OAH | History Teacher Resource Center

OAH History Teacher Resource Center

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Need a workshop speaker? Consider inviting an OAH Distinguished Lecturer to your next event.

Welcome to the OAH History Teacher Resource Center. This area provides links to and information about publications, resources, and activities for teachers of history.

Classroom Resources

Preparing the Next Generation of History Teachers

The OAH, along with the American Historical Association, the National Council for History Education, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, has endorsed the recently published report, "The Next Generation of History Teachers: A Challenge to Departments of History at American Colleges and Universities." The report is the byproduct of a conference held at the University of Virginia and Monticello in the summer of 2006, which considered the issues involved in the task of preparing students who hope to become history teachers.

Teachers: Share Your Thoughts
about the OAH Magazine

The OAH Committee on Teaching has created a brief survey to enlist comments and other suggestions from teachers about the OAH Magazine of History. Please take a moment and share your thoughts with the committee.

National History Education Clearinghouse Launches
in Early 2008

The U.S. Department of Education has granted $7 million to create a National History Education Clearinghouse. The online project, which will be housed in George Mason University's Center for History and New Media (CHNM), will focus on historical thinking and learning. It will also help K-12 history teachers become more effective educators and show their students why history is relevant to their daily lives. Read the full story.

History and the National Park Service

OAH member historians have contributed several bibliographic essays to the National Park Service Historical Themes site. Written for a general audience, these essays provide a discussion of major works in the subfield, putting each work into historiographic context. Recent essays cover the Civil War, environmental conservation, exploration, and technology

OAH Magazine of History

Published quarterly, the OAH Magazine of History provides readers with informative articles, lesson plans with reproducible handouts, guides to internet resources, and current historiography. Each issue focuses on a theme or topic of recent scholarship in American history. For example, the October 2004 issue tackles one of the most controversial episodes in American history: The Vietnam War. Surveying recent research in this area, this issue demystifies the "quagmire" of Vietnam War scholarship and is an invaluable tool in helping teach this difficult period in U.S. history. Available in print with a subscription or as a PDF to OAH members. Selected articles are also available online.

Journal of American History

The Journal of American History is the leading scholarly publication in the field of U.S. history and is well known as the major resource for the study, investigation, and teaching of our nation's past. Appearing quarterly since 1914, the Journal features historiographic essays and reviews of books, films, exhibitions, and web sites, and its ongoing initiative in internationalization places American history in a global context. It also sponsors a "Teaching the Journal of American History" web initiative to bridge the gap between scholarly publishing and the practice of classroom teaching. Each free, online "teaching package" features an article from the print journal, along with supporting documents that demonstrate how it might be used in the U.S. history survey course. And its Recent Scholarship Online is a searchable database available to OAH members. Create, save, and e-mail custom bibliographies or sign up for personalized e-mail updates of new publications in particular fields.

Other Resources

Rethinking American History in a Global Age, edited by Thomas Bender (University of California Press, 2002), places the study of American history in a transnational context. A cast of distinguished historians from the United States and abroad, who were involved in the OAH/New York University LaPietra Project on Internationalizing the Study of American History, examines the historiographical implications of such a reframing and offers alternative interpretations of large questions of American history ranging from the era of European contact to democracy and reform, from environmental and economic development and migration experiences to issues of nationalism and identity.

OAH/NCHS Teaching Units
Published in cooperation with the National Center for History in the Schools, the OAH has nine teaching units written by teams of teachers and historians. Each unit is based on primary documents and is geared toward use in the pre-collegiate classroom. Free PDFs are available.

Teaching with Talking History
Let OAH's radio show, Talking History (on hiatus), help you bring new authors and ideas into the classroom. Free audio files are available. Historians present highlights from their books during 15-minute interviews, covering topics from the Salem Witch Trials to Nat Turner to Pearl Harbor. For example, mark the one-hundredth anniversary of air-conditioning, using an interview with Marsha Ackerman about her book, Cool Comfort: America's Romance with Air-Conditioning, as a starting point. See the October 2003 issue of the OAH Magazine of History for more details.

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Conferences and Professional Networking

OAH Annuounces Two New Community College Workshops in 2008
More students take the U.S. history survey course at community colleges than at any other institution of higher education. To assist community college professors who are increasingly responsible for the Organization of American Historians has developed a new series of regional workshops to provide professional enhancement opportunities and materials for community college professors teaching the survey course.

Focus on Teaching Sessions at Upcoming Meetings
Look for upcoming OAH regional and annual meetings in your area. OAH invites you to submit a teaching session proposal for future meetings; an example of a past call for papers is here.

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Department of Education, Teaching American History Grants

Apply For a Teaching American History (TAH) Grant from the U.S. Department of Education
For more information, check the Department of Education's website. We have prepared suggestions of how you, your school, university, and other local education agency can use OAH resources to strengthen a grant application.

Discover the Latest News in the Teaching American History (TAH) Grant Program
H-Net is hosting a very lively discussion group dedicated to the participants in the Teaching American History Grant program. To learn more about activities and projects, please visit them online to take part in the discussion.

TAH Grant Winners Announced
Read the winning abstracts from previous years here.

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Benchmarks and Guidelines for U.S. History Teaching

[NEW] How Students Learn: History in the Classroom (National Academies Press, 2004) This practical guide explores how the principles of learning can be applied to teaching history topics at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Leading educators explain in detail how they developed successful curricula and teaching approaches, presenting strategies that serve as models for curriculum development, and classroom instruction. Free online version available.

"Seven Rules for Effective History Teaching or Bringing Life to the History Class," by OAH executive director Lee Formwalt, OAH Magazine of History, October 2002.

"Benchmarks for Professional Development in Teaching of History as a Discipline"--a guide for benchmarking professional development and collaborative programs for teachers--was produced by a small group of historians assembled by the American Historical Association, with the assistance of OAH and the National Council for the Social Studies.

Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of Historyfrom the American Historical Association

History Education in the U.S.: A Survey of Teacher Certification and State-Based Standards and Assessments for Teachers and Students
What is the condition of K-12 history education today? Answering this question requires an understanding of how the various states prepare and evaluate their teachers and students. This collection of state reports addresses five key areas for the discipline of history: teacher certification; content standards for teachers; content standards for students; high school graduation and exit exam requirements; and assessments.

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Last modified:
11:52 AM, 02/19/08