The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of American history among adolescent Mexican Americans at the eight-grade level in a mid-west town's middle school. This qualitative study shows that multiple contexts influenced the process of teaching and learning history between and among a white teacher and adolescent Mexican Americans at Atkinson Middle School. Those overlapping contexts (the context of the education of minority language students, the context of social studies education, and the school's culture) created a unique totality responsible for shaping the experiences of learning American history by Mexican-American students. These experiences were detrimental for the appreciation by Mexican-American students of American history's potential meanings and significance.