Resource Library
Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students.
We are grateful to The Hammer Family Foundation for supporting the development of our on-demand learning and teaching resources.
Introducing Our US History Curriculum Collection
Draw from this flexible curriculum collection as you plan any middle or high school US history course. Featuring units, C3-style inquiries, and case studies, the collection will help you explore themes of democracy and freedom with your students throughout the year.
Teaching Night
This guide interweaves a literary analysis of Elie Wiesel’s powerful and poignant memoir with an exploration of the relevant historical context surrounding his experience during the Holocaust.
A Range of Choices: In Action
In this classroom video, students read primary sources and discuss the roles that individuals have played in those historical cases.
A Range of Choices: Terminology
In this classroom video, students are introduced to the terminology of the roles individuals play (bystander, upstander, collaborator, victim, and perpetrator).
Historical Background: The Indian Act and the Indian Residential Schools
Go deeper into the history of the Indian Act and the founding of the Residential Schools system.
The French Bishops' Protest Against the Nazi Occupation in France and the Vel' d'Hiv Police Roundup
Scholar Aliza Luft discusses how French bishops reacted to the growing hostility towards Jews in occupied France during World War II.
Dispossession, Destruction, and the Reserves
Reserves existed in Africa, in the British American colonies, and in Canada, where the colonizers had to address the people they dispossessed— people who seemingly stood in the way of the political and economic plans of European settlers.
Defining the Indian
Two main pieces of legislation laid the foundation for what was to be the new Dominion’s policy regarding relations with First Nations: the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869.
Banning Indigenous Culture
The ultimate goal of the Indian Act has always been the assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples as separate nations into mainstream Canada.
Traditional Education
The idea that Western culture was superior and that the Indigenous Peoples needed to be Christianized and civilized came from the biases of Europeans and their unwillingness to appreciate the complex, largely unwritten teaching processes inside indigenous communities.
Aggressive Assimilation
The key to this policy was a system of industrial schools where religious instruction and skills training would help the Native Americans catch up with the demands of Western society.
Legislation for the Residential Schools
Prime Minister Macdonald authorized the creation of new residential schools and granted government funds for those that were already in place.