Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 13 pages.
Through encountering "clues," students probe the dangerous link between fossil fuels, carbon, and climate change.
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Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 9 pages.
Teaching about patterns of displacement and wealth inequality through the history of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop communities and the building of Dodger Stadium.
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Teaching Activity. By Katharine Johnson. Rethinking Schools. 10 pages.
An elementary school teacher introduces the history of redlining through a role play designed for 1st and 2nd graders.
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Teaching Activity. By Brady Bennon. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
A high school humanities teacher introduces students to the human cost of climate change, building empathy for climate change refugees like those in the island nation of Kiribati.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Renner, Bridget Brew, and Crystal Proctor. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
An article describing how math teachers in a San Francisco high school shed light on the ways economics and racism affect education, housing, and job opportunities.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 12 pages.
A trial role play asks students to question the role played by the U.S. government and other international actors in the 2010 earthquake.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 14 pages.
A role play investigating the economic consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
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Teaching Activity. By Brian C. Gibbs. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
A teacher uses the activist history of Theodore Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles to pose students the question: “What would you be willing to do to create change?"
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Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 20 pages.
Teaching about racist patterns of murder, theft, displacement, and wealth inequality through the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
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Teaching Activity. By Willow McCormick. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
An elementary school teacher connects the Civil Rights Movement to students’ family history by asking their grandparents to share their memories of the Movement.
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Teaching Activity. By Abby MacPhail. Rethinking Schools. 17 pages.
A lesson on the Keystone XL Pipeline battle.
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Teaching Activity. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools. 11 pages.
Lesson based on ANPO: Art X War, a documentary about visual resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan by Japan’s foremost contemporary artists.
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Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 10 pages.
Teacher reflection on different ways to effectively incorporate poetry into history or literature classes.
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Teaching Activity. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools. 18 pages.
Poetry, photography, and text are used in this role play to teach about the seldom told history of Japanese Latin American internment during WWII.
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Teaching Activity. By Andrew Reed. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Teaching activity connects students to history of art as a means of protest and gives them opportunity and skills to create their own stencil with a powerful message.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Using photographs to spark creative writing and critical thinking about child labor issues and social justice.
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Teaching Activity. By Katie Baydo-Reed. Rethinking Schools. 10 pages.
Students hold a mixer and a mock trial in preparation for reading literature about internment.
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Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
How students can use the Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program to assess issues in their own communities and to develop 10-Point Programs of their own. Available in Spanish.
Teaching Activity by Wayne Au
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Bill Bigelow, and Andrew Duden. Article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 15 pages.
A role play helps students recognize the issues at stake in the historic struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
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Teaching Activity. By Rosemarie Frascella. Rethinking Schools.
Our extractive fossil fuel-based economy has always demanded that some people’s homes and health be sacrificed for the benefit of more privileged and powerful others. This article explores how one teacher engages her students in thinking about how “sacrifice zones” play out in their lives.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 29 pages.
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 24 pages.
A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including freedom rides and voter registration.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian. Rethinking Schools. 33 pages.
A mixer lesson introduces students to the pivotal history of the Black Panthers.
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Article. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools, Spring 2019.
For too long, the fossil fuel industry has tried to buy teachers’ and students’ silence. But teaching climate justice has never been more urgent.
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Teaching Activity & Article. By Michelle Nicola. Rethinking Schools.
Using Marshallese poet and climate justice activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s poem “Dear Matafele Peinam,” a teacher helps 7th graders think about the sacred spaces in their own lives and how they will be affected by climate change.
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