High School Archives

Police use tear gas against participants in San Francisco’s 1934 general strike.

Who Made the New Deal? The Economic Recovery Conference Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
Through role play, students explore how different social groups influenced New Deal legislation.

Breadline at McAuley Water Street Mission under Brooklyn Bridge, New York, circa 1930.

What Caused the Great Depression? The Widget Boom Game

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
A simulation helps students understand the causes of economic crises.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Book — Non-fiction. By Ibram X. Kendi. 2016. 608 pages.
This book chronicles the origins and growth of anti-Black racist ideas, and their power, over the course of U.S. history.

Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice (Adapted for Young Adults)

Book — Non-fiction. By Bryan Stevenson. 2019. 288 pages.
This young adult adaptation provides readers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned.

Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington

Book — Non-fiction. By Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, and Michael G. Long. 2019. 168 pages.
A biography of antiwar and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

Young Voices for the Planet: “Words Have Power”

Film. By Lynne Cherry and Young Voices for the Planet. 2019. 6 minutes.
This short documentary features the activism of Jaysa Mellers, a young adolescent girl who rallied her community to challenge local air polluters.

The Green New Deal and Our Schools

Article. By the Rethinking Schools Editorial Board. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
The Green New Deal will only be brought to life by people who grasp the enormity of the crisis that humanity faces and the radical changes necessary to address it. This requires that we teach a climate justice curriculum.

solar house from Rethinking Schools magazine | The Zinn Education Project

Solar Power Comes to Math Class

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.

Because Our Islands Are Our Life

Article. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools, Summer, 2019.
A high school ethnic studies teacher describes how students in the Pacific Island Club used poetry to refocus the narrative surrounding climate justice onto frontline communities.

Teaching Activity by Moé Yonamine

Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations About A People’s History

Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn and Ray Suarez. Reprinted in paperback in 2022. 240 pages.
A collection of conversations between Howard Zinn and journalist Ray Suarez, conducted in 2007, about people's history.

Trinkets and Beads

Film. By Christopher Walker. 1996. 52 minutes.
This documentary reveals the funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling story of the battle waged by indigenous people to preserve their way of life in the Amazon, in the face of international capitalism and colonialism.

Colored Conventions Project

Digital collection. A repository for primary sources and collection of essays about the origins, activities, and influence of the 19th-century Colored Conventions Movement that advocated for Black civil and human rights.

An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Book — Non-fiction. By Paul Ortiz. 2018. 296 pages.
This narrative, intersectional history describes the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights, and argues that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of the United States.

Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice

Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2003. 368 pages.
A selection of passionate, honest, and piercing essays looking at political ideology in the United States.

Teach Voting Rights

Voting rights toolkit for students.

One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden. 2019. 288 pages.
A young readers edition of Anderson's voter suppression analysis and history, One Person, No Vote.

Rad American History A-Z: Movements and Moments That Demonstrate the Power of the People

Book — Non-fiction. By Kate Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl. Ten Speed Press. 2020. 176 pages.
Paired with dynamic paper-cut art, readers explore several centuries of U.S. politics, culture, art, activism, and liberation.

What Our Students Should Know About the Struggle for the Ballot — but Won’t Learn from Their Textbooks

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

From voter ID laws to voter-roll purges, gerrymandering to poll closures to the deadly in-person voting conditions during a pandemic, the right to vote is under attack and the stakes are high. It is critical that students learn about the fight for voting rights, past and present.