Teach for Black Lives

Let’s make teaching for Black lives the norm, not the exception.

The Teaching for Black Lives Campaign helps educators reject racism and anti-Blackness through critical self-reflection in study groups, equips them with classes and curricula that enable the teaching of honest history, and creates a network of collaboration and support for social justice educators across the country. 

Explore the links below to build a toolkit to teach for Black lives.

Monthly Teach the Black Freedom Struggle Online Classes.

The Zinn Education Project offers a series of online classes with people’s historians on the history of the Black Freedom Struggle. Teachers learn directly from leading historians and also interact with peers from across the country. Professional development certificates and ASL interpretation are provided. Listen to excerpts from the classes below and register today!

Teaching Resources

Teaching for Black Lives Book

Emerging from the Black Lives Matter movement, this book highlights the ways educators can and should make their classrooms and schools sites of joy, justice, and liberation in the movement to dismantle anti-Blackness and white supremacy in education. 

Get the book >>
Find supplemental resources >>

Study Groups

The Zinn Education Project supports Teaching for Black Lives Study Groups across the United States. Each study group receives copies of Teaching for Black Lives, a Rethinking Schools, subscription for each participant, access to dozens of workshops and seminars over the course of the year.

Learn about the groups >>
Apply to form a study group >>

Lessons

The Zinn Education Project offers dozens of lessons on the history of the Black Freedom Struggle — from resistance to enslavement to redlining to the ongoing fight for voting rights and reparations.

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Online Classes

Our “Teaching the Black Freedom Struggle” online classes offer the chance to learn directly from leading historians and to meet peers from across the country. In each session, a historian is interviewed by a teacher, and participants break into small groups to meet each other, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas. Sessions are designed for teachers and other school staff — but parents, students, and others report loving the classes too.

Learn about classes >>

Teach the Black Freedom Struggle Podcast

Zinn Education Project’s popular Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes are available as audio recordings. Listen to teacher interviews with leading people’s historians and journalists including Jarvis Givens, Martha Jones, Robin D. G. Kelley, Clint Smith, Bryan Stevenson, Jeanne Theoharis, Kidada Williams, Dave Zirin, and many more.

Listen to recordings >>

Rethinking Schools Magazine

In addition to the book, Teaching for Black Lives, Rethinking Schools publishes a quarterly magazine dedicated to promoting equity and racial justice in the classroom. Each issue offers new ideas for how educators and communities can make schools sites of joy and justice and dismantle white supremacy and other oppressive structures.

Learn More >>

Snapshots

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Events & Announcements

January 9, 2024 in Events

Teaching for Black Lives Study Groups 2024–2025

April 2024 (until spots are filled): The Zinn Education Project is accepting applications for Teaching for Black Lives educator study groups for the 2024–2025 school year. Apply today! Each year…
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January 9, 2024 in Events

Reparations and Climate Justice

Monday, May 6, 2024: Philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò will discuss his book Reconsidering Reparations which takes on reparations and distributive justice with wide implications for views of justice, racism, the legacy…
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January 8, 2024 in Events

Teach Truth Day of Action

Saturday, June 8, 2024: We invite educators, students, parents, and community members to rally across the country and pledge to #TeachTruth and defend LGBTQ+ rights. The situation is urgent. Register
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