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Almost every US History teacher tells students about Manifest Destiny, boiling down an explanation of the term to about eight words in a bullet point of a 18 slides presentation that students dutifully copy and recognize out of four other distractors in a multiple choice question. This is the article the phrase comes from - teachers should be forced to read it and explain why they think their teaching of the phrase does any justice to history at all

Documents recommended by Todd Hudson Williams, Manchester High School, Midlothian VA for teaching the Sand Creek Massacre

Van Valen's Gold Rush Journey -- encourages 6th - 8th graders to learn what life was like during the gold rush by investigating the journal of Alex Van Valen, a man who set sail in 1849 to stake his claim in the California gold fields. The website includes a rich set of primary sources to explore and analyze, an interactive guide where students can record, save and print their findings, as well as a teacher's guide.

Would you believe that there were live-entertainment performances in the 1890s that depicted slave life in the "Old South" as a carefree, simplistic rural life? Students should know that they are learning about an era of history that was actively misrepresented for the entertainment of northerners. How does this shape mythic understandings of American history?

This narrative of the sectionalism and the growth of the Republican party is every bit as valid as the narrative canon, though its significantly different. The bullet point nature of this Twiiter thread and its natural inclusion of primary source documents makes this a strong candidate as the baseline reading assignment for US history students