Elissa Pugh

I currently teach 7th and 8th graders at a small, private Montessori school in Nashville, Tennessee.  We have just wrapped up our first week of remote learning, now that my district schools are closed because of the pandemic.  My co-teacher and I are using Google Classroom and Zoom as our main technological tools.  It’s our year to teach U.S. history and we have been using A Young People’s History of the United States.

In teaching about the coronavirus, I plan on using the two articles shared in a Zinn Education Project newsletter, about the connection between deforestation, climate change, and coronavirus.  Also, earlier this year, we read Fever 1793, and I plan on returning to that, so we can make connections between yellow fever in the 1793 United States and current conditions.

We are currently teaching Reconstruction and, when we get to the Civil Rights Movement, I plan to use the adapted versions of two Zinn Education Project articles — What We Don’t Learn About the Black Panther Party — but Should and The Other ’68: Black Power During Reconstruction — at Newsela.