In July 2023, Teachers College Press published the second edition of my book Teaching US History Thematically: Document-Based Lessons for the Secondary Classroom (1st edition 2017). This book joins my Teaching World History Thematically: Essential Questions and Document-Based Lessons to Connect Past and Present, published by Teachers College Press in 2020, as a resource for history teachers who want to challenge their students to engage with the most compelling documents and crucial questions of the past and present. For context, please check out my blog post on the process of writing Teaching World History Thematically. You can also connect with me and other teacher on my Facebook page Teaching History Thematically. As you will see below, I have also co-written a document-based, thematic history textbook about Burma/Myanmar, in line with my scholarly interest in Southeast Asia.
Teaching US History Thematically, 2nd. ed.
Get started with an innovative approach to teaching history that develops literacy and higher-order thinking skills, connects the past to students’ lives, and meets state and national standards (grades 7–12). Now in a second edition, this popular book provides an introductory unit to help teachers build a trustful classroom climate; over 70 primary sources (including a dozen new ones) organized into thematic units structured around an essential question from U.S. history; and a new final unit focusing on periodization and chronology. As students analyze carefully excerpted documents, they build an understanding of how diverse historical figures have approached key issues. At the same time, students learn to participate in civic debates and develop their own views on what it means to be a 21st-century American. Each unit connects to current events with dynamic classroom activities that make history come alive. In addition to the documents, this teaching manual provides strategies to assess student learning; mini-lectures designed to introduce documents; activities to help students process, display, and integrate their learning; guidance to help teachers create their own units; and more.
Teaching World History Thematically
This book offers the tools teachers need to get started with a more thoughtful and compelling approach to teaching history, one that develops literacy and higher-order thinking skills, connects the past to students' lives today, and meets social studies 3C standards and most state standards (grades 6–12). The author provides over 90 primary sources organized into seven thematic units, each structured around an essential question from world history. As students analyze carefully excerpted documents—including speeches by queens and rebels, ancient artifacts, and social media posts—they build an understanding of how diverse historical figures have approached key issues. At the same time, students learn to participate in civic debates and develop their own views on what it means to be a 21st-century citizen of the world. Each unit connects to current events with dynamic classroom activities that make history come alive. In addition to the documents themselves, this teaching manual provides strategies to assess student learning; mini-lectures designed to introduce documents; activities and reproducibles (available in the “downloads” section of Teachers College Press’s page for the book) to help students process, display, and integrate their learning; guidance to help teachers create their own units; guidelines for respectful student debate and discussion; and more.
Histories of Burma
In 2013, Mote Oo Education published Histories of Burma, a thematically-organized, document-based textbook set intended for secondary and post-secondary students of Burma/Myanmar's history.
I collaborated with a Burmese history teacher, Mr. Aung Khine, to produce this resource. Our goal was to promote national reconciliation through critical thinking about history.
The Source Book contains one hundred of the most important documents in the country's history, bringing together colonial documents with political cartoons, eye-witness accounts, treaties, and speeches by leaders from many of Myanmar's ethnic groups.
The Student Book contains activities for students to do using these documents. Activities are organized into ten thematic units.
The Teacher Book contains guidance for teachers using this textbook.
These resources are available in English and Burmese languages, and can be downloaded here.
I maintain a Facebook page for Histories of Burma to update users on trainings and topics of interest.