Join us in Chicago for AHA26!
The Annual Meeting Is for Teachers, Chicago Edition
The 2026 annual meeting offers exciting sessions for teachers. Read more in Perspectives on History by Katharina Matro, who teaches history at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and is co-chair of the 2026 annual meeting program committee.
Registration
Registration is open! All participants must register, and all US-based historians presenting at AHA sessions must be AHA members.
Program
At our meeting, historians explore new approaches to research, teaching, professional development, and public engagement through panels, workshops, meetups, poster sessions, networking events, and much more.
AHA26 Teaching and Learning Guide
The AHA annual meeting offers dozens of professional development opportunities for educators. Use this guide to navigate the full spread of teaching and learning events taking place at AHA26.
Free Registration for Chicago Public K–12 Teachers
Current K–12 teachers and instructional staff at public schools in Chicago are eligible to receive free annual meeting registration. Email annualmeeting@historians.org from your school address to receive the discount code.
Connect with Your K–12 Community
K–12 Membership
The AHA is pleased to offer a special membership price for K–12 educators. The AHA also offers a special Institutional Membership for K–12 history departments.
Teaching with Primary Sources
The AHA is proud to partner with the Library of Congress in serving the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Mid-Atlantic/US Territories Region. Through the TPS Regional Program, the AHA issues subawards to a wide variety of organizations that plan to integrate the Library’s resources into educational programs.
AHA Community Action and Resource Exchange
The AHA’s Community Action and Resource Exchange (CARE) program brings historians together to discuss shared professional issues and concerns, exchange ideas, and collaborate on strategies and solutions that strengthen the discipline.
K–12 Education Today
American Lesson Plan: Teaching US History in Secondary Schools
The AHA’s 2024 report shares findings from the most comprehensive study of secondary US history education undertaken in the 21st century. AHA researchers appraised standards and legislation in all 50 states, conducted a survey of over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators, interviewed over 200 teachers and administrators, and reviewed thousands of pages of instructional materials from small towns to sprawling suburbs to big cities. The report provides empirical evidence and rigorous analysis to inform current debates over how history is taught in our schools.
AHA State History Standards Support
As part of its mission to promote historical thinking in public life and professional integrity in history education, the AHA monitors and offers guidance on state-level academic frameworks.
Teaching History with Integrity
The AHA leads or participates in several initiatives to support history educators facing intensifying controversies about what we teach and how we teach it. Historians, including both scholars and educators, play a crucial role in public deliberations about how to engage students in truthful and rigorous inquiry in history classrooms.
Freedom to Learn
The AHA’s Freedom to Learn initiative educates historians and others on how to advocate publicly for honest history education, responds directly to the bills themselves, and creates resources to help teachers directly affected by these bills think about how to maintain the integrity of their history courses.
Supporting Historians Under Threat
This guide is intended to provide resources for historians working in a range of different environments to support themselves and colleagues if faced with threats, punitive restrictions, and harassment.
AHA Testimony Before Legislatures & Boards of Education
AHA staff have delivered public testimony highlighting the challenges teachers and educators face from legislation restricting the teaching of “divisive concepts" and issues related to teaching history with integrity.
Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences
The AHA's criteria outline foundational elements for history-rich education that can be adapted to account for local priorities.
Texas Social Studies TEKS Revision Field Guide
Over the next few months, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will make decisions with profound implications for the future of history and social studies instruction in Texas public schools. We encourage supporters of public education in Texas to urge the SBOE to develop social studies TEKS that are responsive to the needs of all Texans, grounded in honest history, and designed to support educators in preparing students for success.
Conferences and Institutes
Regional Conferences on Introductory History Courses
Our regional conferences endeavor to strengthen the community of practice focused on introductory history courses, both in secondary and higher education. Middle and high school teachers, as well as curriculum supervisors, are encouraged to attend.
AHA Learn
Are you interested in the latest conversations about teaching and learning? Join us for our regular series of online programs that are free and open to the public.
Online Teacher Institutes
In July and August 2023, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its involvement in the creation of the C3 Framework, the AHA convened a weeklong professional development institute for K–12 teachers of world history.
History Behind the Headlines
History Behind the Headlines events feature prominent historians discussing the history behind current events. Open to the public and free of charge, events in this series are generously sponsored by AHA member Jared Brubaker.
Resources for Educators
Teaching Things: Material Culture in the History Classroom
Teaching Things: Material Culture in the History Classroom is a new, National Endowment for the Humanities–funded project at the American Historical Association. The digital Object Library helps teachers identify material culture sources for classroom use and includes ready-made resources and materials that teachers can use to craft lesson plans to fit their curriculum. Teaching Toolkits offer plug-and-play resources featuring object-based lessons across fields, time periods, and geographic spaces.
Standards & Guidelines for the Discipline
Many of the AHA's standards and guidelines focus on teaching and learning issues, including Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences and Guidelines for Online Teaching.
#AHRSyllabus
The #AHRSyllabus is a collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look "under the hood" at how historians in the early 21st century do the work of history.
AHA Reads
We invite you to participate in the fourth annual AHA Summer Reading Challenge. Participants will complete three (or more) reading tasks in the months of June, July, and August.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework
In 2013, the AHA, National Council for the Social Studies, and 13 other professional organizations collaborated to produce the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards.
Flashpoints: Free Speech in American History, Culture, and Society
PEN America and the AHA developed the Flashpoints event series to present the history of free speech in American democracy to public audiences around the United States.
For Educators: Explaining Today
In 2022, the American Historical Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, and New American History hosted a series of listening sessions for K-12 educators and higher education faculty.
AHA Resource Library
The AHA’s Resource Library includes hundreds of resources developed or vetted by the AHA and our partners. Our resources range from classroom syllabi, to archival documents from the Civil War, to standards and guidelines for the discipline, and much more.