Teaching Activity. By Rowan Shafer. Rethinking Schools.
A teacher adapts the “Climate Change Mixer” designed for older students as a springboard for a unit on global warming and climate justice. She asks, "How could I bring up an issue so big and abstract, so gloom and doom, with 3rd graders? How could I not?"
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Teaching Activity. By Eric Fishman. Rethinking Schools.
An elementary school teacher developed the engaging Quetzal Conundrum game to help students understand the impact of climate change in Costa Rica.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 2009. Rethinking Schools.
The environmental crisis requires a profound social and curricular rethinking.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
A simulation helps students understand the causes of economic crises.
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Teaching Activity. By Flannery Denny. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
A math educator brings data from a friend’s solar panels — and the story to win them in their community — into her 7th-grade classroom to build a bridge between math and climate justice education.
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Read selections from our favorite classroom stories, written by teachers who have used climate justice lessons found at our website, and see how students respond to lessons about environmental injustice.
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Teaching Activity. By Rachel Hanes. Rethinking Schools.
A 2nd-grade teacher shows how connecting a student's home to the classroom led to profound lessons for all her students — in this case, about pipelines and climate justice.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools, 2020.
This multimedia, creative role play introduces students to the ways African American life changed immediately after the Civil War by focusing on the Sea Islands before and during Reconstruction.
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Teaching Activity. By Renée Watson. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
A teacher's reflection on the power of poetry to spark critical discussion and reflection on current issues of inequality surrounding disaster response in the United States.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Empathy, or "social imagination," allows students to connect to "the other" with whom, on the surface, they may appear to have little in common.
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Teaching Activity. By S. J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners’ strike in New Mexico.
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Teaching Activity. By Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 3 pages.
Text of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War, followed by three teaching ideas.
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Teaching Activity. By Mark Sweeting. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
How one teacher engaged his students in a critical examination of the language used in textbooks to describe the internment.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Translated by Floralba Vivas. Rethinking Schools.
Handout in Spanish for the U.S. Mexico War Tea Party.
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Teaching Activity. By Rick Mitchell. Rethinking Schools. 10 pages.
Description of a course on the history of music in the United States.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 13 pages.
A role play on the origins of the modern high school allows students to question aspects of schooling they often take for granted, such as tracking (“ability grouping”) and standardized testing — and to reflect on the racial biases of these so-called reforms.
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Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Lesson for high school students on the bombing of Hiroshima using the film Barefoot Gen and haiku.
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Teaching Activity. By Alan J. Singer. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
How a teacher and his students organized a tour of the hidden history of slavery in New York.
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Teaching Activity. By John DeRose. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Analysis of textbook passages from different countries, videos and books are used to explore different perspectives about the same event in history, i.e. "Philippine-American War" vs. "War of Philippine Independence."
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Teaching Activity. By Gilda L. Ochoa. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Reflections on teaching students about the 1968 walkouts by Chicano students in California.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
A trial role play helps students reflect on responsibility for the deaths of Irish peasants during the so-called potato famine.
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Teaching Activity. By Larry Miller. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
Story and discussion questions about a teacher's own experience of labor solidarity.
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Teaching Activity. By Wayne Wah Kwai Au. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Lesson on the history of Hawai'i and the impact of colonization and tourism.
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Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
A teacher's reflections about a curriculum unit on women's rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Discussion questions and teaching ideas for examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.
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