Useful Links for American History Teachers

I retired from teaching a decade ago but still take an interest in education. A few of my blog posts might interest history or social studies teachers.

I started writing my own materials my first year in a classroom, when I found the textbook our school used was almost never interesting to students. I always tried to humanize those we studied and read voraciously, looking for examples and stories that would intrigue students and illustrate important points.

You can find a few of these stories—and a couple of ideas for classroom control—if you check out the following links.

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Many teachers have said they like the reading list I compiled for my students. If you’re an avid reader yourself (and most social studies teachers are) see: A Reading List for American History.

Several hundred books are listed and briefly described.

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I am particularly proud of my post about 9/11, which has been viewed almost 24,000 times on my blog. This one I wrote after I retired. But I’m pretty sure, based on several decades dealing with teens, that it would interest students. It’s moving in the way I believe history should move people.

See: Who Were Those People Who Died on 9/11?

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The post on Jim Crow has been viewed more than 20,000 times. I had a reading similar to this, which I used in my classroom.

I know my students were always stunned by the variety of ways in which the races were segregated, spanning the spectrum of life, from cruelty to idiocy (no interracial checker playing!?!)

See: In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.: 100 Examples of Jim Crow.

The Emperor of A, B, C and D also deals with the topic, from the perspective of how constraining standardized testing can be. You might get a couple of ideas on how to address the topic, however.

See also: The Emperor of A, B, C and D (Auxiliary Post), which is more popular on my blog than the original post.

Of interest: Sixty Years Ago: Brown v. Board of Education.

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My students always liked the story of Women in the Revolution. (I sell an updated and better version on my website at TpT, called “Remember the Ladies.” This reading worked perfectly as the basis for a full-period skit.

In fact, I tried hard to increase the focus on women in history. You might also like A Bride Goes West: A Woman’s View of Frontier Montana. I can attest that my classes always found Nannie Alderson’s story of ranching and raising a family on the frontier, starting in 1883, to be interesting.)

Your students might also be interested in You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, the story of the fight for women’s rights that began in the 1960s.

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The story of Thomas Jefferson’s Slave Son, Madison Hemings, might fill in an interesting piece when you cover slavery.

Oddly enough, I found using stories from Gone with the Wind helped students understand what slavery was really like. The author, Margaret Mitchell, was blind to reality, which helped make a critical point. See: Teaching About Slavery: A Novel Approach.

Another excellent resource, if you’ve never seen it, is A Former Slave Writes His Master.

For a few good ideas you might find value in you look at Teaching about Slavery.

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Another topic we covered in depth in my class was the Holocaust—and the whole horrible history of dehumanization (including by teens of other teens). You might find value in: Notes on Hitler and the Nazis (the opening quote, alone is useful, and always caught my students’ attention). If you’ve never read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from which many of the details come, I highly recommend it.

Light summer reading at a mere 1,136 pages!

See also: Holocaust Ideas for Teachers.

And, if you’ve never read Mein Kampf, I can spare you the pain: I Read Mein Kampf so You Don’t Have To.

I sometimes compared the ideals in the Declaration of Independence with the thinking of Adolf Hitler, with good result.

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My classes always liked the story of the Salem Witch Trials. In fact, I did the same lecture on the topic, six times a day, twenty-five years in succession, until I could have talked about the trials in my sleep.

Details on the trials and stories from women who traveled West by wagon and the picture of the sequoia tree branch always got students’ attention. See: A Few Good Ideas for American History.

You might also get some ideas about the Pilgrims from: The First Thanksgiving: What Your Third Grade Teacher Didn’t Tell You.

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The gold rush seemed easy to make interesting. The story of the gold nugget found in Brazil in 1985—the size of a briefcase—always sparked interest. The story of the S.S. Central America is also compelling. See: A Few Good Ideas for American History, Part II.

Photo from author's collection; not far from Jeffrey City, Wyoming (population 58)
My students were always interested in pioneer days and the idea of wide open spaces.
Wyoming, even today, has five people per square mile.

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If you’ve never had veterans talk to your students—and I mean really talk about what war is like—our school found it was easy to get them to come in and visit for a whole day. Joe Whitt’s story about the Battle of Savo Island made it hard to hold back tears. Some of our former students, who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan now visit my old school. It was one of the best days we had every year—and now that I’m retired that remains true with younger teachers taking over the program. See: The Veterans Come to Loveland Middle School. (We also found it relatively easy to set this up, so students heard a number of speakers all on the same day.)

See also: Sham Standards: Governor Kasich and the Standardized Testing Fetish.

Scars from the Civil War and Scars Today might help you tie the experiences of soldiers in 1863 with soldiers today.

If you want one good story about what it was like to serve for four bloody years in the Confederate army, Sam Watkins’ tale is great. My student loved this reading; and we used it (and others on the war) to do a great skit. For the reading, see: A Rebel Soldier’s War. 

To understand how my students turned detailed readings into memorable presentations, see the ending to: The Yellow Brick Road to Nowhere.

For ideas about how to work really good skits into your own class, see: How I Worked Skits in My Class. My students performed marvelously when it came to this kind of activity.

Teaching about Gettysburg may also provide teachers with a few useful ideas.

Personally, I always tried to make sure my students knew war wasn’t glamorous. You might like: The Tenth Anniversary of the Start of the Iraq War.

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If you’d need good examples of why the fight for freedom mattered in the period from 1517 to 1689, see: The Battle for Freedom in England and America. The examples here might help students understand why the U.S. Constitution includes the guarantees of liberty it does.

I always enjoyed focusing on the Declaration of Independence. I explain how we approached that topic in Do You Know What the Declaration of Independence Means?

My students found the story of Watergate fascinating. See: An Affair Called Watergate.

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I had fun teaching about the Northwest Cultures, along the Pacific coast, and my students seemed to enjoy the lesson. See: Stefanie’s Astute Observation.

If you focus on Native American cultures, the story of the Chachapoya, who were crushed by the Incas, might be of passing interest. My students found it interesting to imagine that at a time the French and English were establishing their national boundaries, the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in South America, were doing the same. See: The Chachapoya of Peru (A. D. 650 to 1470).

 

Notes on Sitting Bull and the Sioux may also provide examples to use in your classes.

I found William Taylor’s account (he survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn) to be of great interest. I read his story after I retired. See: With Custer on the Little Big Horn. Again, you may be able to pick out details and work them into your own lessons.

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In honor of my father, I did a post comparing life in 1915, the year he was born, to life a century later. Teachers might find some of the examples interesting. See: What a Difference a Century Makes.

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The tragic story of three sailors trapped alive inside the sunken battleship West Virginia, after the attack on Pearl Harbor is chilling and sad. See: A Particular Tragedy at Pearl Harbor.

If you’d like a reading about the attack itself, see: The Story of Pearl Harbor. My students found this interesting.

The story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is also compelling.

General Interest: Classroom Management

I highly recommend this seating chart, which students liked and also allowed for improved classroom control—a winning combination! Not that any of us ever have to worry about classroom control: The Best Seating Chart Ever.

I did come up with a creative way to use writing “punishments.” See: Elvis’ Belly Button Lint. Or: “Stupid Essays” as a Creative Punishment. These two posts are a bit duplicative, I’m afraid.

I had good success posting interesting quotes on my classroom walls. See: A Few Quotes that Still Matter.

If you’d like to read about a few errors to avoid as a young teacher (or an old one, for that matter), you might enjoy “Snowballs” Fly in History Class and Other Mistakes.

The Case of the Missing Homework might amuse you, as my students played a trick on me with great success.

I’m sure every middle school teacher in history has had to deal with the problem of students being bullied. I explain my approach: Bullies in Middle School.

I do sell my best writing for students at my TpT website: Middle School History and Tips for Teachers.

A Few Good Ideas (I Think) for American History; Part II

I THOUGHT A FEW TEACHERS might be able to use these pictures, all from my personal collection. I’m retired, myself. Copy them if you like.

I pedaled a bicycle across the USA in 2007 and again in 2011. Imagine trying to cross this kind of terrain in a wagon.

Above: a view of Tioga Pass, leading into Yosemite National Park. For perspective, there is a large RV (a white speck) above the handle bars of my bicycle on the road you see.

A view a Mountain Man might see; lake near the top of Tioga Pass.

Another view a Mountain Man might see. Morning near Deadville, Colorado, elevation just over 10,000 feet above sea level. (This is my view from my tent, camping near a mountain stream.)

I never thought of this when I was teaching, it might be fun to ask students what last words people spoke when their loved ones drove away, heading west in 1844 or 1849.

I liked to start a discussion of the gold rush by noting a story of the Brazilian gold rush of the 1980's. The big strike began when a tree was uprooted in a storm. Gold nuggets were revealed in the roots.

The rush was on; eventually one miner found a gold nugget the size of a briefcase. (I always went to my desk and pulled my briefcase out and plunked it down. Gold, being dense, is quite heavy, of course. A gold bar the size of a house brick would weigh about fifty pounds. I liked to note that gold was selling for X dollars per ounce. A pound of gold is 12 troy ounces. When I checked today, gold was $1,255.70 per ounce, making a pound of gold worth $15,068.40. Or: a gold brick would be worth $753,420.

If you are not familiar with the story of the S.S. Central America, which sank in 1857, after picking up a load of gold in California, my students were fascinated by that tale. Tommy Thompson, an Ohioan interested in underwater recovery technology, heard about the wreck (off the Atlantic Coast of the United States, located it, and brought up hundreds of millions in gold, gold coins, gold bars, even gold dust.

Fifty million dollars’ went on display earlier this year. I don’t own the picture below; but it might capture student attention.

Many a miner (and there were a few women) headed west to make their fortunes but came home busted or broke.

Miners had a limited menu, one man joked, pretty much bacon and flapjacks, with coffee to wash a meal down. It was said that one miner got so good at flipping his pancakes he could flip one up the chimney of his cabin, run outside, and catch it on the way down.

We used to do a skit on miners in my class. It was always fun to have a few pancakes or frozen waffles and ask one of the students in the skit to demonstrate his flipping skill, behind the back, etc.

Bouncing a frozen waffle off the classroom ceiling was always kind of fun.

You may know Crockett’s story. Running for re-election to Congress, he told the voters, if they didn’t vote for him, they could go to hell and he’d go to Texas.

They didn’t and he went to his doom at the Alamo. I always tried to make it clear to students that they should remember the Alamo, themselves. It stands as an example of a total wipe out, if nothing else.

In the movie, Black Hawk Down, for example, a young soldier, surrounded with his buddies, says, “I feel like we’re at the Alamo.”

Custer’s Last Stand and Thermopylae also work.

Few of my Ohio students had ever driven across the United States. They had no idea how flat Kansas was. I found on a bicycle that I could see grain towers in towns twelve miles away. Met these two young riders heading east, as I was pedaling west.

The sunflower represents Kansas, of course. And that reminds me of poor Alf Landon, absolutely creamed in the 1936 election, with the electoral vote going 523-8 in favor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Only Vermont and Maine went for the Republican.

Roosevelt ran with John Nance Garner as his vice presidential candidate; I always liked to tell students Garner’s response when offered the second spot on the ticket. The position, he said, “was not worth bucket of warm spit.”

Some say other bodily fluids were mentioned. 

A good question to start a discussion in class was always to ask students to name the three greatest American presidents (according to a survey of American historians). My students usually got Washington and Lincoln right; but FDR usually escaped them. Kennedy was often a response, or Reagan, or Teddy Roosevelt.

I usually explained that historians rated Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman as “near greats.”

Too soon to tell about Trump, although this blogger has his own opinion. According to a recent survey of 170 historians, the current occupant of the Oval Office has some room to go up in the polls.

If you are ever talking about trade, I found it ironic that even at Mt. Rushmore, almost everything for sale in the gift shop was made in China or other foreign lands. It was the same with Christmas ornaments in the gift shop at Yosemite National Park, and with the Bobblehead Presidents at Andrew Jackson’s home, The Hermitage.

Yes, indeed. Made in China!

If a modern American tried to argue that he or she practiced the same religion as the Aztecs, would that be covered under the First Amendment?

Okay, stupid joke.

By comparison the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Native Americans can use peyote in their religious ceremonies.

Animal sacrifice? Yes, for some groups that’s also allowed.

Freedom of religion cases can be tricky. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision earlier this year, a Colorado baker won his legal battle after claiming his religion taught him gay marriage was sinful. So he shouldn’t have to bake a cake for two gays who wanted to marry. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, following the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, practiced polygamy for almost fifty years; but lost the right in 1890. On what grounds? 

If a Muslim-American claimed his religion gave him the right to have four wives, and the Quran does, how would courts rule? The Quran predates the U.S. Constitution by more than 1,100 years.

I’d bring these examples up, but I wouldn’t give my opinions at all. I’d only want to get students thinking about how the courts work.

One great rule of thumb, in deciding cases involving the Bill of Rights, was set down by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. He explained, basically: “Your right ends where the other fellow’s nose begins.”

One Native American compared the hunting done by pioneers on lands his people had long claimed to what Boone would think if the Native Americans came to his farm and shot all his cows.

In later years, Boone was often accompanied on hunting trips by his slave, Derry Coburn, both men going armed. That’s an image of slavery that doesn’t quite fit. On one occasion, Boone caught his hand in a big bear trap and couldn’t get loose himself. He staggered back to camp, Coburn helped free his hand, and then went back to cooking dinner, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

On the other hand, an escaped slave named Pompey took part in the attack on Boonseboro 

I don’t own this picture; but Caleb Bingham’s paintings from the 1840s capture a great deal of American life.

What might students notice about this election day in Missouri, c. 1844?

My students (I taught in Loveland, Ohio, a suburb near Cincinnati) were interested in the story of the first professional sports team in U.S. history, the 1869 Red Stockings. These ladies could have watched a game.

That year, the Red Stockings finished the season 65-0. They started strong again in 1870, winning another nineteen games to start the season. In one eight-game stretch the Cincinnati club scored 58, 66, 54, 76, 65, 56, 51 and 63 runs. One unlucky opposing squad was buried 103-8.

Finally, their streak of 84 wins ended with an 11-inning, 8-7 defeat to the Brooklyn Atlantics. That defeat came in part after a fan jumped on the back of a Red’s outfielder as he tried to pick up a ground ball. (Fans in the outfield were often standing just back of the playing field.

I thought this story worked well to force students to think and examine different points of view. John Brown (above) once led a raid on a farm in Missouri, where eleven slaves were held. In the dark of night, the farmer heard commotion and came out on his porch, armed. Brown’s men shot and killed him, loaded the slaves into a wagon and escaped.

Was this murder? What would the farmer’s wife say? What would the slaves say? What might John Brown himself say?

My students never seemed to know what “artillery,” “cavalry” and “infantry” were. I tried to help them figure it out.

(I was a “heroic” desk jockey during my stint in the Marines.)

 

My students never seemed to know what “artillery,” “cavalry” and “infantry” were. I tried to help them figure it out.

(I was a “heroic” desk jockey during my stint in the Marines.)

A draft wheel used during the Civil War to select the names of men bound for service. My students rarely knew how the draft worked.

A good question for discussion: Should all young Americans, at age 18, have to serve two years in the military?

Certainly, the Civil War rule, allowing a rich man to pay for a substitute struck most students as wrong.

I don’t own this painting by Winslow Homer, but loved to use it to humanize the people who fought in the Civil War. Titled “Playing Old Soldier,” I asked students what they thought the man seated was doing.

Faking sick, I believe. Not that any of our students ever fake it to get out of coming to our class.

Compare the technological advance—ironclad warships in 1862—to advances in modern times: drone warfare, robots to enter buildings, night-vision goggles and many more. I used to explain that the United States had battleships that could fire 16-inch shells weighing more than a ton from the Ohio River (assuming you could get a battleship up the river, of course) and hit Loveland.

The range of 24 miles was just about right.

This barn, just off I-71, north of Cincinnati, reflects the owner’s sentiments. Even many of my African Americans students did not know what this symbol could mean.

Immigrants have always rallied to the U.S. flag in time of war. Recruiting Germans after the firing on Ft. Sumter.

Crossing the barren stretches of Nevada by wagon had to be hard. Ask the Donner Party about that. Even today, the main road across the middle of the state is known as “The Loneliest Highway in America.”

From the spot where I took this picture you could turn in all directions and see the same basic scene. Sagebrush and…more sagebrush.

Scenes from Salt Lake City: Monument to the Mormon handcart pioneers, who traveled thousands of miles, pulling all their own possessions.

Model of the main temple (middle), the main temple (above).

Students rarely know there were multiple gold and silver rushes in the West. A gold strike in 1859 led to the founding of a town called Bodie, California (below). Eventually, Bodie could boast of a population of 10,000.

Bodie sits at 8,379 feet above sea level. In winter the snows fall heavily and weather can be brutally cold.

Once the gold ran out, the town slowly lost population. Today it’s a ghost town.

While the town thrived, it is said there was an average of one murder per day. The school teacher was said to carry several pistols and knives to work. The school appears in the picture directly above.

I had good success, after covering the gold rush asking students to write stories about some miner or some other participant, now a ghost.

Wisdom on the Walls

I remember attending an in-service day and listening to a gentleman say that we should do more to decorate the walls of our classrooms.

He suggested that we hang up family pictures and diplomas and I could see his point immediately. I have always enjoyed a good quote and started printing them out on little posters and sticking them up all around.

My favorite, and the touchstone of my entire history class was this:

Some quotes I included for the humor—since humor never hurts when dealing with teens. One came from Shakespeare: “You are not worth the dust the rude wind blows in your face.” I liked the comedy of the insult and added it to my collection. One day, I was walking through the lunch room when Josh Parton, one of my funniest students, called out from the distance:

“Mr. Viall! You are not worth the dust the rude wind blows in your face.” We both had a good laugh and I was glad a little of the Bard’s wisdom resonated with at least one student.

Here are a sampling, a few of my favorite quotes out of several hundred, turned into posters for a history classroom:

Humor.

A reminder for teachers and students:

Character Education:

Understanding others:

Understanding ourselves:

A plug for reading:

We all understand this:

The Tao of Forest Gump:

Something for everyone to remember when arguing:

Attitudes are a key to success in any endeavor:

Positve reinforcement is probably overused:

How teen peer groups form:  

Useful when discussing any war:

This one is for teachers:

Why do we study history?

The people in the past are like us.

I used to be a lazy student myself:

Never trust anyone who wants to make you hate:

Not that students will ever lie to get out of trouble!

The saddest question:

Lincoln explains his philosphy in a few words:

Truman explains his philosophy in even fewer:

A classic political put-down:

For World History, a warning about tyranny:

We did a great deal of writing in my class. I tried to impress this idea on students:

Not bad advice for living:

Send me an email if you are interested in seeing more of these.

vilejjv@yahoo.com