High School Archives

Sunrise Over Fallujah

Book — Fiction. By Walter Dean Myers. 2009. 320 pages.
Young adult novel about a U.S. soldier in Iraq.

Teaching Activity by Walter Dean Myers

Reclaiming Hidden History: Students Create a Slavery Walking Tour in Manhattan

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.

Pump Up the Blowouts: Reflections on the 40th Anniversary of the Chicano/a School Blowouts

Teaching Activity. By Gilda L. Ochoa. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Reflections on teaching students about the 1968 walkouts by Chicano students in California.

Lessons in Solidarity: Grady Hospital Workers United

Teaching Activity. By Larry Miller. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
Story and discussion questions about a teacher's own experience of labor solidarity.

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 12 pages.
Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

What the Tour Guide Didn’t Tell Me: Tourism, Colonialism, and Resistance in Hawai’i

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.

Empire or Humanity?: What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire

Article for Teachers and High School Students. By Howard Zinn. 4 pages.
An essay which raises questions about the justifications for empire building and imperialism.

One Country! One Language! One Flag!

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.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Daisy Bates, Little Rock 9, and NAACP officers | Zinn Education Project

Warriors Don’t Cry: Connecting History, Literature, and Our Lives

Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 21 pages.
Role play and writing activities for language arts and social studies on Brown v. Board and the Little Rock Nine. Designed for use with the memoir Warriors Don’t Cry.

Teaching Activity by Linda Christensen

Reading Between the Lines: An Art Contest Helps Students Imagine the Lives of Runaway Slaves

Teaching Activity. By Thom Thacker and Michael A. Lord. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
An art contest is used as the basis from which students can examine primary historical documents (advertisements for runaway slaves) to gain a deeper understanding of the institution of slavery in the North.

The Singing Strike and the Rebel Students: Learning from the Industrial Workers of the World

Reading for Teachers. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Author describes how students applied strategies from the Lawrence strike to their own present day activism.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution: Teaching a People’s History of Reconstruction

Article. Background reading for teachers. By Bill Bigelow. 4 pages.
A review of Freedom's Unfinished Revolution, a collection of primary documents for high school on the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

The Election of 1860 Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 12 pages.
A role play based on the election of 1860 allows students to explore the political debates of the time and the real reasons for the Civil War.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Slavery and Defiance

Teaching Guide. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 17 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 9 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on black and white resistance to slavery before the Civil War.

Civil War and Class Conflict

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 16 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 10 of Voices of a People's History of the United States" on "The Other Civil War — the class conflict fought by the poor in the north and south.

Strikers and Populists in the Golden Age

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 18 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 11 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the Gilded Age.

Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike (Teaching Activity) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Socialists and Wobblies

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 17 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 13 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the labor movement at the turn of the century.

Protesting the First World War

Teaching Activity. By Colby Smart.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 14 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on anti-war efforts during the first World War, as well as the U.S. government's response.

From the Jazz Age to the Uprisings of the 1930s

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 20 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 15 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the economic and social realities of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the corresponding rise of unions and the Communist Party.