics at CSUF. Since 1985, she has taught nearly every grade level and every elective in English at Bullard High School, including AP Literature and composition for seven years. She has initiated a new AP course in Art History and has taught it with great success since 1995. Jacobson will serve as a thematic curriculum coordinator.

Vida Samiian will serve as co-project director. Dr. Samiian is Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities at CSUF. She holds Ph.D. and Masters degrees in linguistics from University of California, Los Angeles. Previously she served as Chair of the Linguistics Department, and has taught Persian, language and culture, and history of linguistics. Samiian has also been project director for two recent public humanities programs, cited above. Her duties will include liaison between CSUF humanities faculty and Bullard teachers, summer workshop coordination, and director of CSUF’s Young Humanities Scholars Program, and co-liaison with the NEH.

Thomas McClanahan is Professor of English and Associate Vice President for Grants and Research and Professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Dr. McClanahan holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina as well as MA degrees in philosophy and English. For 12 years he served as Executive Director of the Idaho Humanities Council. Dr. McClanahan was an active participant in the planning grant. He will serve as co-project director. His office will be responsible for general grant administration, for developing (with the assistance of a technology assistant and an international studies liaison) the international school partnerships, for publicity and with Vida Samiian, for liaison with the NEH.

Cathy Cirimele-Hansen (Bullard), Vida Samiian (CSUF) and an independent evaluator will be responsible for formative (start-up and in-progress) and summative (final) project assessment based on input from many people involved in the project. Taken together, the evaluation will assess the impact and success of Crossing Academic Borders while providing blueprints for replicating similar projects in other educational settings. Formative evaluation will establish procedures for comprehensive monitoring of all activities associated with the implementation of primary tasks and achieving project objectives. For example, formative assessment will provide the co-directors and other staff with information needed to make adjustments to resource allocations, staffing assignments, project schedules, and other situations that were not anticipated in the planning stage. Examples of specific instruments include:

• Pre-workshop and post-workshop surveys to measure the level of participants’ knowledge of technology and subject matter;

• Evaluation of the workshops;

• Periodic surveys of teachers to monitor progress toward objectives;

• Student questionnaires at the end of each academic year;

• Surveys of university faculty after summer workshops;

• Assessment of the quality of websites, electronic links, Smart Board usage, etc.

Summative evaluation will utilize several approaches to measure the level of success at the end of the project. These will include:

• Independent evaluation by high school teachers and university faculty members;

• Annual focus/discussion meeting between co-directors, other key staff, the independent evaluator, and teachers;

• An annual report from the co-directors, submitted to the participating schools, university administration, and NEH; and

• Presentation of results through California State University System workshops/conferences and other regional and national workshops conference.

One of the NEH’s goals in its new initiative is to support projects that "serve as national models of excellence in humanities teaching and learning, especially through the innovative uses of technology in instruction." Bullard and CSUF share this goal and plan to disseminate this model as broadly as possible. During the planning process, members proposed hosting a national conference to highlight the results of Crossing Academic Borders as well as other projects funded through "Schools for a New Millenium." However, in subsequent discussions with NEH staff, planners decided to forego that idea because of the possibility of the Endowment hosting a conference of this kind. Nevertheless, there are many avenues to share the project’s results.

Bullard and CSUF will collaborate on presentations to numerous educational constituencies. At a minimum, these will include presentations to University humanities faculty; humanities teachers in other Fresno Unified schools; and teachers in the California Writing and Literature Project, the California History and Social Studies Project, the California Arts Project.

Project participants will also volunteer to make presentations at national conferences of groups such as the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Social Studies, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the National University Telecommunications Network, the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and others who express interest in the project.

Bullard and CSUF will publish information about the project on their respective WEB pages, and they will establish links to the curricular sites for the benefit of individuals who want more information. The project will also publish and distribute a brochure, will develop news releases and feature articles for local newspapers, including Spanish-language publications, educational publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, NEH’s Humanities, CSUF publications (University Journal and The Collegian) and CSU Stateline, a systemwide publications that is distributed to all faculty and staff in the California State University System.

Before receiving an NEH Planning Grant to develop Crossing Academic Borders, Bullard High School and CSU, Fresno already had a productive academic relationship. NEH funding allowed a team of teachers, scholars and administrators to build on this relationship by planning a new approach to studying the humanities by means of new technologies. Planners were able to select humanities themes that will stimulate teacher and student inquiry, to design a new Humanities Strand at BHS, to incorporate these target themes into that strand, and to plan a series of teacher and student activities, including humanities workshops for teachers, expanded opportunities for Bullard students to study the humanities at advanced levels, international school partnerships, and technology training. Once implemented, these activities will lead to the establishment of Bullard as central California’s first Humanities School of Choice.

Planners have attempted to design a project that will have lasting importance not only for Bullard, but for other high schools and universities that, increasingly, will be charged with establishing sensitive balances between the humanities and emerging technologies. Although the particular focus of courses throughout the nation will be as varied as the humanities disciplines they seek to illuminate, Crossing Academic Borders, with its emphasis on academic quality, substantive humanities study, scholarly participation, and practical technological training linked with exploratory project ideas, will provide one sensible and academically stimulating blueprint for curriculum development. When fully implemented, it will invigorate Bullard High School’s liberal arts program, and it has excellent potential to become a national model for teaching the humanities using new technologies.