YouTube. Snapchat. Instagram. TikTok. WhatsApp. Kik. Discord. Houseparty. VSCO. Ask students to share how they entertain themselves during their downtime and their list might look something like this. Now, ask them to imagine that if they could not stream or use an electronic device, how they would keep themselves engaged using analog ways. When…

Bomba is an emblematic Puerto Rican musical genre that emerged 400 years ago from the colonial plantations where West African slaves and their descendants worked. It remains one of the most popular forms of folk music on the island and serves as significant evidence of its rich African heritage. This article explores the main components of bomba…

As early as the mid-1970s, William H. McNeill, the father of modern world history scholarship, warned that the pervasive tendency for faculty to pursue ever-narrowing specializations, combined with a widespread distaste for teaching survey courses, will be history's undoing. In his mind, without concerted pedagogical attention aimed at both…

Frustrated by her students' glib use of catch-all terms such as 'militarism' in addressing causation, Alexia Michalaki wanted her Year 9 students to produce mature causal explanations of World War I. To encourage this to happen she went back into decades of pedagogical writing and research, teasing out the ways in which others have sought to…

In this article, the author describes their class, titled "The World in A Year: A Global History of 1948," that was created to give students exposure to a set of events that, when scaffolded strategically, highlighted themes and processes featured in most global history courses: imperialism, environmental change, social hierarchy,…

This timely book examines how fascist ideology has taken hold among certain segments of American society and how this can be addressed in curriculum and instruction. Vavrus presents middle, secondary, and college educators and their students with a conceptual framework for enacting a critical multicultural pedagogy by analyzing discriminatory…

This book offers the tools teachers need to get started with a more thoughtful and compelling approach to teaching history, one that develops literacy and higher-order thinking skills, connects the past to students' lives today, and meets social studies 3C standards and most state standards (grades 6-12). The author provides over 90 primary…

How has schooling functioned in the construction of meritocratic national systems historically? To what extent will these historical patterns and normative commitments continue in the new era of a global meritocracy? And ultimately, how can educators effectively balance the inherent tension between individual merit and standardized quality? Kariya…

This learning activity, "Feeding Your Family for a Year," teaches students about how the shift from nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian societies led to inequities in resources, which in turn allowed a leisure class to develop (Cordes & Ibrahim, 2003). The activity demonstrates how an unequal distribution of resources,…

COVID-19 offers a unique opportunity to transform the K-12 social studies curriculum, but history suggests that changes to the formal curriculum will not come easily or automatically. This book was conceived in the space between the dismantling of our old way of life and the anticipation of what comes next. The authors in this volume--leading…

World history curriculum continues to be plagued by Eurocentric narratives and perspectives eliminating local and community agency in Caribbean history. Textbooks and curriculum standards exclude much of Caribbean history and marginalize the influence and contributions of the African Diaspora. Oftentimes, Caribbean achievements are attributed to…

James Loewen has revised "Teaching What Really Happened", the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled…

The purpose of this article is to introduce text sets of picture books that address 10 ancient civilizations commonly taught in middle school and also offer instructional strategies that could be used for critical and multicultural literacy exploration. Beginning with discussion of the importance of picture books and text sets in the middle school…

Learn how to design history lessons that foster students' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic engagement. Each section of this practical resource introduces a key element of civic engagement, such as defending the rights of others, advocating for change, taking action when problems are observed, compromising to promote reform, and…

A thoughtfully designed digital text can provide classroom teachers with a powerful resource for addressing an enduring challenge of the K-12 classroom: how to simultaneously provide individualized and student-centered learning experiences for large class sizes and highly diverse student needs. The author describes how she relied on digital texts…