Madeline Alvendia

I have used the Zinn Education Project’s lessons almost weekly in my classroom! We began with a unit on Reconstruction, where we utilized the curriculum guides shared by Zinn. Not only was it academically rigorous and challenging for my students, but it reflected historical themes and questions they had always wondered about, but never learned about.

From reading the “Price of Paradise” on Hawaii’s colonization, to reading Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence from France and the U.S. entry into war, to engaging in the numerous simulations (my students’ favorite!) about historical events like segregation in How Red Lines Built White Wealth, the Zinn Education Project’s lessons continue to encourage my students to question the history they are taught in school.

They have learned not to take anything at face value, and they continue to take this level of questioning and critical thinking beyond the classroom. I am so thankful to Zinn to providing resources to me as an educator that speak to my students’ historical oppression and give them tangible ways to fight back against the sanitized versions of history given to them.