Study Groups Defend the Freedom to Learn From Iowa to Puerto Rico

For the fifth annual Teach Truth Day of Action in June 2025, Teaching for Black Lives study groups in Iowa, Kansas, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Wisconsin organized teach-ins, rallies, film screenings, banned book swaps, and more. Read about the study group actions below.

Iowa | Kansas City, KS | Maplewood, NJ |Brooklyn, NY (P.S. 261) | Brooklyn, NY |

Harlem, NY |Durham, NC |Rincón, PR | Kenosha, WI

Iowa

Two middle school teachers, Petra Lange and Haileigh Mejia, created a three-day teach-in of workshopping poetry, doing research, and creating activist art woven together with the support of Vidya Iyer, a grad student returning home for the summer. Ten to fifteen students engaged in activities, culminating in a poetry anthology and a collective project to highlight their learning on the impact an individual can have on an institution, their community, and our history.

Students spent the first day building community, creating collective commitments, and engaging in a writing activity by Linda Christensen: analyzing Kelly Norman Ellis’ “Raised By Women” poem to write, perform, and anthologize their own “Raised by . . .” poem.

To better understand marginalization, students learned about Helen Fein’s Universe of Obligation to help them realize who is at the center of concern in the United States and who is on the outside. In small groups, students reflected on the concerns of people found on the outside of our nation’s Universe of Obligation, but central to our community and lives. These are the community concerns students shared:

• A fear of deportation in our schools and homes
• Persistent homelessness in our city
• Money issues in our families
• Lack of mental health support or funding in our state
• The continuing effects of policies of segregation in our neighborhoods
• LGBTQ+ safety in our schools

This activity helped students to think about how they could share their learning with the wider communities of our school and city.

On the second day, students reconnected with each other by using Linea King’s “Baby Steps Toward Restorative Justice” in Teaching for Black Lives. When working with humans, conflict inevitably arises, so our team started with the South African practice from King’s lesson, naming the strengths and gifts that each of us brings into the room.

Students also engaged in the “Resistance 101” mixer lesson to learn about the wide variety of change-makers and social concerns that are a part of our nation’s history. Considering the historical figure they selected for the mixer, students identified connections to the community concerns they brainstormed together and decided which person they wanted to highlight for their final project. Students researched their unsung activist, using the following guiding questions:

• What issues did the activist care about?
• What strategies did the activist use to resist/protest?
• How did the activist make an impact?
• How does their life and work connect to the concerns that the group came up with?

Once the research process started, students decided that their collective final project would be to create postcards to send to people who needed an uplifting message and posters to be displayed in their school.

On the third day, students continued creating their individual final piece. When students were almost finished, they were asked to tie their unsung activist to someone they know in their community who shares the same concerns or resists or protests in similar ways. Some students chose family members, while other students chose their teachers. One of the most memorable parts of the teach-in was when four of the students volunteered to share their collective project during the whole staff’s morning meeting. Students took turns sharing all the new topics they learned about, reciting the poems they wrote, and thanking the people who helped to make this possible.

On our last contract day for teachers, the baton of brilliance was passed from students to staff, where teachers, leaders, and support staff had the chance to engage in similar Teach Truth activities. Eleven staff members came to school before contract hours to learn about the undaunted educators who are often left out of educational learning and yet have deeply impacted our field through their impressive efforts to repair the harm done through centuries of systemic oppression. Each educator added their own inspirational poster or postcard to the students’ final piece where they are proudly displayed on a hallway bulletin board in our middle school.

Kansas City, Kansas

Showing Up for Racial Justice — Kansas City, Education Core (with partners Equality KS, Voter Rights Network of Wyandotte County, NEA-KCK, NEA-Shawnee Mission, BLOC, Latinx Education Collaborative) hosted a #TeachTruth Teach-In to educate community on the colonial history of the Shawnee Indian Mission and Northeast Kansas.

Michael Rebne, Teaching for Black Lives alumni coordinator and high school teacher, noted,

We had 30 people show up to listen to deep historical dives by expert historians and educators. People walked away with a morning of fellowship, community, and action steps to move forward with their new knowledge.

Maplewood, New Jersey

Study group coordinators from South Orange-Maplewood reported:

Our Teach Truth New Jersey program was 50 people strong, including students, teachers, and parents from four New Jersey school districts: South Orange-Maplewood, North Brunswick, Paterson, and Millburn. Our activities for the day were engaging and interactive, featuring a screening and discussion of the Banned Together documentary, a new lesson, Legalize Black Education, and a student panel examining all things teach truth, such as personal impact, censorship legislation, youth voice, solidarity, action, and hope.

The event was at the Library and Media Center at Columbia High School in the School District of South Orange & Maplewood.

Brooklyn, New York

For the second year, educators at elementary school P.S. 261 hosted an interactive Teach Truth pop-up display alongside bins of banned and challenged books during their annual Rainbow Run, a Pride event. Erin Simpson, teacher and Teaching for Black Lives coordinator, said,

Prior to the event, our fifth-grade class looked at the Teach Truth Day of Action map to start the conversation. Then we engaged in a discussion about the importance of teaching the truth to 10- and 11-year-olds. Students shared elements of our social studies curriculum that align with the idea of teaching the truth, such as writing speeches about social justice topics and then marching with activism posters to Borough Hall, studying the guiding principles of Black Lives Matter at School and then creating artifacts that showcase one or more of the principles, and engaging in volunteerism while learning about food justice.

The fifth graders dove into why it’s necessary to share the truth with students and they also thought about the effects of not having the full story or everyone’s perspective. We also discussed the value of reading banned books. After these discussions, students created photo frames.