High School Archives

The Day of Silence: Queer Kids, Conservative Kids, and the Silences Within and Between Them

Article. By Anna McMaken-Marsh. Rethinking Schools. 2022.
A high school teacher navigates the tensions that arise in conversations with students about the Day of Silence, and how to bridge divides.

We Refuse Discussion Questions

Questions to accompany Chapter One: Revolution of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson.

“We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect?

Teaching Activity. By Jesse Hagopian. 40 pages.
A lesson to help students consider not just what the Constitution says, but what it leaves out.

The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Viva La Causa

Film. Bill Brummel Productions. 2008. 39 minutes.
A documentary film and teaching guide on the grape strike and boycott led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the 1960s.

Woman screaming at Elizabeth Ann Eckford | Zinn Education Project

“A School Year Like No Other”: Eyes on the Prize: “Fighting Back: 1957-1962”

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
A companion lesson to the Eyes on the Prize segment on school desegregation.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Maestra (Teacher)

Film. By Catherine Murphy. 2013. 32 minutes.
Documentary about the successful 1961 literacy campaign in Cuba.

Standing with Standing Rock: A Role Play on the Dakota Access Pipeline

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.

Teaching Activity by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

Teaching the 1964 New York City School Boycott

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
This lesson and accompanying article teach about the largest civil rights protest of the 1960s was in New York City, when hundreds of thousands of students stayed home to protest school segregation.

Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez

Teaching A People’s History of the March on Washington

Teaching Activity. By Jessica Lovaas and Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 2021. Updated in 2023.
A lesson with case studies from Los Angeles; Birmingham, Alabama; Brooklyn; Detroit; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Albany, Georgia; and Cambridge, Maryland — to introduce students to the diverse struggles across the United States that were represented at the March on Washington.

Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez

Rosa Parks Lived a Long and Active Life, So Why Is This Timeline So Boring and Short?

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 3 pages.
This timeline activity builds on students’ viewing of the 2022 film, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, and involves collaborating on a new timeline of Mrs. Parks' life.

Simulating Redlining: When “Race Was the Real Currency”

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
A high school social studies teacher describes a classroom simulation where students experience the effects of decades of racist federal housing policies.

“We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine”: Helping Students Picture Climate Justice

Teaching Activity. By Suzanna Kassouf. 2023. Rethinking Schools.
To imagine a better future, high school students role-play activists at a visioning conference and then create murals.

Mapping Deportations: Unmasking the History of Racism in U.S. Immigration Enforcement

Digital collection. Invites you to see the history of U.S. immigration enforcement not as a series of disconnected events, but as a pattern.

The People v. the Hip-Hop Industry

Teaching Activity. By Jessica A. Rucker. 2021. Rethinking Schools.
A high school teacher and her students question “Who owns and controls hip-hop?” — and put the hip-hop industry on trial.

Rethinking Teaching About the USPHS Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: A Revision that Centers Resistance

Teaching Activity. By Gretchen Kraig-Turner. 2024. Rethinking Schools.
A high school science teacher revises her lesson on the USPHS Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee to center resistance.

The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman: Hope, Terror, and Exodus in the Post-Civil War South

Book — Non-fiction. By Henry Adams. 2026. 286 pages.
The testimony of Henry Adams, who traveled to the nation's capital to tell an unforgettable story of violence, resistance, and social action in the post-Civil War South.

Unsung Heroes (Lesson) | Zinn Education Project

Unsung Heroes: Encouraging students to write about those who fought for social justice

Teaching Activity. Essay by Howard Zinn and lesson by Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 18 pages.
Students research and write stories about unsung heroes in U.S. history.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition

Book — Non-fiction. By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert. 2021.
This biography of Rosa Parks accessibly examines her six decades of activism, challenging young readers’ perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the Civil Rights Movement.

“Intolerable Conditions”: Teaching About Northern Racism Through Rosa Parks’s Detroit

Teaching Activity. By Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students learn to “talk back” to official accounts of the Detroit Uprising of 1967 by focusing on its root causes. They also get a fuller sense of Rosa Parks’s life and politics, and the Black freedom struggle outside of the South.

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

Book — Non-fiction. By Kellie Carter Jackson. 2026. 304 pages.
A reframing of the past and present of Black resistance — both nonviolent and violent — to white supremacy.

Why Did the United States Invade Venezuela? Student Inquiry

Teaching Activity. By Jesse Hagopian. 2026. 24 pages.
Students are invited to explore competing explanations for U.S. intervention in Venezuela and then develop their own hypothesis.

Teaching Activity by Jesse Hagopian

ain’t i a woman: black women and feminism

Book — Non-fiction. By bell hooks. 2014. 206 pages.
Examines the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the devaluation of Black womanhood, Black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the Black woman’s involvement with feminism.

Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism, An Illustrated Guide

Book — Non-fiction. By Joel Andreas. 2015. 80 pages.
A comic book expose on militarism in graphic format, making it accessible for high school and above.

Teaching Activity by Joel Andreas

Mural by Blake Chamberlain on an interior wall of the Women's Rights National Historical Park Visitor Center depicting influential people of the women's suffrage movement.

Seneca Falls, 1848: Women Organize for Equality

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow