While Hollywood has finally caught up with the times in regards to portraying the histories of LGBTQ individuals, the social studies curriculum is still lagging.

When students are put in charge of examining a political or social-issue movie and preparing a class presentation, they become more critical consumers of film.

The featured naturalization petition belonging to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, who lost her U.S. citizenship when she married an Englishman, can spark an interesting lesson on citizenship rights, women’s suffrage, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

The half-century anniversary of the Loving Supreme Court case offers a valuable opportunity for students to examine this key decision in furthering marriage equality.

Walt Whitman’s featured letter on the conditions at a Union army camp when he went in search of his wounded brother can serve as an engaging launch point for a classroom lesson on the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Civil War.

These outstanding websites include lesson plans and resources for teaching about major global issues.

Providing students with opportunities for discussing contentious topics in the classroom can help bridge the civic opportunity and knowledge gap.

Place-based service-learning projects connect young people with the past in ways that can range from producing mini movies of a historic site to planting a tree geo-tagged with a Civil War soldier’s life story.

A discussion activity centered on a topic of interest to students helped teach seventh graders the rules of civic dialogue while engaging students with a range of academic abilities.