Student Voices Lost, Stolen, and Found
Students write personal narratives about feeling silenced and making themselves heard.
Curriculum Articles
Beyond Loyalists and Patriots:
A history teacher describes a mixer role play that introduces students to Black and Indigenous perspectives at the time of the American Revolution.
Don’t Make Students Love America — Teach Them to Question It
Hagopian highlights how a new Zinn Education Project lesson uses primary sources to engage students in discussions about slavery, inequality, and the meaning of freedom.
Student Essays that Matter — Defying Formulaic Writing
Students write “unbound” essays about topics that impact their lives.
“Rethinking Columbus” to Help Students Find Their Voice in an Age of Villains
A 5th-grade teacher modifies and expands Rethinking Schools’ Columbus trial into a unit.
Science Teaching for Social Justice
Science Teaching for Social Justice helps students and educators dig into science as a tool of oppression and means of liberation.
Be Your Better Self
Students write narratives on kindness and solidarity to speak back to despair.
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.
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.