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It was, and remains, the bluest blue I have ever seen. As I stood on a rock jutting out over Crater Lake, the remnants of a massive volcanic eruption 7,700 years ago, I thought about the immensity…
On the last Monday in May the nation celebrates Memorial Day. It is, of course, a day off from school and work and the unofficial beginning of the summer. There are cookouts, picnics, and always a…
No one captured oral history like Studs Terkel. He was a one-of-a-kind radio show personality, a fixture in Chicago broadcasting, where he held court at WFMT for four and half decades, from 1952…
When most people think of the civil rights movement, they think of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and his acceptance…
So many of our students arrive with a negative impression of the discipline of history. They have come to the conclusion that the study of history is about memorizing a ton of dull facts. Why…
Last time, I began to survey how American artists viewed the Great War (1914–1918). This NEH-supported exhibition, World War I and American Art, has uncovered forgotten works that could…
World War I (1914-1918) has been called the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century, leading to the destruction of four empires (Russian, German, Austrian-Hungrian, and Ottoman), the rise of…
“Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community” is a series developed by the Academy of American Poets in collaboration with EDSITEment that enlists the voices of nine contemporary American poets,…
Americans elect a president through the state-by-state mechanism of the Electoral College rather than direct nationwide popular vote. Today, all but two states award all of their electoral votes…
How can we help students better understand the long history of immigration to the United States and the experiences of contemporary immigrants and refugees? How do we encourage students to compare…
“Life in the galloping flatlands was a pact with nature. It gave as much as it took, and in 1935 it was all take.”—Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time
You are a teenager growing up…
Each of these twenty-one poems or poetic forms for AP Literature and Composition includes a link to the poem and multimedia resources such as EDSITEment lessons and EDSITEment-reviewed websites…
Using art as a teaching resource. Whether you’re in the classroom or on a field trip, artworks are a fantastic way to engage students. But how do you go beyond art as illustration and use it as…
The month of May is an opportunity for reflection on and commemoration of all that Jewish Americans have accomplished and contributed to U.S. history and culture. This piece highlights NEH…
More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source. —Historian Stephen Ambrose
Curriculum unit on the historical context of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle and how the book helped reform efforts in Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and…
A curriculum unit of three lessons in which students explore Hopi place names, poetry, song, and traditional dance to better understand the ways Hopi people connect with the land and environment…
Winesburg, Ohio presents a galaxy of strange and distorted characters in a small town in Sandusky County, not far from Cleveland, well over one hundred years ago. Even a casual glance…
During the Early Modern era (1450–1750), the expansion in maritime trade and the incorporation of the Americas into worldwide exchanges meant the world became increasingly interconnected. These…
A French aristocrat visits Jacksonian America
In 1831, an ambitious and unusually perceptive twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States. His…
“Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the most influential books ever written about America. While historians have viewed “Democracy” as a rich source about the age of Andrew…
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a novel that engages middle school students in thought-provoking discussion, and provides practice in literary analysis skills. The three lessons in this…
This feature is a guide to using informational read-aloud text, “Amazing Whales!” by Sarah L. Thomson. It introduces this species to young naturalists in the primary grades K–1, who are mastering…
This unit is a study of the shifts in narrative voice and literary genres that Melville makes throughout Moby-Dick. It serves to introduce students to several unique features of the novel without…
The Berlin Wall & Beyond is an online high school curriculum for teaching World History, which focuses on the critical post-World War II period. Once united as allies in their war…
Tennessee Williams’ classic play The Glass Menagerie (1944) was an extension of the Expressionism that was then prevalent in mid-century Europe. The Expressionist Movement was marked by certain…
Teacher guide “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by W. B. Yeats includes information about the poem and discussion questions. The included supplementary documents provide contextual background on…
Between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and George Washington (February 22), our commercial republic* has come to celebrate a national holiday unofficially called “Presidents' Day…
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, is a CCSS exemplar for grades 11 – CCR taught at the upper high school level and in AP English. This three lesson unit looks at a variety of schisms and…
In The Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid synthesizes the mythology of his age into a treasury of stories about gods who were lovers, warriors, tricksters, and heroes. This CCSS unit…