Thirty-five years ago in Vietnam on April 29, 1975, Irving Berlin's seasonally uncharacteristic, White Christmas hit the airwaves via Saigon's Armed Forces Radio. The North Vietnamese offensive against Saigon advanced, and the musical selection was a pre-arranged code to trigger a massive, dramatic American evacuation.

It became the largest helicopter evacuation in history—for 18 hours, heavily loaded Marine helicopters ferried 7,000 Americans and South Vietnamese evacuees from the American Embassy compound to the Tan Son Nhut airfield, ultimately to ships of the Seventh Fleet. Thousands more thronged the gates of the compound, hoping for a place on the airlift.

On April 30, Saigon fell, and in one sense, America's almost thirty-year involvement with war in Vietnam ended.

The meanings and implications of the war in Vietnam are complex and still unresolved. Visceral response competes with the academic analysis to make sense of the era; emotion, memory, and personal experience loom large. Involvement in Iraq has intensified questions and invited contrast and comparison about just and unjust wars, about intervention and non-intervention, about containment, colonialism and post-colonialism, and about unilateral national foreign policy and international interests.

"Even today, many Americans still ask whether the American effort in Vietnam was a sin, a blunder, a necessary war, or a noble cause, or an idealistic, if failed, effort to protect the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government," historian Steve Mintz writes. (See the module Learn About the Vietnam War, part of the online U.S. history textbook, Digital History).

Online, materials continue to proliferate ranging from institutionally-based resources to personal websites from veterans and families. Finding materials becomes a question of selecting from a wealth of viable possibilities. The materials cited here address broad topics and issues of the era.

The National Archives, of course, and Presidential libraries are obvious and credible sources for essays and primary source documents. The Teachers section of the Library of Congress consolidates and extrapolates materials related to Vietnam such as selections from the Veterans Oral History Project. The search mechanism within the Teacher's pages help the selection of appropriate materials.

Similarly, Edsitement offers a variety of lesson plans and links to primary resources, also best selected through Edsitement's search mechanism simply entering the term Vietnam.

Founded by Jan Scruggs, the force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC—and an historical figure in his own right—The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation (VVMF) website is worth a visit from educators and students. Materials offer multiple perspectives on the era, explaining and contextualizing the war socially, politically, and culturally, and then explore how we have negotiated the legacies of the Vietnam era.

For teachers the VVMF is a goldmine of balanced educational resources. Echoes from the Wall: History, Learning and Leadership Through the Lens of the Vietnam War is a free secondary school curriculum guide including lesson plans and primary source materials "is designed not only to educate students about the Vietnam War, but also to use the lessons of that chaotic period to imbue future leaders, sitting in classrooms today, with a heightened sense of responsibility, citizenship and service." Lesson plans and the Teachers Guide cover causes of the war, conflict on the home front, analysis of those who served, the perspective of the Vietnamese, and the aftereffects.

Students will find background essays on the history and meaning of the wall and an opportunity to search for names on the wall. If there's any downside to the VVMF site, it's the lack of images of the memorial itself; however, a segue to GreatBuildings.com from Architecture Week leads to 3d-models, aerial views, google earth linkups, and a variety of perspectives on the Memorial in the context of its location. GreatBuildings.com also includes biographical information and commentary from the site designer, then-21-year-old Maya Lin.

And to support teachers and their curricula, the Teach Vietnam Teachers Network, a national group of nearly 300 members, serves as a point of contact for educators in individual states who answer questions from other teachers about effective teaching of the Vietnam War and development of lesson plans commensurate with state standards. Teachers are invited to request additional materials including The Wall the Heals and Why Vietnam Still Matters (books of essays), posters, a video, and Teacher's Guide.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/printable/section.asp?id=…

A lesson plan from Conflict and Consensus, a Montgomery County, Maryland, Teaching American History Grant program, Vietnam Primary Source Document Analysis guides students to examine the reasons for US involvement in Vietnam by analyzing primary source documents that relate to the Containment Doctrine.

Other online materials from Conflict and Consensus include videos of scholar analysis and classroom practice and teaching based upon examination of a Vietnam War cartoon. An additional lesson plan, Voices from the My Lai Massacre analyzing public perceptions of the event.

On AP Central, Professor Scott Kaufman from Francis Marion University in South Carolina offers Guide to Vietnam War Resources annotating diverse materials.

Vietnam War: Maps includes maps of selected battles, including the Tet Offensive and historic maps from the Department of State from 11BC through 1966. (Consider using eHistory essays cautiously, if at all; they appear with an accuracy disclaimer.)

Have you heard of TED? Short for Technology, Entertainment, Design, this nonprofit organization shares "free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers," according to its mission statement. Known for its TEDTalks, TED brings the ideas of prominent thinkers, leaders, innovators, and public figures, ranging from Michelle Obama to Ken Robinson to Diana Laufenberg (who has written for Teachinghistory.org—check out her blog entries!) to a widespread audience via the Internet. With more than 1,100 talks in its online database, TED covers topics including history, technology, politics, and, of course, education.

In April, TED plans to add even more educational resources to its repertoire. According to TED, TED-Ed will feature videos of outstanding educators presenting innovative lessons enhanced by animation. TED has already released 19 videos. Check out "How Containerization Shaped the World" for the story of one American's invention of steel shipping containers.

Do you have a fantastic lesson you want to share with the world? Do you know someone who teaches lessons with clarity, energy, and a passion for historical thinking and student engagement? TED-Ed is accepting nominations for educators to be featured in future videos, as well as nominations for lesson ideas.

Nominate yourself or an educator you admire, suggest a U.S. history lesson you think TED-Ed should cover, and help use this new free platform for sharing critical thinking skills!

March is Women's History Month and classroom resources and lesson plans abound.

Explore the National History Education Clearinghouse website and use our search functions to locate materials. History Content search options offer a filtered gateway to history websites and primary sources on the web at large. Through the On-Line Lectures search, audio files related to women's history include The Salem Witchcraft Trials, and Wage-Earning Women: Teaching about Gender and Work in U.S. History.

In other venues, Roads from Seneca Falls offers material on U. S. women's history and leadership for K-12 students and teachers and includes lesson plans, activities, primary sources, and brief biographies. Visitors are invited to register and ask Mrs. Stanton a question.

The Smithsonian exhibit American Women: A Selection from the National Portrait Gallery is an interactive look at the lives of women reformers, activists, athletes, first ladies, artists, and entertainers from colonial times to the modern day. The site includes a children's activity guide, and each portrait includes a brief biographical sketch of the subject and information about the artist.

Gifts of Speech: Women's Speeches from Around the World provides transcripts of over 400 speeches from women as diverse as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Emma Goldman, Betty Friedan and Ayn Rand. The search function helps pull diverse speeches into collections of common subject areas.

The National Park Service offers links and lesson plans to women's history sites as part of the Teaching with Historic Places program. Places for women's history include the the Hornbeck Homestead Complex in Colorado's Florissant Valley, where a single mother of four established a ranch in the 1870s; the Prudence Crandall House in Connecticut, where efforts toward abolition and quality education for African Americans took place in the 1830s; and the Brucemore Mansion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which looks at the lives of servants in early twentieth century America.

The United States has the 3rd largest Hispanic population in the world, according to 2007 Census figures. Only Mexico and Columbia are numerically larger, and among the 44.3 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States, more than 64 percent are of Mexican background. (Visit Annenberg Media's Race, Hispanic Origin, and Ancestry, demonstrating who is Hispanic and how the census category interacts with race.)

We celebrate the presence and contributions of Hispanic Americans during Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15. The September date marks the anniversary of independence for five Latin American countries—in 1821, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico celebrates its independence on September 16—the beginning of a decade-long war against Spain in 1810—and Chile on September 18.

Knowing the facts of Hispanic firsts and milestones in the United States presented in these activities from Education World is a good beginning for teaching about the fastest growing cultural group in the country. (Note, however, that the statistics on this site pre-date current statistics cited above from the Census Bureau.)

But Edsitements's Read, Write, Think also encourages students and teachers to look at the deeper influences of culture: art, architecture, education, literature, and more. Edsitement resources also link to Scholastic's Celebrate Hispanic Heritage (primarily for younger students).

The valuable resources of the National Park Service National Register of Historic Places highlight historic properties that deal directly with the cultural and political experiences of Hispanic Americans. Bullion Plaza School, for example, includes lesson plans on the segregation of Mexican-American students—a common practice never mandated by law, but by cultural constructions of race and nation.

Library of Congress Themed Resources for Teachers includes a focus on Hispanic Americans and helps educators explore the culture and contributions and interactions of Hispanic peoples in North America through primary source text and multimedia materials. Lesson Plans highlight oral history as a tool for history instruction.

The Smithsonian's Latino Center turns the spotlight on Latino culture in the United States. Beware of dead links; however, a visit to Hispanic Heritage Teaching Resources reveals a variety of perspectives on Latino life and culture including, among the dozen or so topics, Mexican America, a sampling of objects from the collections of the National Museum of American History, and a digital exhibit, The Power of Photography, which looks at the photographic works of Manuel Carrillo exploring issues of identity and representation.

The After Slavery Project, a transatlantic research collaboration directed from Queen's University Belfast, launched its Online Classroom, ­a set of 10 online units that explore the aftermath of emancipation in the Carolinas. Organized thematically, the teaching units cover a range of topics, richly illustrated with an array of primary source materials from dozens of archival collections.

The unit Freed Slaves Mobilize, for example, includes a background essay, transcriptions of nine primary source documents and illustrations, questions related to each document, and suggestions for further reading.

After Slavery addresses emancipation both as an attempt by African Americans to overcome the racial legacies that attended and outlived slavery and as a profoundly important chapter in the history of America's working people. One aspect of this story that has become clearer in recent years is the variety of experience among former slaves across the South. These variations make it necessary to move away from broad generalizations about 'the' African American experience after the Civil War and to try to uncover both the shared elements in black life across the region and the varying capacity of freedpeople to mobilize. This emphasis on the "multiple configurations of freedom" across the post-emancipation South provides the rationale for the project's focus on North and South Carolina: together these states reflect the productive, demographic, political, and geographic diversity of the region as a whole.

EDSITEment posts new materials this month from 19th-century historical writing to material culture to fiction. New resources include a feature on teaching Alexis de Tocqueville's Introduction to Democracy in America, and new lessons on Thomas Hart Benton's painting The Sources of Country Music, and Ernest Hemingway's short story Three Shots.

The five-episode PBS series We Shall Remain begins tonight. Check local listings for broadcast times of this American Experience documentary.

Teaching Guides and Lesson Plans are now available on the rich, interactive, and immersive series website. Teaching Guides are defined by episode, and each includes discussion questions, student activities, additional resources, and lists of relevant themes corresponding to those developed by the National Council for the Social Studies Curriculum Standards and common state social studies standards.

But don't stop there. Explore supplementary video resources including discussions of language, sovereignty, and enterprise included under the Native Now section.

Elsewhere, on PBS Teachers, guest author, educator Eric Langhorst discusses the program and tackles the question, How do you teach Native American history and culture in the context of an American history class?

First, let's address mythology.

Contrary to what our grandparents—and perhaps parents—were taught, Christopher Columbus did not discover America in 1492. The land had been inhabited for centuries, and other explorers from Europe, Asia, and Africa had already landed here.

Neither were his voyages decisive straws breaking the back of the flat earth myth. Renaissance scholars inherited their surety about a rounded shape of the world from antiquity. Nineteenth-century author Washington Irving is responsible for ascribing that feat to Columbus in his 1828 publication, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, a fictional account represented as biographical.

So why is he one of only two individuals with his own national holiday in America? (Martin Luther King, Jr., of course, is the other). Why are cities, streets, and schools named after him, and why do memorials to him appear in every state in the country? Over the centuries, Italian Americans, Catholic and Protestant religious groups, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, government bodies, and more have seen Christopher Columbus as a symbol of unity and of opposition and of power. The umbrella of Columbus Day hosts this variety of political, religious, and ethnic groups who have mobilized to create celebrations and traditions that reinforce and legitimize their own perspectives and experiences.

Broadly speaking, the narrative of Columbus is one of unintended consequences. Columbus set out to find a western route to Asia. Instead, the timing of his four voyages opened the New World to Europeans during an era of growing imperialism and trade expansion.

The Internet Medieval Sourcebook from Fordham University published extracts from the journal of Christopher Columbus in his voyage of 1492. Their preface to this wall-to-wall, unadorned transcription summarizes the tension of conflicting interpretations. "On the one hand, [Columbus's voyage] is witness to the tremendous vitality and verve of late medieval and early modern Europe—which was on the verge of acquiring a world hegemony. On the other hand, the direct result of this and later voyages was the virtual extermination, by ill-treatment and disease, of the vast majority of the Native inhabitants, and the enormous growth of the transatlantic slave trade. It might not be fair to lay the blame at Columbus' feet, but since all sides treat him as a symbol, such questions cannot be avoided."

Annenberg Media approaches Columbus under the heading History and Memory, pointing out "Until recently, Columbus was revered as an intrepid explorer and civilizer in many parts of the world, not least the United States." Annenberg's primary and secondary materials demonstrate that increased scientific and archaeological evidence propelled an historiographic change. "Increasingly, Columbus became symbolic of an encounter that raised uncomfortable questions about conquest, colonialism, and destruction of peoples and habitats."

The History Channel gives a biographical overview of the life of Columbus and a summary of the controversies about Columbus. Their brief history of the holiday, however, leaves out important milestones such as the American Indian Movement's opposition to the holiday and the observance of alternative holidays established through legislation in some states. (Why activists are challenging Columbus Day in Colorado at History News Network discusses a 2006 protest in Denver, where Columbus Day began.)

Edsitement provides a particularly comprehensive lesson plan to teach about Christopher Columbus. What Was Columbus Thinking encourages students to read and talk about primary and secondary sources to discern the intentions behind the voyages of Columbus and the consequences in the lives of Native Americans and Europeans. Although billed as lesson plans for third through fifth grade, the primary sources (including a letter from Columbus and excerpts from his journal) seem a bit advanced for that age group; however, the lesson plan offers detailed guidance for document analysis.

The New York Times lesson plan, scaffolded for intermediate and high school students, uses the vehicle of Columbus Day protests to research "exploration and colonization from the point of view of a stakeholder of that nation."

A wealth of historical fiction, biography, and other nonfiction books for all age groups can be found in almost any bookstore or online. These two books look at the constructions behind different narratives about Columbus Day and how they came to be.

Discovering Christopher Columbus: How History is Invented by Kathy Pelta (grades 6-9) looks at how history is written through exploring primary and secondary sources about Christopher Columbus and discussing how they have been interpreted by different people at different times. Cultural Movements and Collective Memory: Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth by Timothy Kubal (for adults) is a scholarly examination of how political, ethnic, and social constructions have appropriated, shaped, and adapted myths and realities of the Christopher Columbus narrative.

And here at the Clearinghouse, please visit these materials:

Answers to American Myths: Christopher Columbus in our past quizzes section clarifies misconceptions about the man, his explorations, and the holiday.

The website review Columbus and the Age of Discovery leads to a cumbersome, but useful, website for searching and accessing background materials on the man and the era.

The website review 1492: An Ongoing Voyage introduces exhibit-based materials from the Library of Congress.

In the Research Brief Learning to Think Historically: Columbus, Exploration, and the Idea of the Flat Earth, educator Bob Bain models a lesson encouraging students to challenge and examine inherited beliefs about history through exploring historical evidence.

Any human disaster anywhere in the world jars our sensibilities, reminds us of our interconnectedness, and challenges our worldview.

The devastation in Haiti hits us intellectually, emotionally, and ethically, and we ask "how can I help?" A contagious call to action multiplies. But the immediacy of media coverage, continued stories and images of Haiti's people and places, the massive national and global response from individuals, celebrities, institutions and organizations still leave us grasping for a more complete sense of what's happened and why. Headlines spur a teaching moment in the history classroom.

Broadly speaking, teaching materials focus on two approaches: the history of Haiti and the history of natural disasters. Fewer resources are available for the former, but here are a few to jumpstart discussion.

We find few answers to questions about the history of Haiti and the relationship of the United States to that country in American history textbooks. Yet, the only successful slave revolt in history took place there in the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions, culminating with Haiti's declaration of independence from France in 1803 and ideologically infused, in part, by the return of freedmen of color sent to fight in the American Revolution. Haiti was, in fact, hotly contested territory, an economic jewel sought by the British, Americans, French, and Spanish. American history textbooks, however, generally consign the Haitian Revolution to a couple of paragraphs, and the subsequent history of the country itself is subsumed under themes of foreign policy and America's extension into the global economic and political sphere.

These online resources help fill informational gaps on the history of Haiti and America's relationship to that country.

Starting with an encyclopedia is sometimes a good idea—as long as it isn't the endpoint, as the founder of Wikipedia is the first to say. And Wikipedia's History of Haiti entry is a comprehensive place to find an overview and directions for further inquiry.

To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature in the New York Times oped section (January 21, 2010) comprehensively highlights Haiti's history and America's relationship with that country. Author Mark Danner recently published Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War which chronicles political conflict in Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the United States. "...there is nothing mystical in Haiti’s pain, no inescapable curse that haunts the land. From independence and before, Haiti’s harms have been caused by men, not demons," he writes.

At the History News Network (HNN), several entries by historians in Roundup: Talking About History are valuable. Scroll down the list of entries (or hit Control F and enter Haiti in your Find field) and look for America's Historic Debt to Haiti by Robert Parry and The Televangelist Misuse of Haiti's History by Juan Cole for analysis uniting past and present.

Also on HNN, Why We are Partly Responsible for the Mess that is Haiti by Thomas Fleming looks back at early days of Haitian independence. Barely ensconced in the White House, Thomas Jefferson and the French began negotiations for taking back the country. It's an exciting tale of international intrigue and ideological influence, a backstory to the Louisiana Purchase.

CNN provides a timeline of Haiti's history from the CIA World Factbook. In fact, CNN's Homepage is an excellent consolidated resource for continuously updated news approaching the devastation from multiple perspectives: history, economics, society, and culture.

To brush up on Haiti's revolutionary leader of the 18th century, visit Toussaint L'Ouverture Project, a wiki on the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804, and linked blog relating materials to the present day. (While you'll find valuable essays and primary sources here, the provenance and credentials of its creators are obscure. As with any source material, cross-referencing is a good idea.)

Teaching for Change, a Washington, DC-based organization, encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms. They, too, point out "While students should be encouraged to contribute to relief efforts, it is also important to gain a deeper understanding of the history and the roots of the poverty in Haiti. The US has been involved with Haiti for centuries, yet it has received little attention in textbooks or the curriculum." Teaching for Change recently posted a free, downloadable 43-page booklet, Teaching About Haiti. Their caveat: the book was last reprinted in 1994, and some of the statistics are dated; yet the history, songs, oral histories, and literature are very useful for students in elementary, middle, and high schools.

Edsitement from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) offers a lesson plan for high school students including primary sources, student activity materials, and maps. "To Elect Good Men": Woodrow Wilson and Latin America" focuses on Wilson's attempts to carry out missionary diplomacy in Haiti and Mexico and the responses of selected Haitians and Mexicans.

5 Ways to Teach About Haiti Right Now and Resources for Teaching and Learning About the Earthquake in Haiti from The New York Times Learning Network offer lesson plans on past and recent Haitian history (and materials on natural disasters).

On the PBS Newshour, a ninth grader living in America writes about fear for his brother and other family members back in Haiti and his hopes for his native country in Haitian-American Teen Reflects on Haiti Disaster. For more about the effects of the disaster on Haitian children in America, also see an article and audio slide show, Haiti’s Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York, from the New York Times. The Times also provides continuously updated Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake videos from Haitian citizens, academic experts, aid providers, and journalists.

On CBS, Catie Couric talks with Mark Schneider of the international Crisis Group and looks at the history of poverty and oppression in Haiti that has exacerbated the relief effort. (2:44 minutes, NOT commercial-free) The Crisis Group is considered the world’s leading independent, non-partisan, source of analysis and advice to governments, and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union, and World Bank, on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Materials about Haiti address the country's political, social, and economic conditions.

Also from CBS, A Haiti Primer: Haiti's History: Revolution, Subjugation gives a brief narrative of Haitian history from the time Christopher Columbus claimed the land he named Hispaniola for the King of Spain.

A search in the Abraham Lincoln papers in the Library of Congress yields letters to the President from various sources concerning plans to colonize Haiti with freed African Americans during and after the Civil War. In part, these plans developed as a corollary to white post-emancipation racial fears; in part, they were conceived to counter increased Spanish colonization of the island. Motivated by racism, America did not give diplomatic recognition to Haiti until 1862—long after most European nations.

Searching across collections in American Memory also turns up photographs of Haitian street scenes from the early 20th century and various historical maps.