More than 70 Alexandria City Public School (ACPS) administrators gathered at the Lee Community & Senior Center on April 24 for a workshop on culturally relevant curriculum facilitated by Teaching for Change staff Faye Colon and Deborah Menkart. 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 >>

Teaching for Change partnered with Filmfest DC: The Washington, DC International Film Festival for a seventh year to spread the word about the international film festival and to bring filmmakers into D.C. classrooms. Filmmakers from Queens in Training, Puerto Rico: Citizens in Peril, and The Foreigners' Home visited four classrooms. Students learned a lot from viewing the documentaries, preparing questions, and interacting with the filmmakers. Read more >>

At Claremont Immersion Elementary (Arlington Public Schools), fifth grade teacher Wendy Bermudez had her class engage in the popular role play, The People vs. Columbus, et al. The lesson, written in the form of a trial by Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools, is available for free download on the Zinn Education Project website. Read more >>

I used a number of lessons from D.C. Area Black LIves Matter Week of Action resource page and others I collected at that BLM curriculum share. #Lastwords was one of the most powerful lessons for many of my students.I have a number of students with significant learning disabilities as well. So in their classes, I used the lesson related to the book Milo's Museum. We're still working on this unit, but they seem to really be enjoying it!

The D.C. Area Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools gave a powerful start to Black History Month in classrooms across the Washington, D.C. area. Pre-K — 12th grade teachers in more than 100 schools taught lessons about structural racism, intersectional Black identities, and Black history.

Makia Green, a member of Black Lives Matter DC chapter, visited my kindergarten classroom, provided a  presentation to students and read Child of the Civil Rights Movement.

Now that February is ending (how is it already March?!), we are looking back to the beginning of the month when we participated in the nationwide Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.  When talking about something like Black Lives Matter with third graders, we work hard to make sure that the points of entry and examples are tangible, accessible, and developmentally appropriate.

At School Without Walls at Francis Stevens (DCPS), students in my elementary ESOL class read a newsela article and watched a Ted Talk in order to understand the term "systemic racism" and how it impacts people in the United States and in other countries.

In my fifth grade classroom at Rockview Elementary School (MCPS), we spent the majority of the reading block during the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools reading and analyzing poems by Langston Hughes.

Inspired Teaching Fellow Jay Banks’ 2nd-grade classroom at DC Scholars PCS focused on Black Lives Matter by discussing resistance and advocacy. The class read Crossing Bok Chitto by Tim Tingle, the fictional story of the friendship between a young Choctaw girl and an enslaved African boy. 

As a part of Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools, SEED Public Charter School educator Topher Kandik did a powerful lesson on the last words of victims of police brutality.

Washington Yu Ying's 5th graders held discussion lessons each day of the week, connecting what they know about social justice with the Black Lives Matter Movement. Today, the entire school participated in a Black Lives Matter/Black History Month read aloud.

An Inspired Teaching Demonstration School educator wrote… "In a school where Black Lives Matter, we embrace uncomfortable, messy, and yet essential conversations about race. We recognize the systemic injustice of our society and we work daily to provide a school environment that is safe, inclusive, and affirming for every student, without exception." While a Student at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School wrote...

Kindergarten students in Sandhya Rajan's class are solidifying their commitment to valuing and protecting Black lives by adding their signature to the "BLACK LIVES MATTER" banner at LaSalle-Backus Education Campus. 

As part of the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools, U.S. government teacher Ben Williams from Capital City Public Charter School taught a lesson titled “Getting to Know Bayard Rustin: A key leader and organizer of the Civil Rights Movement.” 

Inspired Teaching brought together students and adults from across the D.C. area to engage in intergenerational dialogue about Black Lives Matter. To kick-off the evening, Makia Green, a representative from the Black Lives Matter DMV chapter inspired the audience with her compelling story of how she began organizing for #BlackLivesMatter at a young age.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Teen Writers of The Beacon House, a community-based organization in Northeast Washington, D.C. wrote The Day Tajon Got Shot.  The book tells the story of a teen killed in a police shooting from multiple perspectives, challenging the reader to gain knowledge from the whole picture. The young authors presented at Mt. Pleasant Library.

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.