This year, we’re continuing our tradition of posting resources you can use to bring Latino and Hispanic stories to your classroom.

First, just a reminder because definitions are important. Hispanic generally refers to people, cultures, or languages related to Spain or Spanish-speaking countries. Latino refers to people with origins in Latin America, which includes countries in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. To exemplify the difference, here are two scenarios: someone from Spain is Hispanic but not Latino, while someone from Brazil is Latino but not Hispanic (since Brazil's official language is Portuguese).

Even though our posts come in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, these Latino and Hispanic topic ideas can align with your standards at any time of year. We use the month as a reminder, but we hope that these ideas help you to incorporate these stories into your curriculum year-round.

We’ve compiled a list of many topics associated with Latino and Hispanic heritage and history, available in this document. In each page, you’ll find an idea with a few resources containing all the background you might need, as well as all the relevant learning standards. To see the learning standards, hover on the comment icon in the top left corner or double-click to make the comment appear on the side bar to the right. Some ideas are appropriate to elementary school, others for middle school and others for high school. The notes will show the grade alignments.

You will also notice that the ideas are organized by topics: Ancient Civilizations, Wars, Geopolitics, Civil Rights, Immigration, Ohio Stories and Historical Figures. The latter was not aligned to specific standards, but they are great ideas for research projects to teach your students historical thinking skills, or for programs like Ohio History Day. There are only a few examples of historical figures, and they were purposely chosen to showcase lesser-known stories. There are an immense number of important athletes, artists, politicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs in Hispanic and Latino history to explore.

We hope you find the ideas and resources useful, but we want to acknowledge that there is a great deal more diversity of stories, history and experiences within the Latino and the Hispanic communities than we have space to highlight here. If you missed it, we recommend you to take a look at our Teaching Hispanic Heritage Month – Part 3 post, which provides great resources to address the diversity of Hispanic and Latino experiences with your students.

Happy teaching!

Blog Image Citations:

Sharrat, Nicola. A stone statue holding a kero (left) and a Tiwanaku kero (right). UC Berkley Office of Resources for International and Area Studies. https://orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/societies-americas/tiwanaku.

Baillie, James S., Active , Lithographer. Genl. Scott's grand entry into the city of Mexico, Sept. 14th. Mexico Mexico City, ca. 1848. New York: Published by James Baillie. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002719717/.