You're not just
studying history.
You're living it.
Living History™ is an educational framework that helps students discover how the past continues to shape the present—and how they themselves are shaping history every day.
Three convictions shape the work.
Living History invites students to see history not as a collection of dates and facts, but as an ongoing conversation. Every generation inherits the past, interprets it, and contributes to the story that comes next.
History Lives On
Students discover how historical events continue to influence the choices, institutions, and communities of today.
Students Become Storytellers
Students investigate evidence, ask meaningful questions, collaborate with others, and create original work that connects historical understanding with creative expression.
Every Student Is Living History
Students recognize that the decisions they make today become part of the history future generations will inherit.
A five-step arc from wonder to reflection.
“How is this story still shaping us?”
Every Living History experience begins with curiosity and ends with reflection, helping students connect historical understanding with thoughtful civic participation.
“History isn't something that happened to other people. It's the story we're still writing.”
Ways to bring Living History into your community.
From single keynotes to district-wide implementation — every engagement is shaped around the classrooms and institutions we serve.
Let's Build Something Together
Every school, museum, library, university, and community has its own story. If you don't see exactly what you're looking for, let's design an experience that fits your audience, goals, and historical focus.
Start the ConversationWhere Living History Belongs
Living History™ partners with institutions that believe education should cultivate curiosity, historical understanding, civic responsibility, and a lifelong habit of asking better questions.
K–12 Schools
Reimagine history classrooms as places of inquiry, storytelling, and civic imagination.
School Districts
Professional learning and long-term implementation that helps educators build inquiry-driven history programs.
Universities
Lectures, seminars, and interdisciplinary conversations connecting history, storytelling, media, and democratic citizenship.
Museums & Historic Sites
Experiences that help visitors connect historical collections to the questions shaping our lives today.
Libraries & Community Organizations
Community conversations that make history accessible, relevant, and deeply human.
Conferences & Educational Events
Keynotes and workshops that leave educators and leaders with practical tools and lasting questions.
Freedom
Interrupted.
A media-literate reckoning with one of American democracy's most consequential trades. Originally piloted through the Entertainment Community Fund Teaching Artist Program at Harvard-Westlake School.
- Teacher Guides
- Student Workbooks
- Slide Decks
- Primary Sources
- Assessments
- District Licensing
A storyteller by craft.
An educator by conviction.
Danita Jones is a television writer and producer with more than 30 years of professional experience, including writing credits on Frasier and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She translates the discipline of the writers' room into a framework for how classrooms can teach history.
An Adjunct Professor at Chapman University, a Harvard graduate studies alumna in Creative Writing, and an Entertainment Community Fund Teaching Artist, Danita is the creator of Living History™.
A Different Way to Teach History
Living History™ transforms history from a subject students memorize into a living story they investigate, question, and ultimately help shape. Through inquiry, storytelling, creative expression, and civic reflection, students learn not only what happened—but why it still matters, whose voices shaped it, and how their own choices become part of the history still being written.
Inquiry Before Answers
Students begin with meaningful questions before arriving at conclusions.
WonderMultiple Perspectives Matter
History becomes richer when students examine voices that have been included—and excluded.
InvestigateStorytelling Creates Understanding
Stories transform historical facts into human experience, helping students understand people, motives, and historical complexity.
ConnectCreativity Deepens Understanding
Students deepen understanding by creating—not simply consuming—history through writing, discussion, media, performance, and design.
CreateEvery Student Is Living History
Students recognize that today's choices become tomorrow's historical record.
ReflectThese principles guide every Living History™ lesson, every curriculum, every workshop, and every classroom partnership.
A classroom becomes a studio.
A student becomes a witness.
History becomes a conversation.
Continue the Conversation.
Living History begins in the classroom, but the conversation continues beyond it. On my Substack, I explore history, storytelling, education, civic reflection, and the questions that connect our past to the world we're creating today.