Teach Banned History

“The lesson on COINTELPRO electrified my students.”

Check out teachers’ stories about our lesson on COINTELPRO, the type of people’s history lesson the right seeks to ban. These are the student insights and engagement we need to encourage — not criminalize.

We dove into the COINTELPRO document analysis. For the full 90-minute block period, students discussed, jotted down notes, and exclaimed in both horror and shock as they learned about a sliver of our country’s hidden history.

Paradoxically, teaching people’s history leaves more room for hope than any other educational framework.

When students are given permission to explore the whole truth without frills, we can discuss solutions in the form of direct nonviolent action and civil disobedience that actually mean something in the real world. — Hope Koumentakos, high school social studies teacher, Takoma Park, Maryland

The lesson on COINTELPRO electrified my students.

Student engagement and excitement skyrockets when they see learning as authentic and applicable to today. This lesson helped provide both and more. — Brandon Grijalva, high school social studies teacher, Chicago

Check out the COINTELPRO lesson and share your classroom stories.

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Educational Gag Orders

New Map from PEN America

Although there is a lot of national media about book bans, the educational gag orders have a much greater impact on instruction. PEN America’s new map shows how widespread the laws are. The teacher comments above highlight the instruction and student engagement that the right seeks to silence.

Georgia Read-Alouds

Defend the Freedom to Learn

Fifth grade Cobb County teacher Katie Rinderle was served a termination notice for reading My Shadow Is Purple.

In response, the Georgia Association of Educators and the Zinn Education Project invite educators around the state to read the book. There is power in numbers.

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There are two read-aloud activities scheduled in Georgia.

July 28–29: Community read-aloud

August 1–10: Teachers and other school staff in schools

Learn More and Sign Up

A Different Mirror

A History of Multicultural America

New Foreword by Clint Smith

Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed, has written a new foreword about reading A Different Mirror in college. This excerpt highlights why we are also fans of Ronald Takaki’s classic history text.

It was as if I had been thirsty my entire life and had finally been given water to drink. Ronald Takaki’s book was providing me with the tools I didn’t know I needed; it gave me a new historical framework with which to understand the landscape of American life.

I had previously read books that outlined the histories of particular ethnic groups, but I had never encountered a book that put the experiences of so many different types of Americans in conversation with one another.

With that said, one of the great strengths of A Different Mirror is that it does not allow comparison to slip into conflation. Takaki is careful as he threads his needle through history.

Read more about the book at the link below. There is also a young readers’ edition published by Seven Stories Press.

Prentiss Charney Fellow Spotlight

Our Prentiss Charney Fellowship offers support for a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize together. Today we celebrate Rabiya Kassam-Clay, a Los Angeles social studies teacher and an educational advisor for Monument Lab.

An example of Rabiya’s creative approach to instruction is described in her Rethinking Schools article, “Our Stories: Students Curate the Museum of Corona History” about the lesson she designed during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Rabiya led workshops for the Prentiss Charney Fellows and other K–12 educators grounded in Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance. She continues to lead rest workshops for educators this summer as spaces for teacher colleagues, in partnership with their students, to imagine roles for creativity, comfort, play, and nature in our schools.

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Prentiss Charney Spotlights

We are lucky to teach, learn, and organize alongside Rabiya and all the Prentiss Charney Fellows.

Consider a donation to continue and expand the fellowship in honor of classroom education activist and union leader Michael Charney and leading Ohio education lawmaker, C. J. Prentiss.

Conferences and Classes

For Social Justice Educators

Check out the list of upcoming events hosted by the Zinn Education Project and our colleagues — for example, the upcoming classes in the Zinn Education Project Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online series and a history education conference in Florida.

Events Calendar

We Need Your Help

Teachers are under attack for teaching truthfully about U.S. history. Please donate so that we can continue to offer free people’s history lessons and resources, and defend teachers’ right to use them.

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