In the News

To help teach students about how mail-in voting works, Laura Ellis takes her 11th and 12th graders to a ballot drop box outside Wheaton High School in Silver Spring. Ellis is one of hundreds of educators across the country using a voting rights toolkit to help teachers inform and mobilize students. The toolkits were developed by Zinn Education Project, a nonprofit program dedicated to providing free teaching materials for classrooms. They include materials created by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Task Force for Democracy, the ACLU and more. From Capital News Service. Read the full article here.

Over the past year, the Zinn Education Project’s (ZEP) Freedom to Teach and Learn Surveys asked classroom teachers, librarians, administrators, teacher educators, and other school staff how anti-history laws, executive orders, funding threats, and the broader political climate were affecting what they taught, what students experienced, and whether their schools and districts were defending the freedom to teach and learn. We collected responses from 610 educators in 43 states and Washington, D.C. Their testimony reveals something larger — and harder to measure — than the books formally banned, lessons explicitly prohibited, or teachers publicly punished: the chilling effect of those attacks on classrooms across the country. From Truthout. Read the full article here.

“Teachers want honest materials that tells a truthful story,” says Mimi Eisen, program manager at the Zinn Education Project. “They want materials that includes people who have been critical of the unequal state of things throughout our country’s history. They want materials about the long struggle for freedom.” From Truthout. Read the full article here.

Traditionally, May Day has focused on worker’s economic demands. But educators are bringing a new perspective to the conversation and arguing that their rights, as workers, include being able to teach in classrooms that are free from political censorship. “Education is one of the central battlegrounds where the meaning of workers rights is really being redefined,” said Jesse Hagopian, Campaign Director at the Zinn Education Project, a platform that promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms nationwide. From Colorlines. Read the full article here.

This year, the opportunity to educate students about the achievements and struggles of Black Americans arrives at a moment when students are watching civil rights — their civil rights — being stripped away in real time. Which means this is precisely the moment teachers must teach the truth about Black history and ensure students understand why the African American experience is central to what is happening across the United States right now. Doing so requires tools, not just good intentions. That’s where the Zinn Education Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to social justice education, comes in. ZEP offers free resources to help educators make these connections — between past resistance and present-day protest. Their site features 445 free lessons on the African American experience — from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. But ZEP offers more than curriculum: free books, virtual workshops, study groups, and a community of educators committed to teaching the truth. From Word in Black. Read the full article here.

Adriana Darielle Mejía Briscoe shared her family history with the Zinn Education Project, with appreciation for its numerous resources about the 1930s deportations of Mexican Americans and others throughout U.S. history. From LAist. Read the full article here.