High School

Source: 1776 Unites

What You Get: An organization, curriculum and movement that uplifts, develops character and promotes patriotism through diverse voices.  It has a special focus on African-American voices that celebrate the strength and achievements of Black Americans in the face of adversity.  It offers a network for academics and scholars, classroom ready lessons for middle and high school students as well as essays and recommended books written by intellectuals, entrepreneurs and civil rights activists.

Source: American Birthright

What You Get: Civics Alliance put together this model K-12 Social Studies Standards. Dedicated towards improving America’s civics education, American Birthright teaches how Americans from all walks of life have contributed to the expansion of American liberty.

Source: Bill of Rights Institute

What You Get: For over 20 years BRI has been designing classroom-ready, constitutional principles based lessons, and supporting educators with engaging events.  The digital textbook for high school students is an especially useful resource.

Source: Constituting America

What You Get: An excellent resource for teachers and parents on Constitutional principles and Patriotic podcasts.  Also provides a network of speakers, scholarships, an essay contest and book club.

Source: The FIRE

What You Get: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is an organization that has built an expansive network of resources for teachers, parents and students to defend individual expression and provide curriculum, databases and legal outreach to confront hostility toward the First Amendment.

Source: Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum

What You Get: Hillsdale is a national leader in free, on-line courses that focus on the elements of a Classical education rooted in history, the humanities and effective pedagogy.  This curriculum teaches American History and Civics through units that include primary sources and additional texts with guiding questions, quizzes, writing assignments, study guides, and tests.

Source: Hillsdale College

What You Get: Hillsdale is a national leader in free, on-line courses that focus on the elements of a Classical education rooted in history, the humanities and effective pedagogy.  America’s history is told through the voices of educators esteemed in their fields with a focus on the marvel of the Founding and principles that have made our country exceptional.  The resources also include a K – 12 teaching guide, recommended books, courses/lectures for the whole family including children’s literature and texts developed to provide authentic historical learning.

Source: Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope

What You Get: Land of Hope is a new American history textbook for high school.

Source: Our Underachieving Civics Curriculum

What You Get: A complete program for teaching citizenship, history and character.  Contains a syllabus for elementary, middle, high school and college level instruction with links to recommended books, articles, and documents. At the end of each unit there are core readings with accompanying questions to assess student learning.

Source: Prager University

What You Get: Prager U is bringing together millions of Americans who want to restore balance and diversity of thought in schools: “We are building a powerful online community of pro-America parents and educators who can join forces and make a difference”.  The organization has built an amazing network of individuals that have created curriculum for K – 12 that feature engaging videos and animated presentations that teach children the importance of liberty and individual freedom. 

Source: Teaching American History

What You Get: The Teaching American History is a project of the Ashbrook Center and seeks to provide teachers and parents with lessons and materials for training young people to be historically knowledgeable, civic-minded and “to restore and strengthen the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government”.  Sign up on the website for a free account to have access to lesson plans, primary documents, multimedia resources and podcasts.   Definitely check out the toolkits as well.  Within each toolkit, you will find a solid foundation with original documents for major units of study. Each toolkit is organized in the same way, and contains guiding questions, essential documents, videos, lesson plans, and more.

The mission statement of Teaching American History: The most important work in America is teaching American history, government, and civics.  This work is essential to preserving what has always been distinctively good about America.”