Tuition-free opportunities for K–12 educators to study a variety of humanities topics.

After five years of coordinating national Teach Truth Days of Action, the Zinn Education Project is helping usher the movement into a new phase — deepening its reach by embedding the fight for honest education in year-round social justice organizing rather than leading a single day of action ourselves, and bringing the demand for the #FreedomtoLearn to the growing number of coalition-led protests. We are also focusing on the American Revolution 250 in 2026.

Michael Charney (March 31, 1950 – January 2, 2026) was a passionate educator, political strategist, and labor organizer, committed to ensuring students and the broader community learn the truth about U.S. history and have a voice in their own education. Here is a brief introduction to Charney's life and philosophy.

Educators are teaching in perilous times. We face a white supremacist backlash — funded by billionaires — against the 2020 uprising for Black lives, when tens of millions built a multiracial movement against systemic racism.

Stories from teachers using Zinn Education Project lessons in 2025.

The Zinn Education Project (coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) supports and defends the right to teach truthfully. We need your help to reach more classrooms in 2026.

We offer lessons to teach truthfully, outside the textbook — on immigration, climate, labor solidarity, and more. Our lessons encourage students to ask questions, to think critically, and to ask who loses and who benefits from policies in history and today.

Historian Ned Blackhawk discusses the Indigenous origins of the American Revolution, drawing from his book, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.

Resources for teaching a people's history of the American Revolution.

In 2025, there were increased attacks on teaching history, including anti-history education executive orders and book bans. To counter these attacks, we secured donations from authors and publishers to increase classroom access to books on people’s history.

The Zinn Education Project team offered workshops and an exhibit booth at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference in Washington, D.C. from December 5-7, 2025.

The Zinn Education Project hosted a dinner reception at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 2025.

In 2025, we helped young people learn to read the news with a critical eye, to assess current events with a historical lens, and to recognize red-baiting and fear-mongering tactics.

When South Carolina educator Alana J. Ward learned her African American Literature course was being cut, she could have given up. Instead, she organized.

Eve L. Ewing joined the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online class series to discuss her book Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.

Scholar Joshua Clark Davis spoke with educator Jessica A. Rucker about his new book Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back. This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

A call for creative resistance by artists, including K–12 art teachers and students.

The right-wing media is on the attack against the Zinn Education Project. In their Red Scare vitriol, these media outlets discredit activism and critical analysis in people’s history. The real targets of these attacks are the educators who teach outside the textbook.

Historian Jeanne Theoharis returned to discuss her book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South with renowned civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill. This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

Thanks to the generous support of Dave Colapinto, donations made through Giving Tuesday (Dec. 2) will be DOUBLED up to $10,000.

Resources for Indigenous Peoples’ Day and all year to teach outside the textbook.

For Latinx (also called Latine) Heritage Month, we offer free lessons and recommendations for books and films.

In hundreds of classrooms on Constitution Day, students examined who was invited to write the Constitution (and who was excluded) and what rights are included — and which are left out. Here are their stories.