I had a secondary school history teacher who was excellent. He tried once, rather unsuccessfully, to present primary source photographs and tried to get us to respond with intelligent observations about what was being depicted (he was pursuing his MA at the time, and I suspect that was his inspiration). That said, I always found light bulbs click on when I asked students to participate in actual historical research. And that's not as difficult as it might sound, particularly now with the internet. And by the way, I have lectured to students aging from 12 to 80, and I have found the same sort of thing applies.

I have presented historical photographs and artifacts and asked students to participate in the process of figuring out what they depict, what they are, and what they might mean. I also created a census database, and we used this to explore a variety of questions: what were 12 year olds doing in 1880? How were people of a specific ethnicity/birthplace represented. What can be learned about people pursuing various occupations? This database might be useful to you since you hope to teach at an international high school and the state in question, Nevada, had more foreign born per capita than any other state in the nation (at least in 1870), so an international array of students are sure to find their counterparts in the "Wild West". See this site. The point here is that it is possible to do actual, real, live historical research, and that, I find tends to set imaginations afire.