History was a special subject for me because of my father. His stories were my main source on the world, politics and the events that changed society from 1911 to 1986. He was born in 1911 and had a brother who served in World War I and another in World War II . In my mind, History was going to be a course in storytelling, but when reality hit me, I quickly became disappointed. The textbook was thicker than anything I had ever seen, and the content was dry, factual, specific, and had none of the qualities of my father's stories. Fortunately, he taught me how to navigate the text and introduced me to microfiche and autobiographies, which helped add color to the stark black-and-white perspectives presented in the text. Although cross-referencing the content of the text with primary sources and original accounts was tedious, this process helped fill in details that had been erased from the text. With each successful history class, I learned more about the quality of a textbook, the validity of sources, and how perspectives can change from one edition to the next. History is still a subject that I truly enjoy and understand because I was taught to use a critical eye to evaluate the source and ways to triangulate proposed theories. However, many students are not fortunate enough to have a living historian among them and for them, history is a boring subject that could not be further from their daily lives. The challenge for historians The materials available to a teacher can be used. have a huge impact on content distribution and adoption. History, by its very nature, is both broad and deep and therefore one of the most complex studies to teach. The materials are a cumulative collection...... middle of paper ...... oral content in a package that is more likely to be acceptable and navigable for today's youth. Works Cited Gewertz, C. (2012, December). History lessons blend knowledge and literacy content. Education Digest, p. 11-16. MacPhee, D.A. and Whitecotton, E.J. (2011). Bringing the “social” back to social studies: Literacy strategies as tools for understanding history. The Social Studies, 102, pp. 263-267. Reynaud, D. (2011). Dealing with historical films in history and English classes. Research and scholarship, 48-52.Scheuerell, S. (March 2009). The Avalon Project: Using Literacy Strategies with Primary Sources on the Internet. Research and Practice in Social Studies, 4(1), pp. 71-81. Schlepegrell, MJ, Greer, S., & Taylor, S. (June 2008). Literacy in history: language and meaning. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 31, pp.. 174-187.