Belen Carrasco

This is my first year using Zinn Education Project after learning about it in my grad program in Chicanx Studies at California State University, Northridge. I was nervous about moving from 20 years in 5th grade, teaching multiple subjects, to my first year teaching 8th grade ELA & History. The Zinn Education Project was exactly what I was looking for, which is to be able to make history come alive in the classroom and to tell the stories of all voices in history.

Our class wrote “Write That I” poems that brought us all to tears after learning about the resistance of the enslaved. We’ve re-enacted the Constitutional Convention, joined and held meetings as members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and are currently preparing to plea to President Jackson about moving the Cherokee and Black Seminoles west to Oklahoma. Our students are engaged, angered, driven, and eager to learn and I can’t thank this project and all the hard work that’s gone into writing these lessons enough. I also can’t help but thank all of the voices of the people throughout history that have been ignored, overlooked, displaced, or killed in an effort to keep history one-sided.