Teaching Materials - Zinn Education Project

Just an Environment or a Just Environment?

Teaching Activity. By Hyung Kyu Nam. 2003. Explores the multiple causes of racial segregation and environmental racism, and helps students understand how institutional racism is perpetuated in the post-Civil Rights era.

Time Periods: 20th Century

Themes: Racism & Racial Identity

Kids in Birmingham 1963

Archive. An online collection of stories from people who were children in Birmingham in 1963.

Time Periods: 20th Century, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974

Themes: African American, Civil Rights Movements

Labor Songs

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages. Students explore the power of songs to build solidarity and increase understanding. This is the final activity from Bigelow and Diamond’s labor history book, The Power in Our Hands, and draws on the other lessons.

Themes: Art & Music, Labor, Organizing, Social Class

Modern Times

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson uses Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious classic film, Modern Times, to help students think about the impact of “scientific management” on the workplace.

Themes: Economics, Labor, Social Class

Paper Airplane Simulation

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. In this simulation, students make paper airplanes to learn about the origins and effects of “scientific management”—owners’ attempt to capture workers’ skills and knowledge, and then to exploit that knowledge to reorganize work and cut costs by deskilling workers.

Themes: Economics, Labor

Paradise Lost: Introducing Students to Climate Change Through Story

Teaching Activity. By Brady Bennon. Rethinking Schools. 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.

Time Periods: 21st Century, 2001 - Present

Themes: Climate Justice, Environment, Pacific Islander

Rachel Corrie: “Letter from Palestine”

Film clip. Voices of a People's History. Rachel Corrie's "Letter from Palestine" (2003) read by her mother, Cindy Corrie.

Time Periods: 21st Century, 2001 - Present

Themes: US Foreign Policy, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements, World History/Global Studies

Rethinking What We Know About the Vietnam War

Teaching Activity. Zinn Education Project. 21 pages. Two lessons to introduce key facts about the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers, documents that provide essential history that is often ignored by textbooks.

Time Periods: 20th Century, Cold War: 1945 - 1960, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974, Post-Civil Rights Era: 1975 - 2000

Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Imperialism, US Foreign Policy, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements, World History/Global Studies

Roudanez: History and Legacy

Archive. The work of Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the first Black daily newspaper in the U.S., the New Orleans Tribune, with articles, excerpts, videos, and a timeline.

Time Periods: 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864, Reconstruction Period: 1865 - 1876, Industrial Revolution: 1877 - 1899

Themes: African American, Reconstruction, Media, Slavery and Resistance

SNCC Digital Gateway

Archive. Historical materials, profiles, timeline, map, and stories on SNCC’s voting rights organizing.

Time Periods: 20th Century, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974, 21st Century

Themes: African American, Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Organizing

Sandino Rebellion: A Documentary History

Archive. A digital collection of over 3,300 documents from the Sandino Rebellion in Nicaragua, 1927-1934.

Time Periods: Prosperity, Depression, & World War II: 1920 - 1944

Themes: US Foreign Policy, World History/Global Studies

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Archive. Center for the study and promotion of the histories and cultures of peoples of African descent.

Time Periods: All US History

Themes: African American, Art & Music, Education, World History/Global Studies

Sharecroppers Challenge U.S. Apartheid: The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Teaching Activity. By Julian Hipkins III, Deborah Menkart, Sara Evers, and Jenice View. Role play on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) that introduces students to a vital example of small “d” democracy in action. For grades 7+.

Time Periods: 20th Century, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974

Themes: African American, Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Organizing

Shutdown!—Confronting Plant Closures

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. In this role play activity, students assume the roles of union members and attempt to figure out how to respond to a threatened plant closure.

Themes: Economics, Labor, Organizing, Social Class

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

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

Time Periods: 20th Century, World War I: 1910 - 1919

Themes: Education, Labor, Organizing, Social Class

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.

Time Periods: 21st Century

Themes: Climate Justice, Environment, Math

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. 15 pages. Rethinking Schools. 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.

Time Periods: 21st Century, 2001 - Present

Themes: Climate Justice, Environment, Imperialism, Native American, Organizing

Stepping into Selma: Voting Rights History and Legacy Today

Teaching Activity. Teaching for Change. 2015. Introductory lesson on key people and events in the long history of the Selma freedom movement.

Time Periods: 20th Century, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974

Themes: African American, Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Organizing, Social Class

Sun City – A Teaching Guide

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow. Lessons to accompany the 1985 video "Sun City" that promoted the cultural boycott of South Africa initiated by Little Steven van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E St. Band.

Time Periods: 20th Century, Post-Civil Rights Era: 1975 - 2000

Themes: Art & Music, Laws & Citizen Rights, Racism & Racial Identity, World History/Global Studies

“Taylorizing” Burgers: A Fantasy

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages. In this playful activity, students utilize the principles of “scientific management” to restructure a burger joint—one that has been run a good deal more democratically and imaginatively.

Themes: Economics, Labor, Social Class

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