People’s History Workshops

In 2017, we hired our first full-time organizer to offer people’s history workshops for teachers (with a focus on the Reconstruction era) and to write lessons and articles. This fall we offered workshops in five cities to help teachers better use our people's history resources and to knit together face-to-face network of social justice teachers. Now we need your support to continue this work.
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Bring People’s History to Schools in 2018

For almost 10 years, the Zinn Education Project (ZEP) has offered teachers the resources — and encouragement — to “teach outside the textbook.” In these times, our work to equip young people with critical thinking skills has never been more important.
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Koch Brothers Exploit Pat Tillman’s Legacy

For Veterans Day in 2017, the Koch Brothers funded Bill of Rights Institute released a lesson for schools called, "Pat Tillman and Self Sacrifice: A Different Direction." The lesson exploits the memory of NFL player Tillman, much as the U.S. government did soon after he was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.
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Teaching in the Time of Trump: Year One

What do we want the world to look like when today's high school students graduate? What do students need to learn to become engaged citizens changing their communities and the world for the better? This past year has revealed starkly different possible futures.
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Teaching the Headlines: Climate Crisis and Nuclear War

The climate crisis will not announce itself with one giant catastrophic event. No. It will build, as it has this past month, with hurricanes, destroyed homes, flooding, polluted water and air, power outages, wildfires, droughts, and extreme heat. Nor will the effects of the climate crisis be distributed equally throughout the world.
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Nothing Murky About Columbus’s Legacy

Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools curriculum editor and Zinn Education Project co-director, wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in response to their August 26, 2017, article about statues and Columbus. The following letter was published on September 3, 2017.
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False Equivalency of Blaming “Both Sides”

In light of President Trump's comments about “both sides” being to blame for the violence during the white supremacist, Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA, this past weekend, Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton history professor and author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, shared examples in his Twitter feed about the use of false equivalencies in history.
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Teacher Organizer Campaign | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Let’s Transform the Teaching of History

Imagine how we can transform the teaching of history by knitting together our ZEP network and provide them with even more extensive people's history resources. Resources that can help students question, but also can inspire and empower. To realize this vision, we'd like your help.
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People's history books sent to Arizona | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Teacher Donates People’s History Books to Arizona Schools

Howard Johnson was angry when he read about racist taunts at a basketball game at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona, in early February. But he was not sure what he could do to help students learn to treat each other with respect until he read about the Howard Zinn book drive in Arkansas.
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Civil War Revisionism Still Shames America

By Manisha Sinha If nothing else, President Trump and the Republicans are making Civil War revisionism great again. In the spring of 2017, North Carolina GOP state Rep. Larry Pittman argued that Abraham Lincoln was “the same sort (of) tyrant” as Adolf Hitler, and was “personally responsible” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in an “unnecessary and unconstitutional” war.
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From Oregon to Arkansas: Howard Zinn Book Drive Ties People Together

During the Howard Zinn book drive for Arkansas, we posted this note from Harrisburg, Arkansas high school teacher Morgan Garland: "I only have one copy of Howard Zinn's book and I make copies of each chapter for all of my students." Garland could not afford a class set. A Zinn Education Project Facebook fan, Yarrow from southern Oregon, saw the post and decided to take action.
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