DURING THE PAST DECADE, escalating public concern over the nature and quality of K-12 education has intensified the Organization of American Historians' long-standing involvement with pre-collegiate history education. This increase in activity has been most clearly reflected in the OAH's collaborative efforts with such organizations as the National History Education Network (formerly the History Teaching Alliance) and the National Center for History in the Schools, the growth of such K-12 focused initiatives as the Magazine of History and "Focus on Teaching Day," and attention to the process of developing national and state history standards. At the same time, the OAH has also begun to pay greater attention to history pedagogy in post-secondary education. "Focus on Teaching Day" at the annual meeting, for example, includes sessions of interest to community college and four-year-college/university instructors as well as K-12 teachers. Similarly, the organization's major publication, the Journal of American History, has broken new ground over the past decade by instituting new periodic features of special interest to post-secondary instructors--reviews of films and exhibits and review essays on textbooks. In short, while not abandoning its role as the learned society of United States historians, the OAH has energetically embraced its responsibility to be "part of the solution" in resolving the vital issues surrounding history education in American schools, colleges, and universities.

THE COMMITTEE OF TEACHINGMore than most learned societies, the OAH has maintained throughout its nearly century-long history a focus on teaching and linkages with K-12 teachers. For its first four decades, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (as the OAH was called until 1965) had a Committee on Teaching of American History in Elementary and Secondary Schools. This standing body re-emerged in 1975 as the Committee on the Status of History in the Schools and Colleges; subsequently it was renamed the Committee on Teaching. This committee has been at the center of much of the OAH's recent efforts to reach out to K-12 teachers and has served as a bridge to other pedagogically focused history organizations.

The Committee on Teaching consists of four appointed members, plus a liaison from the OAH Executive Board. Members serve staggered four-year terms (the third year as chair), one member being appointed each year by the incoming president of OAH. The appointed members are drawn from the major educational segments: K-12, community colleges, and four-year universities and colleges. Each appointee comes from the same educational segment as the retiring committee member, thus ensuring that all segments are represented on the committee at all times. Rotation of the chair ensures that no single segment controls the committee's leadership. To keep the work of the Teaching Committee connected to the main work of the OAH, the committee's chair serves ex officio on the Committee on Educational Policy and on the Board of Editors of the Magazine of History (see below).

The Teaching Committee meets during the OAH annual convention, and as needed during the year. Its most important regular responsibility is to plan and develop sessions for "Focus on Teaching Day." Held on Saturday of the four-day annual OAH meeting--and entering its fifteenth year--this event has become extremely popular with K-12 teachers (whose attendance is encouraged by the Saturday scheduling) and, increasingly, with many post-secondary faculty members and graduate students who attend the meeting. In addition to several pedagogical sessions, the day includes a luncheon with an appropriate guest speaker (in 1997 the speaker was Martharose Laffey, Executive Director of the National Council for the Social Studies). The number of individual sessions is necessarily limited by the one-day format, but a steady increase in proposed presentations has led to an expansion from eight or nine sessions in recent meetings to the scheduling of twelve (with two or three concurrent sessions in each time-slot) for the upcoming 1998 meeting in Indianapolis.

Topics for "Focus on Teaching Day" sessions vary widely, including media-focused, document-based, and artifact-based workshops, as well as interdisciplinary and historiographical presentations. Sessions featured at the 1997 annual meeting included such topics as "Teaching the Reconstruction Era" (featuring an address by Eric Foner), "Using the History of Children and Teenagers to Teach High School Students About the American Past," "Methods and Topics That Promote Active Learning," and "Maps Telling Stories: Cartographic Challenges to the Teaching of History." Attendees at "Focus on Teaching Day" sessions generally receive useful handouts, in addition to the information imparted at the sessions. The call for "Focus" proposals is published in the OAH Newsletter and on the OAH website; during the past year the call was also circulated at the annual U.S. History Advanced Placement Reading at Trinity University in San Antonio.

OAH PUBLICATIONS: THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY, THE MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, AND THE NEWSLETTERThe OAH has also demonstrated increasing attention to teachers and teaching issues through its major publications, the Journal of American History (JAH), the Magazine of History, and the OAH Newsletter--each of which plays a distinctly different role within the organization. Long the premier scholarly journal for United States historians, the JAH has greatly enhanced its appeal to teachers under the able and creative editorship of David Thelen. Shortly after Thelen's arrival in 1985, the Journal began to publish reviews of movies. Within a couple of years, two other pedagogy-related features were introduced: Exhibition Reviews and Oral History. Most notably, in 1989, the JAH editorial board decided to create a regular section on Textbooks and Teaching, in which leading historians were to discuss the treatment of particular subjects in major textbooks. Although the first such reviews did not appear in the Journal until March 1992, there have been several such sections published since. Topics treated in the "Textbooks and Teaching" sections have included the History of the West, Popular Culture, Labor History, Progressivism, Family in History, African-American History since the Civil War, Reconstruction, Origins of the Cold War, and International Views of United States History.

The Journal of American History has also broadened its appeal to teachers in other ways. Beginning in 1987, with the special issue on the United States Constitution, the Journal has periodically published special "Roundtable" discussions, featuring contending views of historical issues of importance. Equally notable--and interesting to teachers--was the special issue of the JAH published in December 1994 (volume 81, number 3), entitled "The Practice of American History." In this volume, Part II (entitled "History and Students") included pieces such as "The Public Private Scholarly Teaching Historian," "Practicing History: A High School Teacher's Reflections," and "Evolution of a Self-Made History Teacher.".

While the JAH has been steadily broadening its scope to address the interests of teachers, the OAH's main vehicle for advancing the teaching of American history at all levels has continued to be the Magazine of History, which was begun in 1985. Initially supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Magazine established itself quickly and in 1990 was fully incorporated into the OAH annual budget. It now has approximately 1,200 subscribers, as well as a circulation of 600 within the membership of the OAH (the "history educator" membership carries with it a subscription to the Magazine, rather than the Journal of American History).

The Magazine of History differs from other journals of history pedagogy (including The History Teacher) in significant ways. Each issue is thematically focused on a single teaching topic, with a commissioned guest editor responsible for contents. The model format includes an editor's introduction, an historiographical essay, three or four articles related to the topical theme, and three or four detailed lesson plans. During the past year, issue themes have included Business History, Labor History, Oral History, and the Presidency. Each issue also includes book reviews of interest to teachers. The Magazine has been described as "a major success story" by OAH Executive Director Arnita Jones, and it is well-supported within the organization, with a forty-percent-time managing editor and a half-time assistant editor. Its policies and general health are overseen by an appointed advisory board which includes both scholars and K-12 teachers.

The OAH's other regular publication, the quarterly OAH Newsletter, includes articles of all sorts, but it, too, has reflected growing attention to teachers of history at all levels--and to graduate students. Although the Newsletter does not carry the practical emphasis of the Magazine, it includes features of general interest to practicing historians on such topics as demographics in the profession and the development of national and state-level teaching standards in history.

These efforts to focus publications on teachers' concerns are not new to the organization. Over the years, the OAH has published a number of publications to support the teaching of history--for example, "Restoring Women to History," "Educating Historians for Business," "Historic Preservation: A Guide to Departments of History," and "Teaching Public History to Undergraduates.".

ALLIANCES WITH OTHER HISTORY ORGANIZATIONSPerhaps most emblematic of the OAH's strengthening focus on the teaching of history are its increasingly close connections with two pedagogically-focused organizations, the National History Education Network and the National Center for History in the Schools, housed at UCLA. As an integral partner of both agencies, the OAH has played an important role in the development and "vetting" of national history standards and has kept abreast of issues related to development of state-level standards across the country.

The OAH's interest in standards for teaching history in the schools is fully consistent with its historic mission and interests. For example, in 1943 its predecessor, the MVHA, joined with the American Historical Association and the National Council for Social Studies to produce a report addressing harsh public criticism of American schools. Several years later--as McCarthyism gathered strength and some local governments engaged in "censorship" that stripped public and school libraries of "offensive" works, the MVHA and AHA established a joint Committee on Textbook Pressures to try to stem such activity. And in the 1970s, when then-Executive Secretary Richard Kirkendall established the Committee on the Status of History in the Schools and Colleges, the main objective was to conduct a survey and produce a report that might serve to "wake up" the populace to deficiencies in history education at the national level.

The OAH's current involvement in questions related to teaching standards is well reflected in its affiliation with the National History Education Network (NHEN; see preceding article). Established in 1993 as an outgrowth of the History Teaching Alliance and an informal network of individuals from the AHA, OAH, and Southern Historical Association, NHEN has become an important integrative organization for those concerned about the teaching of American history. In particular, NHEN has been vigilant in following the process of developing history standards in the various states, providing valuable information on these efforts to its sponsoring organizations, including the OAH. Currently, the OAH Executive Board is considering the possibility of issuing a general statement on state history standards, for which the Committee on Teaching provided an initial draft..

The OAH has been more visibly and actively involved in the work of developing national history standards than in the state-level battles, largely through its collaborative work with UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools, led by Professor Gary Nash (himself a recent OAH president). The OAH was not initially connected with the National Center, which was established in 1991 by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education. Shortly thereafter, however, the OAH was one of several professional organizations asked to participate in formal reviews of the successive drafts. Although the OAH Executive Board did not formally endorse the resulting standards (the Basic Edition, a revised version of the initial one), it approved their dissemination. The organization has subsequently played an important role in educating its members as to the content of the standards and about the controversies attendant to their development. As the standard-setting process continues, the OAH can be counted on to play a significant and constructive role in working with both decision-making bodies and teachers, to ensure effective implementation.

CONCLUSIONThe activities described in this brief overview represent only a part of the OAH's work with teachers to improve history instruction at all levels. Other relevant efforts include collaboration with the National Center for History in the Schools to produce a series of teaching units based on primary documents, sponsorship of more than thirty regional teaching conferences in 1995-96, and active support (reflected in the Executive Director's membership on the Board of Trustees) for National History Day. It is clear that the Organization of American Historians will continue into the foreseeable future to maintain and strengthen its tradition of active commitment and service to practicing teachers of history at all levels, even while upholding its traditional role as a learned society concerned with advancing the frontiers of historical knowledge.

For information on membership in the Organization of American Historians, please write to: OAH, 112 N. Bryan St., Bloomington, IN 47408-4199, or see the web page: http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eoah.

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Gary Reichard is associate vice president for academic affairs and professor of history at California State University, Long Beach. His prior teaching and administrative positions have been at Ohio State University, the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland--College Park, and Florida Atlantic University. A specialist in recent United States history and American political history, he is currently working on a biography of Hubert H. Humphrey. He has been a longtime reader in Advanced Placement U.S. History, and in 1997 served as chair of the Teaching Committee of the Organization of American Historians.

* I wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of Arnita Jones, Executive Director of the Organization of American Historians, who made available a 1996 background paper, "The OAH and History Education Reform," from which much of this information is derived. Thanks also to Michael Regoli, Director of Publications at the OAH, for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.