Veterans Day approaches! Last year, Teachinghistory.org introduced you to resources for collecting oral histories from veterans. Most of these resources still hold good—if you're interested in inviting a veteran into your classroom or leading your class in an oral history project, try History.com's Take a Veteran to School Day or the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project.

But what if you don't have the time or resources to arrange a speaker or manage oral history collection? What if your students are too young to appreciate a veteran's stories and their context? How can you honor the holiday and draw your students in?

How about teaching with monuments and memorials?

Everyone knows the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial, with its simple, iconic design, preserving the names of servicemen killed or missing in action. But what about the additions to the memorial? What prompted the creation of the two figural statues, The Three Servicemen and the Vietnam Women's Memorial? If you are far from Washington, D.C., your students can examine photographs (try Flickr Creative Commons for copyright-free images of many major memorials), read about the history of memorials, and draw their own conclusions.

What needs do the different pieces of the memorial fill? What do they say about Vietnam and its veterans? Who designed them? Who chose these designers? Where did the money to build them come from? When were they unveiled? What controversies have surrounded their design? Are there any special observances at these memorials on Veterans Day?

You could also look up other major DC memorials, built to remember very different wars and participants. Try the African American Civil War Memorial, District of Columbia War Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II, or the National World War II Memorial.

Or perhaps you'd like to engage students with material closer to home. Look around your town. Ask at your local historical society. What monuments and memorials does your area have? A memorial for the Civil War? Korean War? Vietnam War? World War II? When were these built? Why might your area have memorials for some wars but not others? Who maintains them? What do area residents think of them? How do they resemble or differ from other memorials to veterans from the same war? How and where is Veterans Day memorialized in your town? Are there any observations at these memorials?

High-school teacher James A. Percoco shares his own experience engaging students with memorials in this video, while 8th-grade teacher Amy Trenkle demonstrates teaching with monuments and memorials in action, in our blog, as she takes her class to visit the Columbus Memorial Fountain in Washington, D.C.

If you can't arrange a field trip to a memorial, but would still like to have students visit and analyze one, try designing an individual field trip (IFT) for students. James A. Percoco tells you how.

Still at a loss for resources? Search our Website Reviews for online exhibits and archives full of primary sources, or our Museums & Historic Sites database for sites in your area.

It's February! Resources throughout the web stand ready to provide you with lessons and primary source materials for Black History Month (also known as African American History Month), but African American history stretches far beyond the confines of one month and the narrative litany of a handful of cultural heroes. Maybe you want to go beyond Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Jackie Robinson. What stories can you uncover beyond the headlining stories textbooks provide? Remind your students of the complexity of African American history with these resources.

• The New York Times' lesson plan "Stories to Tell: Curating an African-American History Exhibit" introduces students to the difficulties in curating a large museum—or even just one exhibit. How can curators for the developing Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture create a museum that honors all of African American history?
• Search the Carnegie Museum of Art's Teenie Harris Archive Project for photographs taken by photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris for the Pittsburgh Courier. Published from 1907 to 1965, the Courier was a major African American newspaper, and these photographs show Harris's journalistic perspective on Pittsburgh events of all scales. Use the keywords "Teenie Harris," along with others related to your topic of interest, to find images of life at school, home, community events, church, work, and out on the town.
• The Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Portraits of a City provides a similar photographic record of a place. The Scurlocks ran studios in DC for much of the 20th century, documenting African American life in the nation's capital.
• The Library of Congress's American Memory collection The African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 focuses on the themes of slavery, politics, and religion. Its wide range of primary-source documents, including thousands of newspaper articles, can help students construct a view of just what the collection's title implies.
• High-quality photographs in the National Archives and Records Administration's "Pictures of African Americans During World War II" could give students a look into another kind of community—one that formed both overseas and on the home front during war.

If none of these resources fit into your curriculum or spark your interests, there's plenty where they came from. Search our Website Reviews using the topic "African Americans," and you'll turn up close to 300 websites, on topics ranging from Marcus Garvey to the construction of race to Seattle's Black Panthers to sheet music by and about African Americans. Or test your African American history knowledge in our weekly quiz feature! You and your students can take online quizzes on African American baseball players and other athletes, the historical accuracy of the film Glory, Jim Crow laws, and foodways.

You can also explore the African American History Month pages of history and educational organizations, including:

• The Library of Congress
• EDSITEment
• Verizon Thinkfinity
• Smithsonian Museum of American History and History Explorer
• Scholastic
• The History Channel
• Biography.com

Martin Luther King, Jr. is the only American with a unique, individual holiday—not even American presidents are so remembered anymore. It's observed on the third Monday in January—January 18 this year—and the path to creating this holiday was uphill. Corretta Scott King (1927-2006) considered the day as one of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. "Whether you are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian-American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America," she wrote.

Since 1994, it's also been a Day of Service, "a day ON, not a day off," when people are encouraged to come together with volunteer projects to move us closer to achieving the dream Dr. King had for the nation. Dr. King once said that what we all have to decide is whether we "will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life's most persistent and nagging question is 'what are you doing for others?'"

Communities throughout the country offer opportunities for volunteers—use the searchbox at Serve.gov to find programs near you—or consider planning ahead with your students to develop a school-based day of service for 2011.

Few commemorations of the Civil Rights leader will occur without citing King's moving and powerful I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, August 28, 1963. Few will fail to ask whether we have moved closer to achieving his dream that America is living out the "true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

It was a question Martin Luther King later asked in the sermon, "Unfulfilled Dreams," delivered at Ebeneezer Baptist Church on March 3, 1968 less than a month before his assassination. "I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable," he stated and he talked about Mahatma Gandhi, Woodrow Wilson, and various Biblical figures who died before seeing the fruition of their lifework.

The creators of Teach Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Western Michigan University MLK Celebration Committee believe that students K-12 are able to tackle this question and offer teaching ideas and resources grouped for elementary, middle and high school students. Materials encourage educators to move beyond textbook biographies to "...the years following 1963...years of tremendous growth and deepened insight. King was uncompromising in his stand against racism in the United States."

The site provokes discussion through introducing (and dispelling) four myths about Dr. King, including, "Martin Luther King, Jr. should be thought of as a great African American leader." "Compared to Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. was an "Uncle Tom;" rather than using "any means necessary" he believed in a passive non-violence." "Now that we are in the twenty-first century we have achieved the goals King fought for?" The phrasing of the myths is intended to jar; the commentary does not, but emphasizes the scope of Dr. King's work, placing his life in a global context of meaning and achievement.

Audiovisual resources posted on the site (and linked through YouTube) include "I Have a Dream," other speeches, and videos of historical commentary.

For materials that help relate Dr. King's work to the present day, explore a 2008 speech by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama at Ebeneezer Baptist Church. The half-hour video recaps the civil rights movement, Dr. King's life and impact, and present-day concerns.

And for comprehensive access to primary sources, white papers, and teaching materials, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University hosts the King Papers Project. As you might expect, a plethora of materials on King, his life, his speeches, and his work are accessible under this umbrella. Classroom Resources include document-based lesson plans, biographical essays, and an online encyclopedia of the civil rights movement.