Utah Teachers Have Their Own State Standards Tool

Utah history and civics teachers have a new resource at their disposal, thanks to the Bill of Rights Institute.

As part of BRI’s aligned state standards tool, Utah’s own state-specific tool features curricula recommended by BRI to meet the state’s civics and history education standards. The tool allows teachers to filter the state’s standards by grade, subject, and the type of resource they want to use.

Utah teachers can filter for grades 8-12 and for the subjects of U.S. History, U.S. Government and Citizenship, and Utah studies. They can also filter through the state’s standards, which include explaining how slavery and other geographic, social, economic, and political differences between the North, South, and West led to the Civil War; explaining how social reform movements influenced Constitutional amendments and changes to laws and democratic processes; and using evidence to investigate the effectiveness of the New Deal as a response to economic crises.

The Utah tool also links to recommended BRI resources under each standard for teachers, including activities, essays, podcasts, and videos from BRI curricula like American Portraits, Presidents and the Constitution, and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (BRI’s comprehensive U.S. History digital textbook).

BRI introduced the Utah standards alignment tool to teachers during a workshop, and Utah history teacher Nicole Jones described the state standard alignment tool as “fabulous!”

“I learned so much about BRI [and] I can’t wait to implement these awesome resources in my classroom immediately,” Jones said.