Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Shannon Schuver | Saint Paul, MN
Kathleen Kercheski | Salem, OR
Rachel Wheelin | Baltimore, MD
Catherine Ramos | Santa Monica, CA
in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."Students need to learn hard truths about history and current events so we do not keep repeating the same injustices. Our children need to be anti-racist allies and agents of change.
Trina Sotira | Roselle, IL
Students demonstrate the effects of censored K-12 education when they enter my college classrooms. Out of 17 students in a composition class, one entered college understanding red-lining. The other 16 students were faced with new knowledge that had been muffled in their prior education. Students shouldn't experience our country's history under a veil of secrecy, through books read in private, or talks behind closed doors. Students and teachers should be allowed to discuss our country's truths in a safe space--our public classrooms. The truth is not an elective.
Lisa Stone | Houston, TX
Students, and the rest of us, need to learn truth in order to be prepared to think and act safely and honorably.
Liza Rimola | Bloomington, IN
Lois Sugar | Scottsdale, AZ
I believe that the truth is vitally important and we must be age-appropriately open and honest with our learners.
Polly Garcia | Brooklyn, NY
Immigrants experience racism on many levels. If intervention in their education to become English speakers does not occur, racism and misinformation is propagated and white supremacy is made stronger. It is our duty as teacher of ELLs to commit to anti-racism education.
Bonnie Owens | Salt Lake City, UT
I care about the youth I work with, their families, and their futures. I care about and support my colleagues of Color and others who have been oppressed. Hiding our history will not protect us from the consequences of marginalization and systemic oppression.
Joe Bradley | Freeport, NY
America will never live up to its putative ideals by denying fundamental historical truths.
Leah Hood | Minneapolis, MN
I will not be intimidated or censored by fascists. Students need and deserve the truth.
Linda Heeg | Havertown, PA
Craig Morley | Seattle, WA
My students should have the opportunity to view history and their current realities from multiple perspectives in order to develop critical thinking skills.
Megan Wolfslau | Saint Louis, MO
Teaching kids to seek and understand diverse perspectives and honor truth will help us move forward in fulfilling the ideals set forth in our governing documents.
Ronny Reddig | Charlotte, NC
I pledge to teach the truth.
Toni Puzzo Canady | Fall City, WA
I believe acceptance and telling the truth about all philosophies, sexual orientation, cultures and ethnic background is vital for getting our society to finally stop all forms of hate and intolerance once and for all. We must teach our future leaders to learn and educate themselves about the factual history/past to change the future. We deserve to live in a world filled with love and kindness toward all.
Maya Thieme | Denver, CO
I cannot lie to my students who look to me as a trusted adult
Casey Hernandez | Fort George G Meade, MD
My duty as an educator is to guide students in the pursuit of knowledge and to help them grow into well-rounded, civic-minded individuals. The role of the public educator should never be to promote state propaganda. By pledging to teach the truth, I am dedicating myself to my profession, to my students, and to a fair democracy. I cannot help my students grow into well-informed, civically engaged individuals by lying to them about our country's history.
Colette Ballew | Honesdale, PA
I have always felt that truth over lies is the only way to encourage good dialogue.
Patricia Tyrol | Kingston, NY
We cannot move forward in an anti-racist way until we look at and teach the true past.
Dori LaMar | Apple Valley, CA
history must be taught, all of it. We must be critical so we can grow.
Peter Langella , VT
The United States was founded on stolen Indigenous land using enslaved people to build wealth and power.
Olga Korzen
it is important to teach history truthfully.
Fabiola Flores | Sacramento, CA
our children deserve to know the truth. My multiracial daughter has the right to know how the United States treated her black ancestors! Teachers need to
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.