The Zinn Education Project launched the Prentiss Charney Teacher Fellows program in 2022. Named for education activists C. J. Prentiss and Michael Charney, the fellowship offers support for a cohort of people’s history teacher leaders every two years to study, learn, and organize together.
The first group of fellows was recruited and selected in the spring of 2022, the second in 2024, and the third in 2026. Read selected spotlights.
Why Now?
Educators are at the center of battles over what history children will learn and the kind of future they will create. The right wing uses its immense wealth and the complicity of the mainstream press to fan the fires of bigotry and repression. To fight back, we need to support educators who will teach, organize, write, create, and build.
We are also getting an increased number of requests for media interviews, workshops, presentations at conferences, and more lessons. In order to respond to the current requests, let alone ensure that this work can carry on in the years ahead, we need to develop a cohort of teachers with the support, skills, analysis, and connections to play that role.
From Isolated Classrooms to Collective Action
Five years ago we could point to thousands of teachers across the country using people’s history lessons from the Zinn Education Project. We impacted a truly impressive number of classrooms — one by one.
Ironically, the pandemic created the opportunity to overcome the isolation and bring those teachers together. While they were working from home and on Zoom, we organized weekly classes with people’s historians. In each class, teachers met in small groups for conversation. While the teachers said the speakers were phenomenal and transformed much of what they knew about U.S. history, they cited the small group conversations with peers as equally important. For many, this was the first time they could talk with radical educators from across the country — sharing both moral support and strategies.
Those online classes began in March of 2020 and continue today, shifting from weekly to monthly now that teachers are back in the classroom.
In September of 2020, we deepened the peer-to-peer teacher collaboration with teacher study groups — 30 in the 2020–2021 school year and 100+ every year since.
Every summer we engage many of those same teachers in leading days of action across the country in response to the right wing anti-history education attacks.
These collective experiences are not only helping teachers deepen their practice as education activists, they are also keeping them in the profession. At a time when record numbers of teachers are leaving in the face of unprecedented challenges, the study groups and Teach Truth events offer teachers a lifeline. These are the very teachers we cannot afford to lose. And it is from this pool of teachers that we are recruiting the teacher fellows.
Fellowship
A fellowship generally means receiving a grant to study and learn; but fellowship is also a “friendly association, especially with people who share one’s interests.” We are designing something that incorporates both meanings of the word: an opportunity for working teachers to study, learn, and participate in a community of radical educators.
The fellowship is named “Prentiss Charney” for two education activists who embody the spirit of this endeavor. C. J. Prentiss and Michael Charney were committed to radical education for young people and recognized that creating the conditions for that learning requires creative, grassroots organizing. Through their decades of work in Ohio and nationwide, they modeled the tenacity and strategic brilliance required to be successful against well-funded right-wing institutions.
This is a fellowship with ongoing support and engagement. Sustaining and advancing this work requires that we have teachers ready to engage in one or more of five ways:
Organizing. Organizing for changes in district or state standards and testing, against anti-history bills, school district climate justice resolutions, etc.
Policy. Examining how education policy affects schools/classrooms, including gathering stories about the impact of and resistance to policies like privatization, testing, funding inequity, teacher credentialing/preparation, etc.
Professional development. Developing and offering workshops on Reconstruction, racial justice, climate justice, and other key areas that support the Zinn Education Project mission.
Writing curriculum. Adding new teaching resources and perspectives to the collection at the Zinn Education Project website so that we can eventually offer a full alternative to textbooks and packaged materials from groups like the Koch-funded Bill of Rights Institute.
Sharing stories. Writing about the work of being an educator and/or activist for multiple audiences, including op-eds, education blogs, the Zinn Education Project website, and Rethinking Schools magazine.
Fellows meet throughout the year as a cohort. Early in the year, they develop goals and write a work plan; meetings throughout the year allow fellows to share their progress, receive feedback and support, and modify their plan accordingly. In their last convening, they share their work, celebrate each other, and coordinate next steps with the ZEP team.
Each Prentiss Charney Fellow receives:
Public recognition: local and national media, stories about the work they accomplish, web posts featuring each fellow and their story, etc.
Structured sessions throughout the year (at least five) and summer convening. The sessions include organizing, writing, and curriculum workshops, political readings/discussions, and workshops on how to engage with the media.
Stipend: recognizing the extra work they do during the fellowship year and have done for many years leading up to that (which is why they were selected in the first place), they each receive a stipend of $3,500 and at least $500 worth of resources, such as books, conference registration, travel, etc.
The fellows play a necessary role in deepening the impact — now and in the future — of the Zinn Education Project in the fight to defend and expand teaching outside the textbook.
Support
Funding is provided by the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Foundation and individual donors.
We need your help to continue this vital educator leadership program. Choose the Prentiss Charney Fellowship from the campaign options on the donation form.
Meet the Fellows
We celebrate the work of prior Prentiss Charney Fellows. Here are some stories from the Fellowship’s previous years.
 Sally Stanhope during the Stone Mountain Action Coalition led Truth Walk. Photo by Dean Hesse. Sally Stanhope’s students investigated how citizens of Shermantown, an African American community in the shadow of the world’s largest Confederate monument, mobilized a variety of tactics to thrive despite threats to their community’s safety and wellbeing. |
 Tamyka Morant and Becky Pringle at a Teach Truth rally in D.C. Tamyka Morant developed a unit on globalism examining Black pride movements across the Americas and Caribbean, documenting how justice-centered pedagogy cultivates critical consciousness and supports collective liberation. |
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