Teaching Center · For Educators

Teach this history, from the sources.

A local, primary-source, standards-informed way into LGBTQ+ history, built for real classrooms on the South Coast and beyond. Filter by grade, subject, and the time you have, and you will find a ready-to-teach source set, a full K-12 unit, or a printable handout, each one with an answer key. No prep archaeology. Pick a tile and teach.

Find a resource Browse primary-source sets Printable handouts

1 · New here?

Start here, and teach tomorrow.

Three steps from this page to a class period. The fastest first lesson is a single primary-source set: real documents, ready questions, a built-in key.

Pick a set or a unit

Use the finder below, or jump straight to a primary-source set for one lesson, or a K-12 unit for a full sequence.

Grab the handout and key

Every set prints two ways: a clean student handout, and a teacher copy with the answer key and standards. One click each.

Teach it in about 45 minutes

Students read the documents, weigh how strong each one is, and argue what they can claim. The museum's confidence tags do the rest.

2 · Find a resource

What do you teach, and how long do you have?

Tap a grade band, a subject, or a time frame to narrow the shelf. Tap again to clear it. With no filters on, everything shows.

Grade band

Subject

Time

Showing all 13 resources

Source Set1 lesson Civics & U.S. History · Gr. 6-12 Sent to Washington Five real documents on Studds and Frank: an election, a fishing law and its dollars, a House-floor statement, and the local archive. Open the set → Source Set1 lesson Local History & Media Literacy · Gr. 5-12 Reading a place: 20 Kenyon Street Read one real building like a historian, and watch a museum be honest about a thin record. Verified 1982, exact date Unknown. Open the set → Source SetTrauma-informed U.S. History, Civics & Ethics · Gr. 9-12 Puzzles, 2006 How a community answers violence, and the ethics of how we remember it. Includes the museum's own decision not to feature the attacker. Open the set → Source Set1 lesson ELA, Arts & History · Gr. 6-12 Reading Between the Lines Decode two real coded works: Ma Rainey's 1928 blues and Hartley's 1914 painted love letter. The stated versus the implied. Open the set → Source SetTrauma-informed History, Public Health & Art · Gr. 6-12 Remembering: the AIDS crisis A 1988 federal brochure, a memorial sewn by hand, local care, and a documented silence the museum refuses to fill. Open the set → Source Set1 lesson U.S. History, Civics & ELA · Gr. 8-12 Freedom, Delivered Late Work straight from the founding documents: the Emancipation Proclamation, General Order No. 3, and the Thirteenth Amendment's exception. Open the set → Source SetAdvanced History & Media Literacy · Gr. 6-12 Interrogating Claims The upper-grades capstone: the five kinds of claim, worked on real museum cases. Not every claim is the same kind of true. Open the set → Unit 1K-12 unit History & Media Literacy · Gr. K-12 How Do We Know? The museum's core skill as a K-12 spiral: evidence, sources, corroboration, and the confidence tags, anchored in a real local case. Open the unit → Unit 2K-12 unit Civics & U.S. History · Gr. K-12 Sent to Washington How a fishing district shaped national law, from classroom voting in K-2 to a document-based question and civics-action project in high school. Open the unit → Unit 3K-12 unit ELA, Arts & History · Gr. K-12 Reading Between the Lines Coded language, subtext, and censorship across music, theater, and visual art. Close reading and the history of free expression. Open the unit → Unit 4K-12 unit History, Art & Health · Gr. K-12 Remembering A trauma-informed unit on the AIDS crisis, the Memorial Quilt, and how communities remember loss, with a memorial-design studio. Open the unit → Unit 5K-12 unit Local History & Civics · Gr. K-12 Hidden in Plain Sight Turn students into historians of their own community, ending in a student-built mini-exhibit they can contribute to the museum. Open the unit → PrintablesPrint & go Worksheets & keys · Gr. K-12 Classroom handouts Ready-to-print worksheets and graphic organizers across all units and grade bands, each with a worked example and a teacher key. Open the handouts →

3 · Use the whole museum in class

The museum is a media-literacy lesson that never ends.

Every claim in this museum carries a confidence tag, Verified, Corroborated, Oral, or Unknown, and a citation. That makes the exhibits themselves a ready-made tool for teaching students to read a source. Have them find a claim, name its tag, locate the source, and argue whether they would rate it the same. Then send them to the gaps: not only what we know, but how we know it, and what it would take to know more.

The method Our Method The four confidence tags and the never-infer rule, the exact framework your students will practice. Read it first. How we source → The honest map Coverage & Gaps What the museum holds and what it is still missing. A live model of how to ask "what is undocumented, and why?" See the gaps → The collection The exhibits Twelve sourced exhibits your students can mine as primary evidence, each tagged and cited. The raw material behind every set. Enter the museum →

4 · Why you can trust it in your room

Local, rigorous, age-appropriate, and honest about its limits.

It is theirs

This history happened in your students' own city and county: the port, the mills, the bar down the street. Proximity makes it real.

It is sourced

Every load-bearing fact carries a confidence tag and a citation, so students see exactly how strong each claim is, and where the record runs out.

It is age-appropriate

Each K-12 unit has four grade-band tracks. The youngest learn through universal ideas, safe places, fairness, how we know, on real but gentle examples. Hard histories are flagged and trauma-informed.

It models inquiry

The museum shows its work, including what it does not yet know. That makes it a living example of how historians weigh evidence and sit honestly with uncertainty.