Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Lisa Delpit. 2019. 272 pages.
Essays and interviews from beloved, well-known educators, dynamic principals, and classroom teachers who tackle difficult topics in 21st-century K–12 schools.
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Article. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools Blog, September 2019.
A call to action for teachers to join students, whether in the streets or in classrooms, by using their voices for climate justice.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 14 pages.
A role play investigating the economic consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
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Teaching materials and guides on the 15th Amendment's significance in 2020 — its 150th anniversary and an election year.
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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.
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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.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Eve Ewing. 2018. 240 pages.
This book flips the script about how we talk about "failing schools," using historical research and current data to show that Chicago's public schools are storehouses of memory, an integral part of their neighborhoods, and at the heart of their communities.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna.
Students meet dozens of advocates and recipients of reparations from a variety of historical eras to grapple with the possibility of reparations now and in the future.
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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.
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Picture book. By Laban Carrick Hill. Illustrations by Theodore Taylor III. 2013. 32 pages.
A picture book biography about DJ Kool Herc, and the birth of hip hop.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Mike Selby. 2019. 208 pages.
This book reveals the histories of grassroots "freedom libraries" that were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and tells the stories of courageous people who operated and used them.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Film. Produced and directed by David Shulman. Narrated by Danny Glover. 2015. 82 minutes.
Documentary about the pivotal role played by Black landowning families during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi who controlled over a million acres in the 1960s.
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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.
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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.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Bryan Stevenson. 2019. 288 pages.
This young adult adaptation provides readers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned.
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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 Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
Through role play, students explore how different social groups influenced New Deal legislation.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Andrea Pitzer. 2017. 480 pages.
Starting with 1890s Cuba, this book is a chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps that is filled with prisoner perspectives.
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Picture book. By Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Don Tate. 2019. 36 pages.
This picture book chronicles the young life of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, an Appalachian-born Harvard scholar and advocate for African American history. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (which grew into Black History Month), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the Journal of Negro History.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Clint Smith. 2016. 84 pages.
A teacher and scholar celebrates Black humanity, and guides readers toward self-reflection through his coming-of-age poems that are political, historical, and deeply personal.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Michael Bronski, adapted for by Richie Chevat. 2019. 336 pages.
A young adult readers edition of the original text explores the history of LGBTQ+ experiences in the U.S. since 1500.
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