Once called Armistice Day, Veterans Day has evolved into a day of recognition for all U.S. military veterans, not only those who fought in World War I. This year, the holiday falls on a Friday (November 11), only a week away. How do you celebrate Veterans Day? How do your students celebrate? Do they have veterans in their families? Do they know the history of the holiday? Each student's awareness of Veterans Day and his or her understanding of what it means and how it should be observed will be unique—and ripe for discussion and exploration.

This year, Teachinghistory.org has gathered all of our resources on Veterans Day in one place: our Veterans Day spotlight page. On the page, you can find materials for learning about the history of Veterans Day and the branches of the U.S. military and about the experiences of individual soldiers at war—from the American Revolution to the present day. Get ideas for teaching with monuments and memorials and with oral history, or watch a historian analyze civil war letters. Take quizzes on the 54th Massachusetts (the African American Civil War regiment featured in the film Glory), Operation Desert Storm, and other topics related to veterans and war. (Remember that our previous spotlight pages, on 9/11, Constitution Day, and Columbus Day are still available—and don't forget to visit our new Thanksgiving spotlight.)

If you need more resources, the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project preserves the experiences of thousands of veterans through oral history. The memories of more than 3,000 veterans are featured online, including interview transcripts and audio and video recordings (go to "Search the Veterans Collection" and choose "yes" for "Transcript?" and "Digitized Collection?"). A Library of Congress blog entry gives a quick overview of the Project and ways to use it in the classroom.

At HISTORY.com, you or your students can learn about the Take a Veteran to School program, tweet in honor of veterans (use hashtag #thankavet), or read guidelines for donating photos to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. The 21-min. online video "The Story of Veterans Day" gives a quick, accessible introduction to the holiday and its history.

For recent materials on Veterans Day, check out the official White House website. Here, you can read Obama's Veterans Day proclamations and find photos and articles on the celebration of Veterans Day in recent years. The Department of Veterans Affairs lists regional Veterans Day observances—and also features a free downloadable teacher resource guide.

Some students in class today may have clear memories of the events of September 11, 2001. Some may have vague memories. Others may have been born years after the attacks. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 presents an opportunity for educators to explore with students what it means to experience history. Were students alive during the attacks? Do they remember them? How do their parents remember the attacks? How did adults they know make sense of the events as they happened? How do people who were alive during the attacks interpret the past when its events are close and painful? How long does it take for historians to find a framework in which to fit events such as 9/11? People watching the World Trade Center towers collapse knew that 9/11 would appear in history books later—what has happened during students' lifetimes that they think was "history in the making?"

One way to teach 9/11 is to compare and contrast it with other past events that witnesses believed were history in the making. Lesson plans often feature the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK as comparable to 9/11, but what about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The assassination of Abraham Lincoln? The assassination of William McKinley? The Boston Massacre? The Springfield Race Riot of 1908?

How many people witnessed those events? How many of them witnessed them in person? How well were the witnesses prepared for the events? Did they know ahead of time what the effects might be? Did they share their eyewitness knowledge freely with others, or keep it secret? What did people write about these events immediately after they happened? Years after they happened? Does where something happens make a difference in how people react to it? Has technology made a difference?

Regardless of how you choose to teach 9/11 and whether or not you contrast it with other historical events, approach the subject thoughtfully and with clear goals. To honor the anniversary and to help you as you learn about, teach, and remember the day and its effects, we've gathered together our 9/11 resources on one page: "In Remembrance: Teaching 9/11."

Our spotlight doesn't include all of the many resources available online. More examples follow. Some were created in the immediate wake of 9/11 and some were created 10 years later, in the present day. You can use the older materials as they are, or use them as primary sources in their own right. They represent snapshots of writers, publications, and educators trying to make sense of a sudden, horrifying event.

If you are contrasting 9/11 with other traumatic events in U.S. history, you may want to compare these early reactions with early reactions to those events. How did schools, educators, and students react to violence in the past?

From 2001:

• A New York Times lesson plan published on September 12, 2001, suggests ways educators can help students think about and process the attacks.
• A Special Report from Rethinking Schools discusses teaching in the wake of the attacks.
• America Responds, a PBS website, documents PBS stations' responses to 9/11, maintained throughout 2001; it includes nine lesson plans.
• Scholastic catalogs its student and teacher resources published during 2001, on a subsite of its page created for the 1st anniversary of 9/11.

From 2011:

• Recordings of presentations from September 11: Teaching Contemporary History, a two-day conference presented by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Pentagon Memorial Fund, and Flight 93 National Memorial, consider how understanding of 9/11 has changed.
• Articles from the Organization of American Historians on teaching 9/11 draw on memories of 9/11 submitted to websites (follow the link and scroll down to the "Editor's Choice" selections).
• A free curriculum guide from the 4 Action Initiative includes more than 130 lesson plans for K-12.
• A call for teachers from the New York Times asks educators to contribute their strategies for teaching 9/11, and a later article pulls together NYT resources
• Two simple timelines look at themes related to the attacks at Pearson's Online Learning Exchange
• A free oral history lesson plan from Brown University's Choices program
• EDSITEment's lesson plans on 9/11 and heroism

Many websites and publications also offer primary sources, yet to be interpreted for educational use or packaged into lesson plans. If you have the time to search for and browse these materials, they can provide a rich base from which to assemble your own comparison of past and present. Here are some examples:

• The New York Times' "Times Topics" page collects all NYT articles and photographs that mention 9/11. It archives original coverage of September 11 and NYT anniversary pages from 2002 to 2006, as well as short biographies memorializing the victims of the attack (see "Portraits of Grief").
• Lectures and panels from Columbia University respond to and attempt to contextualize 9/11.
• Columbia University also created a guide to key documents on presidential, administrative, congressional, and international responses to 9/11.
• Archived television footage from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC spans September 11–13.
• Legacy.com's Remember: September 11 preserves biographies of the 9/11 victims, searchable by name, home city and state, and flight.
• Sourcebooks from the National Security Archive gather up primary sources related to U.S. policies on terrorism, Afghanistan, biological warfare, anthrax attacks, the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden.
• More than 50 eyewitness interviews share memories on topics such as "Hijackers," "FBI," and "1993 WTC Bombing," courtesy of National Geographic.
• The American Red Cross's Exploring Humanitarian Law curriculum, while not focused on 9/11, models strategies for teaching about difficult subjects and thorny emotional and ethical questions.

When the 13 colonies first rebelled against England, they called on the help of established nations—including France and Spain—to succeed. After the Revolutionary War, the newborn United States gradually began to take part in world affairs itself, making payments and treaties, waging war, and withholding or offering aid. Today, the U.S. maneuvers its way through a constant web of decisions. Who does it choose to help and how? What kind of aid should it offer? Military? Economic? Social? When and why does it withhold aid? How have the choices it makes today grown out of those made in the past?

Following the March 11 earthquake that rocked Japan, your students may have questions about the U.S. and international aid. Or maybe they're curious about the uprisings in the Middle East, a part of the world with which the U.S. has a complicated history of trade, war, and aid.

A good place to start learning about U.S. aid history is, appropriately enough, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Established in 1961 in an effort to separate non-military and military aid, USAID combined the social and economic aid efforts of a number of smaller initiatives under one "roof." Though the website's history page is dense, it provides a sense of the complexity of aid issues. If you want to dig a little deeper (and read a little more), download the primer on USAID. (The section on "Responding to Crises" may be particularly relevant right now.)

For statements on current events, check out the Senior Staff Speeches and Testimony section. Press releases also feature current information. For a broader view, search by location to learn more about USAID's work in Haiti, Egypt, Thailand, and other nations. Browse issues of USAID's newsletter, FrontLines, starting in 2003, to see what's been given the most press in the past few years.

Ready to head further back in time? In our Ask a Historian feature, look at aid in the Middle East, both non-military and military, during the 1950s.

Skip back a few years more and learn about the Marshall Plan, a well-known precursor of USAID designed to help Europe rebuild following World War II. USAID's small online exhibit on the Plan features audio, visual, and text primary sources, while the Library of Congress hosts an exhibit on the Plan. If you need more primary sources, try the document collection Truman & the Marshall Plan at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

Of course, U.S international aid didn't begin with the 20th century and isn't limited to the federal government. Read up on the history of the American branch of the Red Cross, an organization founded by Clara Barton in the late 19th century. (The bibliography in the "Students" section recommends American author Pearl S. Buck's 1948 children's novel The Big Wave for learning about tsunamis. You might consider introducing this novel to students as a primary source itself, reflective of Buck and the context in which she wrote.)

Consider having students trace the U.S.'s relationship with a particular country or region back in time. For instance, what part is the U.S. playing in events in Libya now? What is our stance on the country and events there? What was it back in the early years of the U.S.? (For an idea, listen to historian Christine Sears describe the First Barbary War, one of the U.S.'s early overseas conflicts.) Between then and now, how has our position changed and evolved? Have we given aid or taken it away? When and how?

As it has grown in power, the U.S. has shifted in its relationship to other parts of the world again and again. Exploring the history of international aid might help you (or your students) follow these shifts through time and gain a better understanding of responses and relationships today.