Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Naomi Lara | Norwalk, CA
I believe in education for liberation and that means teaching the TRUTH.
Keith Barger | Portland, OR
I owe the truth to my students. The only way teaching and learning history can impact the present with any meaning is to be truthful. Only be seeing what was done can we make different choices.
Marea Sharpe | San Diego, CA
Students deserve the truth.
Michelle Sweezey | Sacramento, CA
We must acknowledge and understand our history in its truthful entirety in order to repair, learn, and do better.
Courtney Hanson | Chicago, IL
Mary Perisho | Tulsa, OK
Stephanie Elliott | Graton, CA
All stories should be told.
blanca Caldas Chumbes | Saint Paul, MN
Porchia KEELEY | Rosedale, NY
The truth is the only option even if it makes any group of people uncomfortable.
Keya Blasingame | Atlanta, GA
MARGARET CHANEY | Tucson, AZ
As a parent and a teacher of history and government I continually seek to answer questions from students that demonstrate an understanding about WHY things have happened, keep occurring or should never happen again. They deserve nothing less than the truth!
Torin Coffino | San Francisco, CA
To follow in the tradition of Paulo Freire. As found in the introduction to his seminal work, Richard Shaull writes if Freire’s work, “There is no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.” I choose freedom and truth.
Mark Thompson | Hatch, NM
Teaching history that reflects the actual oppression that has existed throughout every era of history is the duty of every history teacher!
Pietro G. Poggi | Emeryville, CA
I believe in the academic freedom to expose students to new ideas and accurate portrayals of both history and colonial modernity—and the First Amendment.
Ken Hung | Philadelphia, PA
Monica D’Antonio | Norristown, PA
Jim Wood | Sodus, NY
We cannot cede public education to disseminators of ignorance, misinformation and lies. Among the first steps to disentangle and dismember systemic racism is to expose its historic roots for our students to see, discuss and understand.
Beatrice McGeoch | Providence, RI
We can not have effective civic public education without teaching the truth.
Lindsay Colf | St. George, VT
Gianna Craig | Ross, CA
Comfort Agboola | Chicago, IL
Jackie Blair | Portland, OR
Raymond Taddeo | Kansas City, MO
I pledge to teach the truth. A pledge to teach a non-eurocentric viewpoint of history.
Maria Hernandez | Chicago, IL
It is important for us and our children to understand the roots of our current issues. We must get to the root of our problems by looking at our past, even if it makes us uncomfortable
VALERIE RICHARDSON | Glenn Dale, MD
Selected Pledges
Click on pledge below to read many more.
As an educator who is serious about teaching the truth I will not be bullied into silence. I will do my part in the fight for equity and equality by making sure my students are most equipped to fight this ugliness in the real world.
Yes, the truth of American history needs to be taught, but also its impact on the rest of the world, such as its role in WWII. I just finished teaching a college-level course on the Holocaust, and could not believe how little the students knew about the rest of the world’s participation in the war! They seemed to believe that WWII was ended by the US alone!
“When you begin to do things that raise the achievement of the poorest and disenfranchised students, you may not always get applause. You need to be ready for that.” Dr. Asa Hilliard
“Resistance is a powerful motivator precisely because it enables us to fulfill our longing to achieve our goals while letting us boldly recognize and name the obstacles to those achievements.”
Dr. Derrick Bell
Our young people deserve the truth and it is our kuleana (responsibility) to give space and opportunity for the truth and the difficult conversations.
If we don’t teach it all, we teach nothing…
Social justice is a major theme of my Humanities 7 course, and my school uses Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL framework (development of identity, skills, knowledge, Criticality) to frame our entire curriculum. Student agency through research work and essay writing, and action-oriented civic engagement work, define what we “cover” in my course.