In this article, the author relates his experiences preparing Mexican teachers wishing to enter bilingual classrooms in Texas. The author, who was about to teach U.S. history, envisioned to teach his class with Howard Zinn's "A People's History." However, during his briefing, he was instructed by his program director to use a book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History" as it was required by Texas. He decided to offer the "visions" offered by the two books and let his students decide for themselves. He and his students found that the diverging statements offered from each book reveal significant differences between what the author describes as "the "Idiot's" hero motif of U.S. history and Zinn's form of questioning U.S. imperialist ambitions in World War II and the present." Zinn's approach to teaching history was a change of paradigm, but one that author felt would lead his students into new spaces of understanding and reflection about the teaching of history. (Contains 1 note.)