The annual Youth Justice Summit at Capital City PCS in Washington, D.C. included six sessions of youth-led workshops on a variety of social justice topics including book banning, the impacts of gentrification, gun violence, disability and policing, and climate justice. 

This story’s title gave it away, but Sacred Heart students, and the wider community, are beaming with pride because their book, Historias y Dibujos: Students of Sacred Heart School, Washington, D.C., 2022, is now available to purchase online,and eight copies are a part of D.C. public library’s permanent collection! 

Ofosu Jones-Quartey, author of Love Your Amazing Self: Joyful Verses for Young Voices, interspersed a read aloud of select verses from his book with mindfulness exercises at Rocketship PCS - Legacy Prep in support of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

By Bridget Fuller

On February 26, the Anti-Bias Early Childhood Educator working group met to connect as a community, discuss challenges and successes with the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, and share ideas on using biographies in early childhood classrooms.

D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice, Communities for Just Schools Fund, and the Early Childhood Initiative at the National Museum of African American History and Culture offered a workshop on hair representation in children’s books on November 2, 2019.

We are excited to announce the launch of the DC Area Educators for Social Justice network's second annual Anti-Bias Early Childhood Working Group, a collection of classroom educators, librarians, social-emotional specialists, non-profit directors, teachers trainers, and arts educators experienced and committed to anti-bias education.

Can you remember your favorite book growing up? Did it introduce you to a new world, either fictional or real? Did it stir you to think about a topic differently? Did you see yourself and your experiences reflected in it? What if that book was banned? Read more >>

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 >>

On the morning of Saturday, June 1, members of the Anti-Bias Early Childhood Education Working Group met at the offices of Teaching for Change for the final session of the year. The working group met monthly throughout the school year to provide feedback on children’s literature, support teacher growth and development, and collectively create new curricular resources.To culminate the year together, they gathered for a final workshop focused on Teaching About Family Structures and Fairness. Read more >>

On Saturday, April 27, 2019, the Antiracist Research and Policy Center held the First Annual National Antiracist Book Festival at American University in Washington, D.C. Among the hundreds of attendees were Teaching for Change staff and a board member. In addition to being mesmerized by the panel presentations throughout the day, we had the honor of offering a teacher workshop in the afternoon. Read more >> 

We all know what “The End” means when reading a children’s book. The story has concluded. The last sentence of a book can also indicate to a reader that there is closure. But what are the consequences of that closure when it comes to books about ongoing social movements? Isn’t there always more to the story? Or is the struggle for justice over? Read more >>

The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Early Childhood Education Initiative hosted a Family Day on Saturday, April 13th inspired by the the museum’s first children’s book, A is for All the Things You Are: A Joyful ABC Book, written by Anna Forgerson Hindley and illustrated by Keturah A. Bobo. Each child in attendance received their very own copy of the book to take home! Read more >>

By Ashley Chu.

One of the earliest stories children hear is the familiar tale of Cinderella. While there are hundreds of Cinderella narratives from dozens of cultures, the most common one in American households is the version that traces its origins to French author Charles Perrault’s 1967 Histoires ou contes du temps passé, Cendrillonin… Read more >>

Over the course of two weeks, an early childhood teacher explores each of the 13 Black Lives Matter Movement guiding principles with her students through discussion and read alouds.

In my 5th grade ELA class at Munda Verde Bilingual PCS, each day during the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, a family member from our class came in and described what Black Lives Matter means to them. With gallery walks and dialogues, students became experts on the 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

At Bruce-Monroe ES @ Parkview (DCPS), a dual language English/Spanish school, students explored the principles of the Black Lives Matter movement by reading and completing projects related to The Day You Begin / El día en que descubres quién eres, Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, and Milo’s Museum.

Ashley Chu read This Is the Rope by Jacqueline Woodson in her Kindergarten class in D.C. for Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

Preschool students in Makai Kellogg's class at School for Friends explored the guiding principles of queer and trans-affirming during a story-time reading of Jessica Love’s Julian is a Mermaid .

Parents of children in a pre-K class at Anne Beers Elementary School (DCPS) were featured guest readers (part of the Teaching for Change Roving Readers program) in honor of Black History Month and Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

We hosted two sessions for D.C. area early childhood teachers in January to prepare for the 2019 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. Read more >>