Teaching Materials Archive

Poetry of Defiance: How the Enslaved Resisted

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez.
Through a mixer activity, students encounter how enslaved people resisted the brutal exploitation of slavery. The lesson culminates in a collective class poem highlighting the defiance of the enslaved.

Climate Justice (Art) | Zinn Education Project

Meet Today’s Climate Justice Activists: A Mixer on the People Saving the World

Teaching Activity Draft. By Matt Reed and Tim Swinehart. 2019.
Students learn the names and stories of dozens of climate justice activists.

People’s Climate March, 2014 | Zinn Education Project

Blockadia: Teaching How the Movement Against Fossil Fuels Is Changing the World

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Adam Sanchez, and Tim Swinehart.
A role-play activity engages students in building solidarity among different groups and organizations fighting fossil fuels and searching for alternatives.

Classroom filling with water | Zinn Education Project

Teaching About Climate Change

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 2009. Rethinking Schools.
The environmental crisis requires a profound social and curricular rethinking.

Photo of La Via Campesina women | Zinn Education Project

Food, Farming, and Justice: A Role Play on La Vía Campesina

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Chris Buehler, Julie Treick O'Neill, and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools.
This role play invites students to take on identities of La Vía Campesina activists around the world, to compare/contrast circumstances in order to discover the common goal of “food sovereignty.”

The Climate Crisis Trial: A Role Play on the Roots of Global Warming

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools.
Who — or what — is to blame for the terrible effects of the climate crisis? This trial role play helps students understand the complicated factors involved.

Resplendant Quetzel Illustration - Olivia Wise | Zinn Education Project

Where Are the Climate Change Superheroes? Systems Thinking and Climate Activism in the Children’s Eternal Rainforest

Teaching Activity. By Eric Fishman. Rethinking Schools.
An elementary school teacher developed the engaging Quetzal Conundrum game to help students understand the impact of climate change in Costa Rica.

Water Rushing Through Tress | Zinn Education Project

Teaching to the Heart: Poetry, Climate Change, and Sacred Spaces

Teaching Activity & Article. By Michelle Nicola. Rethinking Schools.
Using Marshallese poet and climate justice activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s poem “Dear Matafele Peinam,” a teacher helps 7th graders think about the sacred spaces in their own lives and how they will be affected by climate change.

Climate Illustration - Schafer | Zinn Education Project

The Young People’s Climate Conference: Teaching Global Warming to 3rd Graders

Teaching Activity. By Rowan Shafer. Rethinking Schools.
A teacher adapts the “Climate Change Mixer” designed for older students as a springboard for a unit on global warming and climate justice. She asks, "How could I bring up an issue so big and abstract, so gloom and doom, with 3rd graders? How could I not?"

Rini Templeton Climate (Art) | Zinn Education Project

Stories from the Climate Crisis: A Mixer

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools.
A role play introduces students to 23 individuals around the world — each of whom is affected differently by climate change.

What We Don’t Learn About the Black Panther Party — but Should

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian. Rethinking Schools. 33 pages.
A mixer lesson introduces students to the pivotal history of the Black Panthers.

Mystery of the Three Scary Numbers: A Climate Change Teaching Activity

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 13 pages.
Through encountering "clues," students probe the dangerous link between fossil fuels, carbon, and climate change.

Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 24 pages.
A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including freedom rides and voter registration.

Frances Harper, William Sylvis, Isaac Myers, and John Roy Lynch pictured. They were leaders of the Reconstruction Era in US history

When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa. 25 pages.
A mixer role play explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.

Street scene woodcut | Zinn Education Project

Teaching Sacrifice Zones

Teaching Activity. By Rosemarie Frascella. Rethinking Schools.
Our extractive fossil fuel-based economy has always demanded that some people’s homes and health be sacrificed for the benefit of more privileged and powerful others. This article explores how one teacher engages her students in thinking about how “sacrifice zones” play out in their lives.

"Running the Negro out of Tulsa" | Zinn Education Project

Burned Out of Homes and History: Unearthing the Silenced Voices of the Tulsa Massacre

Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 20 pages.
Teaching about racist patterns of murder, theft, displacement, and wealth inequality through the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

Eduardo Relero Apple Store in Madrid | Zinn Education Project

Congo, Coltan, and Cell Phones: A People’s History

Teaching Activity. By Alison Kysia. 28 pages.
In this lesson, students learn about the colonial history of Congo, debate responsibility for crimes against humanity, and investigate the connection, past and present, between the exploitation of natural resources and violence.

Michele Roberts, environmental justice coordinator | Zinn Education Project

The Red Dot of Environmental Racism

Teaching Activity. By Alma Anderson McDonald.
A teacher looks back on her childhood to discover the meaning of environmental racism. Linda Christensen offers ways to teach about this story with students.

Reconstructing the South: A Role Play

Lesson. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve — and sustain — real freedom following the Civil War. It's followed by a chapter from the book Freedom's Unfinished Revolution.

COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 29 pages.
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.