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A community-driven blog providing resources for educators, by educators.

    Pole Vaulting Your Way Through the DBQ

    Teaching a young, eager, and naive student how to write a sophisticated DBQ is like teaching a similarly inexperienced athlete how to successfully clear the bar in a pole vault competition. You wouldn’t set them on the runway with a 12-foot long...

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    Students talking together at ashared table. One has a laptop open and the other two have textbooks and notebooks open.

    Black History Month: African American Experiences Post-Civil War

    In honor of Black History Month, I have created a lesson that can be used for students to learn (or review what they have learned) about African...

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    Taking of Jake Livingston book cover

    Black History Month: He Sees Dead People

    My mother tells this story of being so exhausted that she couldn’t get up to rock my older brother, her first child, back to sleep in the middle of...

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    A book sits open with a magnifying glass laying on top. Behind the open books are large stacks of historical documents.

    AP® Gov: Document Analysis

    Whether you felt relieved or intimidated by the nine foundational documents in AP U.S. Government and Politics after the redesign, you likely had to...

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    Architecture, Design & Structure in Literature

    Ernest Hemingway once famously said that “Prose is architecture. It’s not interior design.” Well-known for the sparsity and tight structure of his...

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    Black History Month

    Dear Son, (A Black History Month Mini-Lesson)

    On December 20, four days after his semester finished, my youngest son flew home for Christmas break. On December 29, he flew back—19 days before his...

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    Cover of Born a Crime by Trevor Noah with library in the background

    New Beginnings: Born a Crime

    Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood is a memoir by Trevor Noah about his upbringing in South Africa and how he became a popular...

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    board balancing on a rock. On either side of the board balances two piles of rocks, the one on the left with more.

    Analyzing Historians' Perspectives on the Rwandan Genocide

    The following lesson plan uses the historical thinking skills of comparative and cause and effect to analyze two historians' perspectives on the...

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    Tokyo in the springtime

    New Beginnings: Tokyo Ever After

    Tokyo Ever After: A Novel by Emiko Jean has been climbing the charts as one of the most popular books right now for young adults. With Netflix’s “The...

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    stained glass window with Martin Luther

    AP® Euro: The Age of Reformation

    For well over a millennium, Western Europe was unified by religious orthodoxy to the Roman Catholic Church. Although the church had been challenged...

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