Teacher Authors
You already know which book
your students need.
Most of the best history writing for young people starts in a classroom, not a publishing house — a teacher who noticed the textbook left something out and wrote the missing chapter. The History Education Foundation helps teachers turn that into a real reading story students can open on any device.
Why we would help you publish
Our whole argument is that good history teaching depends on teachers shaping the material. Publishing is one way to take that seriously — and to leave something behind that outlasts a single school year.
The gap is usually a missing story
A local history nobody wrote down. A court case that explains the Constitution better than the chapter does. An event your families lived through. Those are books, and nobody is going to write them but you.
The tool is already built
Our Story Reader turns your chapters and pages into a reading experience with read-aloud narration and word highlighting, so students who read below grade level can still get the content.
Your name stays on it
You are the author. We list your name and your classroom on the story page, and we point teachers in our network to what you wrote.
How it works
Tell us the idea
One paragraph. What is missing, who it is for, what grade you teach. No outline needed.
We reply with a plan
Dr. Kendall writes back with a shape for it, the standards it would hit, and a realistic scope for your class schedule.
You write it here
You build it in the Story Reader — chapters, pages, images, audio. We help when you get stuck.
You publish it
When you are ready, it goes live with your name on it — and, if you want it, an ISBN from our block.
What this is — and what it is not
We would rather be plain about this up front than disappoint you in month three.
What we do
- Help you shape a classroom-sized idea into something finishable.
- Give you the writing and read-aloud tool at no cost.
- Publish it on this site with your name and school on it.
- Assign it an ISBN from the Foundation's own block, so your story is a cataloged title with a formal publisher behind it — not just a page on a website.
- Point teachers in our network to it, and list you with our teacher authors.
- Leave the copyright with you. Your words stay yours.
What we do not do
- We pay no advances and no royalties. There is no money in this for either of us — the Foundation is a nonprofit and the grant is the budget.
- We do not sell your book on Amazon or anywhere else for you.
- We are not your agent, and we cannot promise sales or reviews.
- We cannot edit a full manuscript for you — but we will tell you honestly what it needs.
- If you want a printed book, we will point you to people who do that well.
About the ISBN — read this part
An ISBN is what makes a book a book: it can be cataloged by a library, cited in a paper, and listed for sale by a bookstore. The Foundation holds its own ISBNs and can assign one to your story.
Two plain conditions come with that. You keep the copyright — the words stay yours. The Foundation is listed as the publisher of record — that is simply what the number means. Each ISBN can only be used once, so we decide together when a story is finished enough to spend one on.
Who this is for
Classroom teachers
Student teachers
Retired teachers
Librarians
District curriculum leads
Community historians
History, civics, geography, economics, media literacy — and anything local that your students should know and the textbooks skip. If you have written lessons for a Utah standards strand, you already have the spine of a book.
Tell us what you would write
One paragraph is enough to start. You are not committing to anything by sending this.
Prefer email? Write to info@history-education.org.
Read what teachers have already built
Every story in the Story Reader started as a teacher's answer to a gap.
Open the Story Reader