A 5th-grade teacher devises a mixer activity to help her students understand that the Civil Rights Movement was not fueled only by great leaders, but also by ordinary people who became change makers and organized with others.
Nearly every child in the United States learns about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The March on Washington, where King delivered this speech, is one of […]
Get the free Teaching for Black Lives Starter Pack when you sign up today for email updates from Rethinking Schools.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which promised “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or […]
“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try—that’s my fate, too.”—11th-grade African American student, […]
Oregon students and teachers learn life lessons by participating in the ‘Theater of the Oppressed’.
Unfortunately, the transformative history of Reconstruction has been buried. First by a racist tale masquerading as history and now under a top-down narrative focused on white elites. It’s long overdue we unearth the groundswell of activity that brought down the slavers of the South and set a new standard for freedom we are still struggling to achieve today.
The largest civil rights protest wasn’t in the South, it was in New York City in 1964 when hundreds of thousands of students stayed home to protest school segregation. Here’s how today’s students reacted to a lesson about this historic boycott.
Teaching the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee helps students see the Civil Rights Movement as being fueled by thousands of young people like themselves instead of a few charismatic leaders. “Without the history of SNCC at their disposal, students think of the Civil Rights Movement as one that was dominated by charismatic leaders and not one that involved thousands of young people like themselves. Learning the history of how young students risked their lives to build a multigenerational movement against racism and for political and economic power allows students to draw new conclusions about the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and how to apply them to today.”
Organizer and advocate Tony Báez has been fighting for improved bilingual education programs for decades. In this interview, he talks about the current state of bilingual education and describes how parents and educators won a maintenance K-12 bilingual program in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
The history of the Black Panther Party holds vital lessons for today’s movement for Black lives and all movements to confront racism, inequality, and police violence. But our textbooks distort the significance of the Panthers — or exclude them completely.
As we return to our schools this fall, we need to rededicate ourselves to building an education system and a society that values Black lives.
A history teacher helps his students see the conservatism of the early New Deal and the impact of organizing and mass resistance.
The chief architect of the Common Core created a model lesson of a close reading of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A teacher from Birmingham compares that to King’s own critical reading of the “word” and the “world.”
Second graders ask grandparents to write about their experiences during the Civil Rights Movement. The letters bring surprising wisdom – and some thought-provoking issues – to the classroom.
“
Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War is a collection of 10 classroom-tested lessons on one of the most transformative periods in U.S. history. These lessons encourage […]
Teaching for Black Lives grows directly out of the movement for Black lives. We recognize that anti-Black racism constructs Black people, and Blackness generally, as not counting as human life. […]
A People’s History for the Classroom helps teachers introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of U.S. history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula.
It includes a new introductory essay by veteran teacher Bill Bigelow on teaching strategies that align with Howard Zinn’s<em> A People’s History of the United States
These exemplary teaching articles and lesson plans — drawn from an assortment of Rethinking Schools publications — emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history, and raise important questions about patterns of wealth and power throughout U.S. history.
An understanding of the “people’s history of the United States” provides the perspective and analytical tools so important for making sense of Ñ and improving Ñ today’s world.
A People’s History for the Classroom was produced in cooperation with Teaching for Change, as part of the Zinn Education Project.
I can think of no better way to excite young people about the history of our country than to introduce them to the teaching activities in </em>A People’s History for the Classroom.”
-Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
