Search Results - Zinn Education Project

Salt of the Earth: Grounds Students in Hope

Teaching Activity. By S.J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners’ strike in New Mexico.

Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass.

Lessons in Solidarity: Grady Hospital Workers United

Teaching Activity. By Larry Miller. Rethinking Schools. Story and discussion questions about a teacher's own experience of labor solidarity.

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.

Exploring Women’s Rights: The 1908 Textile Strike in a 1st-grade Class

Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. 3 pages. Rethinking Schools. A teacher's reflections about a curriculum unit on women's rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.

The Singing Strike and the Rebel Students: Learning from the Industrial Workers of the World

Reading for Teachers. By Bill Bigelow. Author describes how students applied strategies from the Lawrence strike to their own present day activism.

Lewis Hine’s Photographs

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. 4 pages. Rethinking Schools. Using photographs to spark creative writing and critical thinking about child labor issues and social justice.

Organic Goodie cartoon | Zinn Education Project

Organic Goodie Simulation

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages. Lesson engages students in a lively simulation that helps them experience some of the pressures that lead workers to organize.

Who Makes History?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson introduces students to Bertolt Brecht’s poem, A Worker Reads History. Students reflect on the creative role of workers in making history.

What Rights Do We Have?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson teaches some of the nuts and bolts of labor unions and then moves beyond to ask students to consider what rights they have at work, and to recognize that “rights” depend in large part on what people have fought for and won.