While some teachers are tailoring content, instruction, and assessments to state exams in this era of high-stakes testing, ambitious teachers continue to create opportunities for powerful teaching and learning.

With nearly four decades of NCSS conferences under his belt, the author reflects on the valuable networking and stimulating sessions, and highlights key educational websites from the increasingly technologically-adept exhibits.

A featured lesson plan invites students to consider the tension between private wealth and common wealth through a debate on healthcare.

Interview and Teaching Activity by Michelle Parrini; The study of competing interpretations of the Second Amendment illuminates for students why an acceptable compromise on gun policies has been so elusive.

A survey of curricular materials developed to address 9/11, reveals there is great discrepancy on how the topic should be covered and what students should be learning.

Students take on the roles of archivists and researchers when they study primary documents at the Constitution in Action Lab.

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet launch of Sputnik, which fueled American panic that the Soviet Union could fire intercontinental ballistic missiles. The featured document highlights President Eisenhower's reaction and the government's response.

Foreign films not only engage students with other countries and other cultures, but can also promote reading through their subtitles.

Hilary Landorf and Martha Fernanda Pineda