Purpose: This article explores the expressed thoughts and feelings of 24 research participants who processed and articulated their lived experiences. They each attended the same private, religious, historically, and predominantly White institution and participated in a three-credit course that covered the history of the Civil Rights Movement of…

The 1619 Project by "The New York Times" asks American History teachers to revise their history curriculum to recognize the influence of Blackness, and of slavery, as foundational to the development of the United States. In this article I share a practical approach, including lesson plans and learning activities, to a similar revision of…

December 1, 2015, marked the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus in 1955. This incident sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the mid-20th century civil rights movement. A century before Parks' act of resistance, African American schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings was…

This paper reports results from a six-state study of 62 USA social studies classrooms. We examined the extent to which intellectually challenging authentic pedagogy was present in study classrooms, the characteristics of classroom practice at different levels of authentic pedagogy, and how those characteristics may promote or inhibit high levels…

This study examined the 4th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments (history, geography, and civics) and 3rd- and 4th-grade social studies standards from nine randomly selected states and organized the content around three global concepts (conflict, movement, discovery) and six specific concepts (war, rebellion,…

Exploring controversial and difficult events and issues with young children can be challenging. The Civil Rights Movement is an abstract, perhaps remote, issue for young children today. However, it is an important part of our country's history and a theme worthy of study. This article suggests ways to use photographs to explore this mature subject…

The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at the states that have designed strong history standards and note what has made them exceptional so other states might do the same. They include Alabama, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and South Carolina. The report draws on interviews with individuals from each state who sat on…

This study investigated the strategic uses of music in the U.S. history classroom of six expert secondary U.S. history teachers identified by their administrators as expert teachers based on the merit of national certification, exemplary student and/or administration evaluations, high achieving teacher awards, or a combination of these criteria.…

Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of the role of the school librarian in the twenty-first century, but, for many reasons, collaboration is challenging to implement. Some classroom teachers may not know how students benefit from the classroom-school library collaboration. Others may be unwilling to relinquish control of their…

This study was an action research design which examined the effects of infusing the local history of North Alabama into the traditional Early American History curriculum to assess the effect on student interest, multicultural awareness, and success on the Alabama High School Graduation Exam history portion. This study found no significance when…

This teaching unit, "The Alabama Constitution of 1901 Unit," is the sixth in a series of 10 units about Alabama state history, part of a project designed to help teachers integrate the use of primary source materials into their classrooms. Although the units are designed to augment the study of Alabama, they are useful in the study of…

This teaching unit, "The Great Depression Unit," is the eighth in a series of 10 units about Alabama state history, part of a project designed to help teachers integrate the use of primary source materials into their classrooms. Although the units are designed to augment the study of Alabama, they are useful in the study of U.S. history,…

Students from the University of Montevallo, Alabama's public liberal arts university, re-created the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) approximately twenty miles north of Corinth, Mississippi. For ten weeks in a classroom environment, nineteen students studied strategy, operations, and tactics that affected events nearly 143 years prior. Then,…

This teaching unit, "Creek Indian War," is the first of a series of 10 units about Alabama state history, part of a project designed to help teachers integrate the use of primary source materials into their classrooms. Although the units are designed to augment the study of Alabama, they are useful in the study of U.S. history, world…

This teaching unit, "Reconstruction Unit," which deals with the post-Civil War period, is the fifth of a series of 10 units about Alabama state history, part of a project designed to help teachers integrate the use of primary source materials into their classrooms. Although the units are designed to augment the study of Alabama, they are…