Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Susan Dobrian | Aliso Viejo, CA
Truth is important. Our job as educators is to teach our students to think. To do so, it is imperative that all points of view be available to them. To deny certain truths is to create a generation of people without critical thinking skills
Nikea Carwell | Los Angeles, CA
Erika Chavarría | Columbia , MD
Christopher Buttimer | Melrose, MA
Our students deserve nothing less than the truth.
Jennifer Greenwald | Madison, WI
History matters. The truth matters. Children can handle complexity. It’s better for our collective future if we acknowledge the full truth of our past.
Jennifer Greenwald | Madison, WI
History matters. The truth matters. Children can handle complexity. It’s better for our collective future if we acknowledge the full truth of our past.
Paul Spies | Minneapolis, MN
As a white guy, I was denied knowing the truth about the past growing up and was disempowered from this lack of knowledge. Knowing the full truth about the past empowers not only BIPOC, but also whites and together we can work for racial justice and equity.
Lesley Newman | Heathsville, VA
We are finally in a moment of progress in this country, and the youth's future depends on us continuing this trajectory. Denying young people access to the truth is not democratic, and it is holding us back at a time when we need to push forward more than ever.
Margaret Bokelman | Mechanicsburg, PA
Students deserve to learn the truth . . . and to be exposed to multiple perspectives. Passing legislation ruling on what teachers CANNOT teach is particularly terrifying. It's a terrible precedent to set.
Katherine Gambino | New Paltz, NY
I was taught incorrect history that not only moseducated us but left huge chunks of important historical events nd info out completely. When I finally attended a college course for history of the United States last year my professor taught us as much as he could but even he said he wasn't allowed to tell us about certain things I asked him because he had to stick to the curriculum. We need to teach out youth the truth so that past mistakes will not be repeated!
Jeanette Swank | Catonsville, MD
glossing over or sugar coating our history is not okay. We must teach the truth so our students understand that our country has made mistakes and continues to make mistakes. We cannot allow our marginalized groups to be further oppressed by creating nonsense laws that stop educators from having their students look at race through different lenses.
Chelsea Slade | Morgantown, WV
Lisa Huggins | Manteca, CA
I do not believe that I need to be told how to provide information that will encourage critical thinking. I believe in order to make this country better and to have citizens who can think for themselves, the history of this country that tells the story of all of its citizens needs to be taught so that we can move forward.
David Grapka | Altamont, NY
No politician is qualified to tell me what to teach, and no politician has the right to restrict teaching the truth. It is inconvenient for them to have to face the truth, but they must.
Deanna Haurie | Oakland, CA
Our students deserve to learn about all facets of US history so that they can shape a country that is better than the one standing today. Educators play no role in uplifting or furthering the oppression, isolation, endangerment, and marginalization of communities.
Deborah Wyttenbach | Reston, VA
I believe in teaching the truth.
Stephanie Miller | Auburn, WA
the truth will always win.
Lauren Thompson | Milwaukee, WI
Discussions of race and sex are important to student development. They see and hear and live things that they have questions and concerns about. I shouldn’t be restricted from having open and honest conversations with them about things that matter; it will inhibit relationship development and trust within my classroom.
Lauren Doherty | Kailua Kona, HI
As educators we have a responsibility to teach and educate our students on the truth with facts and accurate historical accounts and how they have affected our country throughout time. Refusal to teach about the documented and real issues regarding systemic racism and discrimination in our country and government is to distort our history and the struggles that African-Americans faced in the past and still today. We teach the factual truth, not someone’s version of it.
Connor Sheridan | Somerville, MA
I will always teach the truth, no matter what.
Christine Franzkeit , WA
We must teach the truth!
Louise Pajak | Plaistow, NH
Children should be taught the truth.
CHRISTOPHER DAIKOS | Seattle, WA
Kassie DeMarsh | Camp Sherman, OR
We need to learn from our past to make educated decisions about our future.
Pamela Oppenheimer | Philadelphia, PA
Music and art are representative of and created from cultural experiences. I cannot teach about music without teaching accurate representations of past and current cultural experiences. It would be a disservice and a lie to my students to ignore the history of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and oppression marginalized groups have faced in this country that have created countless songs, musical artists, and shaped genres of music and the shape of American music and global music today.
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.