THINK HISTORY is a professional development program for grades 6-12 Social Studies Educators in southeastern Ohio . Funded through a Teaching American History grant from the United States Department of Education , this program brings together the resources of the Perry-Hocking Educational Resource Center , the Ohio Historical Society , and Ohio University to support and improve the teaching of traditional American history.

Each year, thirty-two teachers will have the opportunity to interact with OU faculty, and OHS curators and archivists. Participants will visit historic sites and explore national, state and local history. School-year programs will consist of four Saturday seminars, a regional seminar at an OHS site and OU regional campus, and a research day at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus . An intensive content-based residential Summer Institute at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus will follow the seminars in June.

All THINK HISTORY activities relate to one of four core themes: (1) Westward Expansion, (2) Constitutional and Political History, (3) Industrialization, and (4) Migration and Immigration.

THINK HISTORY reinforces new state standards in Ohio and helps to create new unit plans and curriculum guides for use by all Ohio teachers. Teachers can also share the curricular materials they create with their colleagues in the program on the website.

The participants in THINK HISTORY have access to the wealth of primary materials available at the Ohio Historical Society for use in the seminars and their classrooms. The full-time Project Curator identifies collections related to the four core themes and makes the materials, including documents, photographs, maps, diaries, posters, and archeological artifacts, available to the teachers. Under the guidance of the Project Curator, the teachers then use these resources to connect local events to national themes, invigorate the classroom experience, and encourage the development of their students' critical thinking skills. The materials are available not only during the seminars, but in one-on-one sessions or in small groups with the Project Curator. In addition, most of the OHS materials used in the THINK HISTORY project will be digitized and made available on this website.