D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice (https://www.dcareaeducators4socialjustice.org/) is forming a working group for D.C. area middle and high school social studies teachers who are committed to teaching with a people's history lens for the 2019-2020 school year. Read more >>

“The Color Line…Teach it! Reconstructing the South…Teach it! Teaching SNCC…Teach it! What we don’t learn about the Prison Industrial Complex…Teach it! The Black Panther Party…Teach it! Who Gets to Vote? Teach it! Those were the chants heard at the African American Civil War Memorial in DC on Saturday, June 11 for the #TeachTruth event hosted nationally by the Zinn Education Project, African American Policy Forum, and Black Lives Matter at School.

On Saturday, April 17th, the DCAESJ People’s History Curriculum Working Group met to reflect on fugitive pedagogy, try out a new lesson on Brown v. Board, and to foster community care.

This year, D.C. educators, Lia Bengtson and Tarja Lewis presented during the 2020 National Deaf Education Conference. Bengston and Lewis are middle school educators at the Kendall Demonstration School, Secondary School for the Deaf. Their presentation, Exploring Hidden Narratives to Engage Diverse Students cover topics of representation and cross-curricular lessons that teach hard history.

For attendees at the 2019 Indigenous People’s Curriculum Day and Teach-in, it was a day centered in learning and development to be able to better teach students about Indigenous People’s history and life today.  Read more >>

Can you name a historical figure from Central America? This was one of the opening questions Teaching for Change Executive Director Deborah Menkart asked a class of graduate students in Dr. Elizabeth Langran’s Cross-cultural/International Curricula class at Marymount University. Read more >>

Close to 80 teachers convened at Howard University on April 13, 2019, to participate in a Reconstruction Teach-In as part of the Teach Reconstruction campaign. Read more >>

Fifty seventh and eighth grade students at McKinley Middle School (DCPS) learned about the history of Black Muslims in the U.S. in a lesson led by Alison Kysia.

To continue the momentum of Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, Teaching for Change coordinated visits by two Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans to high school classrooms.

At Thurgood Marshall Academy in D.C, eleventh grade students explore how laws and policies are created and evaluate the impact on different communities through a legal lens in an Introduction to Law class. Their teacher, Sam Chiron, used the Resistance 101 lesson.

As a part of Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, high school students at EL Haynes Public Charter High School, learned about social justice activists. They used the Teaching for Change lesson Resistance 101.

On September 2, 2018, Greg Carr gave a talk on Reconstruction as part of the Busboys and Poets A.C.T.O.R. series. The talk was co-hosted by Teaching for Change and the Zinn Education Project. Read more >>

Every seat was full for the Indigenous People's Curriculum Day and Teach-In on September 8, 2018 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Read more >>

U.S. history came alive inside Room B219 at Theodore Roosevelt High School (DCPS) with a lesson about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) through role-playing and actively engaging in decision-making. Read more >>

On April 24, close to 100 D.C. area educators filled the Blackburn Center at Howard University for a teach-in on the hidden history and relevance today of Reconstruction. The event was hosted by the Howard University School of Education, Teaching for Change’s D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice, and the Zinn Education Project as part of the Zinn Education Project campaign to teach Reconstruction. Read more >>

High school U.S. history students attended a presentation by SNCC veteran Courtland Cox, coordinated by teacher Lordsline Exantus. Cox explained to the students that his years of activism began when he was their age, and like many of them, he grew up in an immigrant household. He also told them that the in the 1960s, the apartments near their school were for whites only and that he protested the DC football team for not allowing Black players.

More than thirty teachers gathered on October 2, 2017 for an Indigenous People’s Curriculum Night at Busboys and Poets. Hosted by D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice, the event began with a “people bingo” activity that provided educators from various schools and organizations an opportunity to meet and get to know one another. Through a combination of brief presentations and structured discussions, educators shared curriculum ideas and strategies for teaching about Columbus and Indigenous People’s history and life today. Read more >>

World famous after her visit to the White House for the 2016 Black History Month reception, Ms. Virginia McLaurin spoke with D.C. history classes at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School on March 16, 2016. McLaurin was born in South Carolina and came to D.C. during the Great Migration. Media outlets from all over the world have interviewed McLaurin about what it was like to meet the the Obamas. Read more >>

Rachel Hull’s fifth graders were studying the founding of the United States from various perspectives in a unit called “Know Your Rights.” Through their analysis of primary sources and research, they began to uncover a version of history that was missing from their textbooks. To deepen their knowledge, they invited Teaching for Change board member Timothy Jenkins as a guest speaker. As a lawyer, lifelong activist, and veteran of the Civil Rights Movement... Read more >>