There is a long history in the United States of collaboration between the academy and K-12 educators. Indeed, history, as an academic discipline in America, began in an atmosphere of professorial concern about history's place in the schools. In this article, the author provides a brief and general overview of the history of collaborative efforts between professors and K-12 teachers and discusses the lesson from these earlier cooperative efforts among the schools and the academy. His hope is that as more college and university faculty become involved in teacher institutes, they will experience the great benefits of working with K-12 teachers and administrators. As more college and university administrators become fully cognizant of the positive impact that these partnerships have on the community, including the direct impact they can have on the quality of students coming into institutions of higher learning, they too will become promoters of these collaborations. They will better understand how to reward faculty for their efforts to promote the teaching of history outside of the college classroom. (Contains 18 endnotes.)