Teaching with WBA?
Who Built America? offers a range of materials readymade for classroom use and homework assignments. The thirty-chapter textbook (broken into parts, chapters, and sections) is accompanied by drawings, paintings, prints, cartoons, photographs, objects, and other visual media. Each chapter includes first-person “Voices” from the past, such as excerpts from letters, diaries, autobiographies, poems, songs, journalism, fiction, official testimony, oral histories, and other historical documents—along with a timeline and suggestions for further reading. Ten 30-minute video documentaries on key themes in U.S. social history, along with study guides, are linked in the chapters. These resources are well-suited for U.S. History classes, as well as composition and literature classes, or any course that requires historical context or primary source analysis.
This OER features teaching essays designed to help readers understand the practice of history. The more than forty peer-reviewed “A Closer Look” essays, up to 1500 words in length, offer readers a model investigation of a significant historical event, cultural phenomenon, or trend that is otherwise only touched upon in a chapter. Accompanied by a selection of primary source evidence, including many images, these essays are intended to help readers become comfortable looking closely at historical documents and to understand how historians arrive at their understanding of events or ideas. The essays introduce new scholarly interpretations and make connections between past and current events and issues through the use of a focus question at the beginning and reflection questions at the end. These questions can be used in class to generate discussion or independent writing, or could be used to create homework assignments. The seven “Historians Disagree” essays provide readers with historiographic perspectives on how scholars’ approaches to key topics have changed over time, illuminating how history is an ever-evolving field of study. These essays are valuable because they provide teachers and students with an entry point into historical debate written in an accessible manner. They would be particularly well-suited for an annotation assignment in which students could identify key historiographical turning points in preparation for classroom discussion.
Using the History Matters Repository
This repository of more than 2,000 primary documents in text, image, and audio presents the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. Each item is introduced by a paragraph of background information that places the document within its larger historical significance and context. This repository can be searched using keywords, and any item can be printed as a PDF.
Creating Packets by exporting to PDF
Exporting in PDF allows you to conveniently create customized packets of materials for classroom use, homework assignments, or offline reading. You can easily export materials from Who Built America? as PDFs using your browser's built-in functionality. To do this in Chrome, select "Print" from the browser menu and then choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialogue. In Firefox, select "Print," and in the print preview window, choose "Save to PDF" from the destination options. For Safari, select "Print" from the File menu and then click the PDF button in the print dialogue, selecting “Save as PDF.”
Highlighting and Annotating the Textbook
Assignments focused on close reading and annotation are particularly effective teaching practices. They encourage students to engage meaningfully with primary and secondary source materials, promote critical thinking, and help students analyze and interpret multiple perspectives. The Who Built America? primary source documents, essays, and textbook chapters are all compatible with Hypothes.is, a free, open-source that allows students to highlight, annotate, and collaboratively discuss the texts. Find out more here.
Sample Teaching Modules and Collections
We have included sample modules and collections intended to support teachers in their implementation of WBA? in their classrooms, including chapter sections, supplemental essays, images, voices, and American Social History Project-produced documentaries. The two modules (Women Workers in Lowell and Chinese Workers in the U.S. and Exclusion) are accompanied by specific recommendations for how teachers might implement them over two class periods, with suggested assigned readings and activities. The two collections (Black American Political Organizing in the 20th and 21st Centuries and U.S./Mexico Border) contain curated lists of materials that can be added to existing syllabi either as homework, assigned reading, or in-class activities. These lists are organized both thematically and chronologically. The textbook selections and Voices, images, and “A Closer Look” essays can be mixed and matched to create lessons and homework assignments. Although we are suggesting some specific ways these materials could be used, they can be easily adapted and reconfigured as needed depending on a class structure, size, and pace, such as asynchronous or virtual classes, large surveys, and small seminars.