Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Martha Davis | Mansfield Center, CT
Our district is committed to equality and citizenship. Providing students with opportunities to use critical-thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration and world citizenship. All of these are goals within the district's Portrait of a Graduate. Thus, truth, and the recognition that truth can be hard to hear and hard to accept is why competent and capable educators must provide students with primary sources and to give voice to the voiceless. I am proud to engage in this important work with strong young minds, who will make their way in this world as empathetic and informed citizens.
Margaret Montoya | Albuquerque, NM
I have experienced CRT, LatCrit, and ethnic studies provide students and faculty with a sense of agency and feelings of worth in White-dominated institutions. I have heard emotional testimonies that CRT has re-energized careers for physicians and provided analytical tools for teachers and public sector workers. CRT theory, pedagogy, vocabulary, and thought models remade my identity, my teaching, and activism. Moreover, CRT and LatCrit offered me and others academic communities that provided the support I/we needed to remain in academia as scholar-activists.
Jennie Kim | Austin, TX
We cannot learn from history if we do not know it.
Kristin Weigand | Austin, TX
It is imperative that we teach our children with truth and integrity and not white-wash our history; it is part of who we are as a nation and it must be part of our collective education and dialogue. Our nation needs to come together to heal and teaching our children the truth about our past even when uncomfortable and inconvenient is part of the solution.This type of divisive legislation is reminiscent of Jim Crow laws and threatens to derail the process we have made in the past 50 years to ensure this great nation is equitable for all. I look to our political leaders to do the right thing and act with moral integrity. Voting against this legislature is doing just that.
Deanna Federman | Ardmore, PA
This is important information and I have read all the Zinn books.
Allie Arnold | Washington, DC
Our kids need to be prepared to live and act fully in this world. Teaching this truth begins to repair the centuries of harm and give our kids a way to heal instead of re-traumatizing them and leading to greater harm.
Stephanie Blose | Niles, OH
I believe in empowering my students to become the positive change our world needs. This generation needs to hear the truth from educators so that they can pave the road for our country that is filled with intelligence, truth, and love. History repeats...If we do not know the truth, we can not figure out how to avoid repeating those same mistakes...
Deborah Way-Salinas | Austin, TX
We are stronger and braver when we stand for truth together.
audrey cashen | Menlo Park, CA
it is imperative that we teach our children to be independent, critical thinkers.
DELISA ALEJANDRE | Los Angeles, CA
Rachel Tingley | Chicago, IL
I pledge to continue to give students access to multiple primary source that challenge dominant narratives and ask the questions: if the victors write the history, whose history are we really learning? Who is telling the story, and why?
Sylvia Bustillos | Las Cruces, NM
Truth. Plain and simple. Then let the students decide. It is not my job to influence or sway them. I will present all sides and let the students decide how to believe.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell | San Bruno, CA
Taylor Hall | Dorchester Center, MA
I refuse to lie to my students- all this does is perpetuate white supremacy.
Ryan Strole | Napa, CA
It is unconscionable to me that lawmakers wish to ban the truth about our problematic history. If we sweep our mistakes under the rug, we will truly never learn from them, nor heal the toxin that so virulently infects our society.
Andrea Reyna | Menlo Park, CA
Carson Loveless , NLCA
Naqiba Gregory | West Sacramento, CA
We will not be able to grow as a society until we tell the truth. Perpetuating lies and myths does not help anyone. Heal the wounds of our ancestors. Expose human weaknesses so that we can learn, as we have all made mistakes and only grow from owning it and finding a new path. Teaching others to take responsibility for their owns actions will filter through to their personal life also.
Joseph Piccione | Gilbertsville, PA
We cannot make a better future if we do not learn about and from the past.
Andrea Vazquez | Port Charlotte, FL
Thomas Murley | Sterling, VA
Kristen Tubman | Baltimore, MD
We must look honestly at history in order to seek empowerment for all our young people
Michele Messer | Philadelphia, PA
As a parent and a school psychologist, I believe supporting understanding through perspective taking and contexualizing experience. I will support any and all efforts to dismantle systems that prevent students and families from reaching their potential. Critical thinking about our nation’s history is an essential step.
Jess Huetteman | Providence, RI
Chris Fenlon | Catonsville, MD
The truth has been either hidden or obstructed for too long from too many. It's unfair for people to not know the full truth of the land in which they live. There are many things about this country that I have learned as an adult, on my own, that would have helped me for far longer, had I learned them in school.
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.