Spring 2019 update: U.S. History I to 1877

01/25/19

I am Kelli McCoy, Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and subject editor for U.S. History I. As a professor at a liberal arts college, I teach a range of lower- and upper-division classes to both general education students and history majors. Over the last several years, I have found that Milestone Documents is my favorite material for assigning in nearly all of my classes, both for U.S. history and World Civilizations.

I consistently get positive feedback from my students about their experience with Milestone Documents, including how much they enjoy encountering so many different primary sources. For both beginning and advanced students, the time spent with primary sources provides the opportunity to hone the always-important skills of critical thinking, careful reading, and information literacy—on top of making the story of history more interesting and lively! I always cluster the primary sources with one of the Milestone Documents textbook articles for context, and that works really well. I find that most students rise to the challenge of reading even the difficult primary sources when presented with the opportunity and the context for why it matters.

Have you ever wished that a particular primary source was available here? Please just let me know! The Milestone Documents team is continually working to expand the collection, and we would love to include the sources you’d like to use! The current options are excellent ones, but I— like you—have a few others that I also like to use in class, and we’ll be working on adding those to the collection this year.

We heard from instructors in response to a recent survey that they would like to see an even wider array of documents and would like them all to have an overview/introduction. The Milestone Documents team will be launching an initiative this year to make sure that every document has an overview. I also will be working with them to make sure that we have an even more diverse range of documents, including diversity in type (legal, religious, literary, etc.) as well as in the people groups represented. We will particularly focus on adding documents in the areas of Native American history and women, gender, and sexuality. I also am hoping that we can add a textbook unit on women’s rights movements.

Please send me an email at kmccoy@pointloma.edu. I’d love to hear from you about how you use Milestone Documents, what you’d like to see done differently, and what specific documents and textbook articles you’d like us to add. I’m looking forward to hearing from you and continuing to work toward improving this already excellent teaching resource!

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