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At the end of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, Emerging America widely promoted an online survey of teachers to discover how much they teach disability history. Though the response has been small, the results offer intriguing insights.

The 27 2022-2023 respondents represented 7…

July marks the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark legislation passed on July 26, 1990, that broke down barriers to inclusion in society. Disability Pride Month was first celebrated that same year, taking place in Boston, Massachusetts in the US. Celebrations follow, with th…

Accessing Inquiry for English Learners through Primary Sources will be offered at the Collaborative for Educational Services (CES) in Northampton, Massachusetts in a two-session format, meeting Thursdays a month apart, October 19 and November 16. 

Multilingual learners can benefit from primary source activities, and all students can find compelling questions in the history of immigrants…

First posted to the TPS Teachers Network by Laurie Risler, and published as an Emerging America blog post on February 5, 2021 with the title, Using History's Mysteries to Teach African American History (guest post).

Update: in 2022, iCivics incorporated Laurie Risler and Kelley Brown's groundbreaking elementary inquiry curriculum into their array of teaching resources under the name Pri…

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. 

There are many words about disability that are offensive in today's usage but that are unavoidable in primary sources–even current sources. (Think for example of the term, "dumb," which once meant n…