When students complete this class, they should be able to look at any historic document and "source" it. They will be able to determine who the author is, what the author's authority is, when the source was written and if that date impacts the source's reliability. 
They will also know how to take two accounts of the same story and pull corroborating facts out.
They will know how to determine which sources are reliable and which are not.
They will know what primary and secondary sources are.
They will know how to determine which sources should be used for a research paper and which should not.
They will learn key events and concepts in United States history.

My Masters degree is in American Studies and I spent a great deal of my graduate studies focusing on the Civil War, Westward Expansion, and the Industrial Revolution. I completed my Master thesis on the Americanization of Christmas. 

Since graduating, I have completed many professional development courses through the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Stanford History Education Group. My most recent courses in the summer of 2022 included American Immigration History, Black Women's History, The Civil War, and The Great Depression and the New Deal.

In addition to my degrees and continuing education, I spend a lot of time researching and reading about various topics in US History such as Westward Expansion, Pennsylvania history, the history of Christmas in America, and more.

I have been teaching both US and World History in person to homeschoolers and on Outschool since 2019. 

With the exception of the mapwork, all resources students use in this class are primary sources. Wherever possible I use primary sources from marginalized people so that students are given history from the point of view of the people who lived it and not just from the point of view of the "victor." There is no required reading outside of the class material. 

Primary sources were also used to create the curriculum and the lecture materials. In addition to the primary sources used, I also relied heavily on my studies in college, my continuing education in United States History through professional development courses, and on the nonfiction books on topics in US History that I have read (see Teacher Expertise section below for more information).