On Sunday, December 4th, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll stepped onto the grass at SoFi…
Deborah MenkartDecember 6, 2022
Let’s make teaching for Black lives the norm, not the exception.
When we reject racism and anti-Blackness in our teaching, equip our students with information about the truth of our history and engage them in critical self-reflection, we help them access their own power to define their roles in the world.
Explore the links below to find everything you need to build a toolkit to advocate for Black lives in your schools and classrooms, starting with the book, Teaching for Black Lives.
Join Us! 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. Listen to excerpts from the classes below and register today!
Teaching Resources
Teaching for Black Lives Book
Essays, teaching activities, role plays, poems, and artwork, designed to illuminate the movement for Black students’ lives, the school-to-prison-pipeline, Black history, gentrification, intersectional Black identities, and more.
Study Groups
Teaching for Black Lives is the core text for teacher-led study groups on how to teach about racism, resistance, and joy. The Zinn Education Project provides facilitation guides, curriculum workshops, and opportunities for study group members to collaborate across the country.
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.
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 are also welcome to participate.
Teaching for Black Lives Podcast
The forthcoming Teaching for Black Lives Podcast will provide both the historical context and pedagogical strategies for educators to teach about the ongoing Black Freedom Struggle. This podcast will feature educators who have designed and implemented dynamic lessons, as well as leading historians of African American history.
Additional Resources
In addition to the book, Teaching for Black Lives, Rethinking Schools offers a number of other titles to support educators in pursuit of racial justice, such as Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War, Rethinking Ethnic Studies, Rethinking Mathematics, Rhythm and Resistance, Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, and more.
Snapshots
In October, the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle class series hosted author Ashley Farmer in…
Julia SalcedoNovember 15, 2022
The Zinn Education Project has begun its third year of nurturing communities of antiracist educators…
Julia SalcedoOctober 26, 2022
Events & Announcements
History of Racial Terror in the United States
Monday, December 12, 2022: Author, lawyer, and professor Bryan Stevenson will discuss his book "Just Mercy" and history of racial terror in the United States. Under Stevenson’s leadership, the Equal…
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