People’s History Lessons
2023 Social Studies Teachers Conference
| The Zinn Education Project team hosted seven interactive workshops, a dynamic exhibit, a drag story hour, and two receptions during the National Council for the Social Studies conference in Nashville. | Rethinking Schools executive director Cierra Kaler-Jones and Mississippi teacher Andrea Burroughs at NCSS 2023 in Nashville. | |
This is a big change from when ZEP co-director Bill Bigelow first attended the NCSS conference as a second-year teacher in 1979 and found barely a mention of social justice. Or 15 years ago, when NCSS rejected Howard Zinn’s offer to keynote — for free. It took behind-the-scenes organizing to turn that around and, even so, Zinn was placed on the last day after most people have usually left the conference. Defying tradition, 800 teachers stayed to hear Zinn’s phenomenal talk to teachers that November morning in 2008.
Since then, the Zinn Education Project team has hosted an exhibit and workshops each year. In addition to our presence, consistent exhibitors and presenters include Learning for Justice, Seven Stories Press, Beacon Press, and other progressive organizations. Of course, there are also right-wing groups. In 2014, we exposed the Koch Brothers funding of the Bill of Rights Institute.
This year at NCSS, the Zinn Education Project celebrated our 15th anniversary.
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Teach About the Ongoing Crisis | |
One cannot understand the crisis in the Middle East without acknowledging its history. As educators, our role is to help students grasp and analyze this history. | |
Atefeh Rokhvand, of Teachers Against Genocide, with a lesson she brought to legislators on Capitol Hill on Dec. 13, 2023. | |
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Many education groups provide resources for teaching about the crisis as a “conflict” rooted in antisemitism and Islamophobia. However, that sole emphasis is misleading. Students need to study how the current crisis is shaped in large part by settler colonial history, land, water, conditions of apartheid, and the geopolitical motivations of world powers.
We offer a growing collection of resources to help students learn the roots of the current crisis, including lessons and articles from Rethinking Schools, books for K–12, podcasts, calls to action, and infographics.
Along with the vast majority of people in the world, we add our voice to the call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
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Teach the Black Freedom Struggle
Online Classes
| Our free Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes offer the chance to learn directly from leading people’s historians and to meet peers from across the country. Invite your colleagues and/or students to join you. | |
Upcoming topics include “The Condemnation of Blackness: Lies We’re Told About Crime” and “Everyday Solidarity: Interracial Organizing Stories from The Sum of Us.” | |
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Rethinking Multicultural Education
New 3rd Edition
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From book bans, to teacher firings, to racist content standards, the politics of teaching race and culture in schools have shifted dramatically in recent years.
This 3rd edition of Rethinking Multicultural Education, edited by Wayne Au, has been greatly revised and expanded to reflect these changing times.
Sections have been added on “Intersectional Identities,” “Anti-Racist Teaching Across the Curriculum,” “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “K–12 Ethnic Studies,” among others.
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Order a copy for your school library, teacher education program, a gift for friends and colleagues, and/or for yourself. | |
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“A License to Pollute”
2023 U.N. Climate Summit in Dubai
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COP28 UN Climate Summit on Tuesday, December 5, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. © Rafiq Maqbool, AP | |
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Asad Rehman, spokesperson for the Climate Justice Coalition, told Democracy Now! that the agreement coming out of the U.N. climate summit is a “very weak text” with “lots of loopholes” that allows rich countries to avoid responsibility. It offers a “license to pollute.” Watch more coverage of the climate summit in the archives of Democracy Now!
Check out our lessons, timeline, recommended books, and more in our Teach Climate Justice campaign.
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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. | | | | |
