Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Discussion questions and teaching ideas for examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.
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Teaching Activity. By Wayne Wah Kwai Au. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Lesson on the history of Hawai'i and the impact of colonization and tourism.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 12 pages.
Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.
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Teaching Activity. By Larry Miller. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
Story and discussion questions about a teacher's own experience of labor solidarity.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
A trial role play helps students reflect on responsibility for the deaths of Irish peasants during the so-called potato famine.
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Teaching Activity. By John DeRose. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Analysis of textbook passages from different countries, videos and books are used to explore different perspectives about the same event in history, i.e. "Philippine-American War" vs. "War of Philippine Independence."
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Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Lesson for high school students on the bombing of Hiroshima using the film Barefoot Gen and haiku.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 9 pages.
Students are invited to solve a mystery, using historical clues, about the real story of the Draft Riots.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Students read a poignant excerpt from Agnes Smedley's novel, Daughter of Earth, and use it to think and write about how schooling—their own included—teaches lessons about social class.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Students explore some of the myths of the Civil War through examining excerpts from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the rarely mentioned original Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Lincoln promised to support, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Teaching Activity. By Rick Mitchell. Rethinking Schools. 10 pages.
Description of a course on the history of music in the United States.
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Teaching Activity. By Mark Sweeting. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
How one teacher engaged his students in a critical examination of the language used in textbooks to describe the internment.
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Teaching Activity. By Doug Sherman. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
The author describes how he uses biographies and film to introduce students to the role of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement beyond the familiar heroes. He emphasizes the role and experiences of young people in the Movement.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Empathy, or "social imagination," allows students to connect to "the other" with whom, on the surface, they may appear to have little in common.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 8 pages.
A role play on the history of the Vietnam War that is left out of traditional textbooks.
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Teaching Activity. By Gilda L. Ochoa. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Reflections on teaching students about the 1968 walkouts by Chicano students in California.
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Teaching Activity. By S. J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners’ strike in New Mexico.
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Teaching Activity. By Thom Thacker and Michael A. Lord. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
An art contest is used as the basis from which students can examine primary historical documents (advertisements for runaway slaves) to gain a deeper understanding of the institution of slavery in the North.
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Teaching Activity. By Alan J. Singer. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
How a teacher and his students organized a tour of the hidden history of slavery in New York.
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Teaching Guide. A collection of strategic tools and training opportunities for movement organizers.
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Teaching Guide. Presented by Ra Vision Media & Know Your Rights Camp. 2022. 85 pages.
In conjunction with the Netflix series of the same name, this teaching guide provides students with resources and activities to understand and address systemic and institutional racism.
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Lessons and resources to place Islamophobia firmly within a U.S. context and shared cultural history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Alison Schmitke, Leilani Sabzalian, Jeff Edmundson. 2020. 216 pages.
This much-needed guide unpacks the colonial narrative that dominates most mainstream histories of the Corps of Discovery expedition.
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Teaching materials and guides on the 15th Amendment's significance in 2020 — its 150th anniversary and an election year.
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