Teaching History, Learning Citizenship: Tools for Civic Engagement

Learn how to design history lessons that foster students’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic engagement in grades 6–12.

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 working with others to achieve common goals. Primary and secondary sources are provided for lessons on diverse topics such as Alice Paul and the Silent Sentinels, Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor, Harriet Tubman, Reagan and Gorbachev’s unlikely friendship, and Lincoln’s plan for reconstructing the Union.

With Teaching History, Learning Citizenship, teachers can show students how to apply historical thinking skills to real-world problems and to act on civic dispositions to make positive changes in their communities.

Book Features:

• Ready-to-use lessons on important historical topics that are likely already part of the history curriculum.
• Materials that allow teachers flexibility in the way lessons are designed.
• Lessons aligned with important civic engagement themes, including ideas for additional historical topics that are useful to teach similar material.
• Strategies to help teachers facilitate the transfer of thinking skills and concepts (such as empathy, corroboration, and historiography) into the realm of civic engagement.
• Background knowledge customized for use with the documents included in the book.

Jeffery D. Nokes is an associate professor in the History Department at Brigham Young University and a former middle school and high school teacher.