Every unit of the Reform to Equal Rights: K-12 Disability History Curriculum includes an introduction to the topic of disability, including strategies to address disrespectful vocabulary. 

This lesson uses the 21st century “travel ban,” ruled constitutional in 2018, as an entry point to explore previous shifts in US immigration policy. More specifically, students will use primary sources to examine social contexts of three specific immigration laws (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Immigration Acts of 1921 & 1924, and Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) in order to understand who was banned or excluded from the US and why.

The Relevance Matrix from Teaching Tolerance is a tool for teachers to consider means to connect content to real world applications and contexts that relate to students' lives. Thinking critically about engagement and effective classroom strategies can help students answer, "Why should I learn this?"

Strategies listed include:

Using the table teachers think about

Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) as developed by Dr. Gloria Gladson-Billings, offers an invaluable set of strategies to engage and support diverse learners. 

View five instructional videos examine culturally relevant pedagogy using primary sources.

The first video, a webinar from the Minnesota Historical Society, presents an overview of CRP. 

Emerging America, in a partnership with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, has a produced a primary source-filled lesson on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) – arguably the start of World War II. In this complex conflict, all sides used propaganda to sway the opinions of Spanish citizens and nations around the globe. The most apparent form of propaganda used was posters created by each side of the war. The Library of Congress has over 120 colorfully detailed posters. Students will use these posters to discuss and evaluate the tools of persuasion.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves. Northerner legislatures passed laws in an attempt to reduce the impact of the FSA and how the work of the Underground Railroad (UGRR) was impacted. Students will learn how the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (FSA) changed perspectives of Northerners and the ultimate destination of the fugitives themselves. Students will learn background knowledge and vocabulary about the Underground Railroad in the United States.

Incarceration in a variety of contexts and settings has been deeply ingrained in American society for centuries. The experience and processes of incarceration takes many forms including criminal detention, imprisonment in wartime, and immigration detainment. This primary source set contains a range of items tracing the history of incarceration in the United States and includes images, maps, political cartoons, and reports–all from the digital collections of the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress holds thousands of the most important primary sources on slavery and opposition to it and has devoted extensive and thoughtful labor to bringing them to the public. (See also the CES Primary Source Set: “Civil War and Reconstruction”). This primary source set offers distinct and vitally important sources not included in other primary source sets.