The Power of Plants
A middle school teacher in Laos attempts to restore her and her students’ connections to the land through gardening together and learning about Indigenous medicine.
Curriculum Articles
Teaching About the “Stuff That Is Actually Happening”
Yonamine describes how learning about young people fighting against climate change energized her summer school students.
Exploring Our Houses of Memories Through Poetry
Christensen uses abecedarian poetry to excavate student memories and bring their lives into the classroom.
Snapshots of Joy
Kaler-Jones and Lee discuss how they used photographs of joy to humanize leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
What’s Missing in Holocaust Education?
Winograd and Chertoff expose the Echoes & Reflections curriculum — produced by the Anti-Defamation League, Yad Vashem, and the Shoah Foundation — for its pro-Israel indoctrination and offer an alternative vision for how to teach about the Holocaust.
“I Really Felt Like I Was Using My Writing for Good”
Christensen details strategies to encourage students to write essays that matter while they investigate decades of housing discrimination in their neighborhood.
Teaching “Mexican Repatriation”:
A 5th-grade teacher engages students in a unit on the forced deportation of 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the United States during the Great Depression.
Sweet Stuff
Through a trial role play in a high school science class, students explore who — or what — is to blame for the rise of epidemics related to increased sugar consumption.
What Nina Simone Teaches 1st and 2nd Graders About Making Change
During a unit on changemakers, 1st and 2nd graders learn about power, change, representation, and community through the songs of Nina Simone.
Teaching the Haibun During Times of Chaos and Struggle
Christensen teaches the writing process by encouraging students to celebrate beloved places with the haibun, a Japanese poetic form.
Teaching the Fight for Queer Liberation
Students imagine themselves as LGBTQ+ activists and debate key questions facing organizers through more than 50 years of movement history.
Why We Need to Teach the History of the Environmental Justice Movement
A high school social studies teacher discusses ways to teach the rich history of multiracial, community-based environmental organizing in the United States.
“Starcups Workers Unite!” — Students Learn Their Workplace Rights
The director of the Young Workers Education Project describes a high school simulation based on recent Starbucks workers’ organizing.
Israeli Apartheid: A Simulation
A high school teacher and co-editor of Teaching Palestine details a classroom simulation revealing some of the inequities Palestinians face throughout Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Teaching Palestine
Palestine has long been one of the great silences in the official curriculum. Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices provides educators with powerful tools to uncover the history and current context […]
Why Do You Live Where You Live?
A middle school English teacher uses online mapping tools to connect past racist housing policy to the present.
“More People Get What They Need”
First graders learn about accessibility and empathy through constructing emergency signals.
Rethinking Teaching About the USPHS Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: A Revision that Centers Resistance
A high school science teacher revises her lesson on the USPHS Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee to center resistance.
Green, Blue, Yellow, Red: Mapping Spatial Injustice
Layering maps, a former high school science teacher illustrates spatial injustice in air quality and highway construction.
Simulating Redlining: When “Race Was the Real Currency”
A high school social studies teacher describes a classroom simulation where students experience the effects of decades of racist federal housing policies.
Transgender Justice in Schools
Transgender Justice in Schools provides inspirational stories from trans students and educators and resources for teachers, students, and parents seeking to build communities where everyone flourishes. This book will educate, […]
Debunking False Climate Solutions in Our Classrooms
An environmental justice teacher encourages students to critically examine proposed solutions to climate change.
For Students to Understand Today’s Violence in Palestine-Israel, We Need to Teach About Zionism and the British Empire
Bigelow details a new mixer lesson about the roots of Zionism in the classroom — and its relevance for today’s crisis.
Grounding in Our Roots: Preserving Family History Through Migration Narratives
A high school language arts teacher writes about the power of students interviewing family and friends to develop migration narratives.
Nurturing a Rainbow of Resistance to Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws
Christensen describes teaching high school students about new anti-LGBTQ+ laws — and the growing resistance to them.