Every morning at Brookhaven High School, the junior classshuffles before Mike Powell, group by group, to learn U.S.History.

Covering the nation’s chronicle from 1877 to the present day,the 10-year veteran teacher and football coach takes his studentsout west to pan for gold in the late 1800s. He urges them acrossthe beaches of Normandy in 1944. He walks with them across the moonin 1969.

But Powell also takes the time to connect his pupils to the pastby way of their homeland.

When the class studies the removal of Native Americans from theSouth in the 1830s, they walk west with the Choctaw fromMississippi. When the nation boomed and flappers danced into thenight during the Jazz Age in the 1920s, they trace the music backto the Delta Blues. When young men were consumed by fire in thejungles of Vietnam in the 1960s, the class goes online to look upthe names of the dead from Brookhaven and Lincoln County at TheVirtual Wall.

“The more you can connect history to home and expand from thereas national history, the easier it is to relate to,” Powellsaid.

Next summer, teachers from around Southwest Mississippi willhave the opportunity to learn more ways to study U.S. history froma Magnolia State standpoint when a series of workshops funded bythe Teaching American History grant will be held. The sessions,which will be carried out over a three-year period, will featurelocal and national historians from state universities and elsewherethat will train teachers in new ways to look at American historythrough a local lens.

One of the two $1 million grants was awarded to the McCombSchool District, which will share the resources with several localdistricts, including the Brookhaven and Lincoln County systems. The”Making Connections: Mississippi History as American History”program will focus on how important moments in U.S. historyaffected the development of Mississippi.

About 55 area history teachers are expected to participate inthe program.

“Because it is so tied-in to Mississippi, we hope it will helpour students become more interested in history because it will beabout things they know as well,” said Brookhaven School DistrictSuperintendent Lea Barrett. “I’m hoping it will ultimately increaseour achievement for our students.”

In the northern part of the state, the Corinth School District’sgrant will be shared with 15 school districts, including some inAlabama and Tennessee. Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Educationis distributing more than $115 million to run the program for 124school districts