The Own Your History® (OYH) high school or college curriculum has nine teacher-ready lesson plans  for a semester course, with all instruction & primary source documents. They can be tailored to supplement a US history or ethnic studies class. The  Los Angeles Unified School District, second largest, posted  OYH on their proprietary website.OYH’s major theme:“We all … benefit from inheritances we did not choose and cannot change. Growing up involves deciding which part of the inheritance you want to claim as your own, . . .” Susan Neiman, Einstein Institute. The curriculum focuses on ten major topics in US History since1880. Fact-based, focused on the future. Topics consider sources of American greatness as well as our struggles --and progress--with inequality, xenophobia, poverty, discrimination and injustice based on color [“race”], gender, ethnicity, religion, and LGBTQ+ status.   For productive citizens who “own” our history, to advance the American Promise.    Inquiry-based with active learning, such as debates, role play, & advocacy. 

In this story, the three friends and Mo are inspired by the Memorial Day Parade.

Students will select a person, persons, or event from the Pre-war to Civil War era that had a significant impact on African American and United States history. They will design a monument or a memorial and create a proposal for it.

Within twenty-four hours of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 politicians, artists, and cultural critics had begun to ask how to memorialize the deaths of thousands of people. This question persists today, but it can also be countered with another: is building a monument the best way to commemorate that moment in history? What might other discourses, media, and art forms offer in such a project of collective memory? How can these cultural formations help us to assess the immediate reaction to the attack? To approach these issues, “Out of Ground Zero” looks back to earlier sites of catastrophe in Germany and Japan.

Numerous academics have researched Japan’s dehumanizing comfort women system that, for decades, forced innocents into sexual slavery. Since 2010 a campaign has been in place to proliferate comfort women memorials in the United States. These memorials now span from New York to California and from Texas to Michigan. They recount only the Korean version of this history, which this text finds incomplete. They do not mention that, immediately following World War II, American soldiers also frequented Japan’s comfort women stations. They say nothing of how, to the present day, GIs continue to patronize Asian women and girls organized in brothels near their barracks. The Korean narrative also ignores the significant role that Koreans played in recruiting women and girls into the system. Intentionally or not, comfort women memorials in the United States promote a political agenda rather than transparency, accountability and reconciliation. This book explains, critiques, and expands on the competing state and civil society narratives regarding the dozen memorials erected in the United States since 2010 to honor female victims of the comfort women system established and maintained by the Japanese military from 1937 to 1945.

This collection uses primary sources to explore Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.