Explore by Theme

Dozens of downloadable teaching activities, books, films, and websites to teach. Select by theme on the right.

Sample Teaching Activities

Promoting Social Imagination Through Interior Monologues

Empathy, or “social imagination,” allows students to connect to “the other” with whom, on the surface, they may appear to have little in common. A social imagination encourages students to construct a more profound “we” than daily life ordinarily permits. Prompting students to wonder about the social contexts that provoke hurtful behaviors, rather than simply to dismiss individuals as inherently “evil” or ”greedy.”

Frederick Douglass Fights for Freedom

A lesson to introduce students to the numerous and varied ways African Americans resisted their enslavement, using the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845.  “The lesson described here asks students to empathize with Douglass’ desperate confrontation with slave owners and their agents by drawing on their own experiences resisting those who would seek to control them.”

The Politics of Children’s Literature: What’s Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth

A critical analysis of children’s books about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This reading encourages students to reject the “Rosa Parks Myth,” in favor of a more holistic understanding of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.