Classroom filling with water | Zinn Education Project

Organizing Lessons from the Portland Climate Justice Resolution

The climate justice resolution passed on May 17, 2016, by Portland, Oregon’s school board was the country’s first such comprehensive resolution. Portland’s Educating for Climate Justice, the organization that initiated this effort, offers some thoughts on what contributed to this successful effort as well as some of the things that they'd do differently were they starting over.
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60,000 Registered Teachers Teaching Outside the Textbook | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

A Community of People’s History Teachers Grows

This month, we reached the milestone of 60,000 teachers teaching outside the textbook. Each year, the Zinn Education Project grows by an average of 10,000 teachers. Why are so many teachers signing up to use people’s history lessons from the Zinn Education Project? Here’s just a few of the many reasons we’ve heard.
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Portland Passes Climate Resolution | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

School District Abandons Climate Denial

By Bill Bigelow In what may be a first in the nation, this week the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity.”
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New Teaching Activities on Civil Rights, Economics, and Foreign Policy | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

New Teaching Activities on Foreign Policy, Civil Rights, and Economics

From Brussels to Lahore, from Syria to the Trump campaign, the world can seem an increasingly chaotic and scary place. More than ever, teachers need people’s history resources to help students ask deep and critical questions—and to surface the grassroots activism for justice that is always there, but too often buried in the official curriculum.
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Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality (Teaching Guide) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

New Teaching Guide from Rethinking Schools

The latest book from Rethinking Schools is Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality that addresses questions including: How do you respond when a child asks, “Can a girl turn into a boy?” What if your daughter brings home school books with sexist, racist stories? What does “queering the curriculum” look like? What’s wrong with “anti-bullying” policies? What are alternatives?
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Henry Kissinger Is No Friend of Humanity

Did you see the Democratic debate last night? Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger became a point of contention. We can take this opportunity to introduce students to Kissinger. It was Kissinger who famously called anti-Vietnam War activist and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America."
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Thanks to You, More Students Will Learn People’s History in 2016

I donate to the Zinn Education Project so that my daughter will not have to wait until she is an adult, as I did, to learn people's history. —Katherine Gray
Katherine Gray is one of dozens of people who have donated to the Zinn Education Project during our year-end campaign so that we can provide free people's history lessons to teachers across the country in 2016.
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Let’s Transform the Teaching of History

Dear Zinn Education Project friend, As you may know, we launched our People's History Organizer Campaign last month, and the response has been encouraging. Please join the campaign to raise the final third—$40,000—of our goal.
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Check Your Curriculum: Are Native Americans in the Past Tense?

For Native American Heritage Month, we highly recommend the article “‘All Indians Are Dead?’ At Least That’s What Most Schools Teach Children,” based on a study called "Manifesting Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K–12 U.S. History Standards." The article can inspire an examination of the curriculum and books in our schools.
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Let's transform the teaching of history—Donate! | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

People’s History Organizer for People’s History Teachers

Recently, a remarkable thing happened. A longtime Zinn Education Project (ZEP) supporter—a retired social studies teacher and teacher union activist—came to us with a proposal: "I want to help the Zinn Education Project reach hundreds of thousands more students. We need to provide every teacher with a people's history alternative to their textbook."
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Call to “Abolish Columbus Day” Has Unprecedented Reach

The recent If We Knew Our History article, “Time to Abolish Columbus Day,” has gone viral, as the call to change the name to Indigenous Peoples’ Day gains support across the country. The article has received more than 140K Facebook likes on Common Dreams and the Huffington Post. It has also been referenced in national news media, including MSNBC, The Washington Post, Nonprofit Quarterly, and Common Dreams, and was posted on AlterNet.
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A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis (Teaching Guide) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Pope Francis: System Change, Not Climate Change

With every passing day, the climate crisis announces itself with greater urgency. The drought in California. The wildfires in the West. The summer of 2015 was the hottest ever recorded. What's next? The good news is that activism is on the rise, too. The movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is growing by leaps and bounds.
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A People’s History of Muslims in the United States (Article) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

A People’s History of Muslims in the United States

With all the hate speech and misinformation from presidential candidates about Muslims, we revisit the Zinn Education Project article by Alison Kysia, "A People's History of Muslims in the United States." Kysia writes, "Most of my students reference 9/11 as the first time they heard of Muslims. Mainstream textbooks do little to correct or supplement the biases that students learn from the media. These books distort the rich and complex place of Muslims throughout U.S. history."
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