Alisha Merrill never imagined that her class project would become a nationwide teaching tool.

"I put together this board game, Journey Home, touching on the five major regions of Native Americans," said Merrill, who graduated in 2018 from Binghampton University, with a major in childhood and early childhood education. "I brought a little bit of my culture in and tried to connect it to standards and bring it to classrooms."

The board game was a product of an elementary education curriculum development assignment. Jenny Gordon, the course instructor, asked her class to create a lesson plan that...