By Bill Bigelow In what may be a first in the nation, this week the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity.”

"The Color Line" lesson by Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow is featured in a Washington Post article today called "How American oligarchs created the concept of race to divide and conquer the poor" by Courtland Milloy Jr.

From Brussels to Lahore, from Syria to the Trump campaign, the world can seem an increasingly chaotic and scary place. More than ever, teachers need people’s history resources to help students ask deep and critical questions—and to surface the grassroots activism for justice that is always there, but too often buried in the official curriculum.

The latest book from Rethinking Schools is Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality that addresses questions including: How do you respond when a child asks, “Can a girl turn into a boy?” What if your daughter brings home school books with sexist, racist stories? What does “queering the curriculum” look like? What’s wrong with “anti-bullying” policies? What are alternatives?

We are pleased to announce the five winners of a class set of A People’s History of the United States. These teachers were among hundreds who entered our contest last fall, with many inspiring stories about how they use the lessons from the Zinn Education Project website to teach outside the textbook. Here are two examples

By Will Kaufman In December 1950, Woody Guthrie signed his name to the lease of a new apartment in Brooklyn. Even now, over half a century later, that uninspiring document prompts a double-take.

After attending a presentation on the history of housing segregation and race, parent Wendy Jacobson…

On the release of the 35th anniversary edition of A People’s History of the United …

I donate to the Zinn Education Project so that my daughter will not have to wait until she is an adult, as I did, to learn people's history. —Katherine Gray
Katherine Gray is one of dozens of people who have donated to the Zinn Education Project during our year-end campaign so that we can provide free people's history lessons to teachers across the country in 2016.

The Zinn Education Project registered 11,000 new teachers in 2015. We now have more than 55,500 teachers who have signed up to download our free "teaching outside the textbook" materials. In addition, we also:

Dear Zinn Education Project friend, As you may know, we launched our People's History Organizer Campaign last month, and the response has been encouraging. Please join the campaign to raise the final third—$40,000—of our goal.

This past weekend was one of the largest climate mobilizations in history. Throughout the world more than 785,000 participated in demonstrations.

The Zinn Education Project will be attending the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, Nov. 13-14, 2015, in New Orleans. Our booth is always abuzz with inspiring conversations as educators meet to share teaching people's history success stories, challenges, and resource ideas.

Recently, a remarkable thing happened. A longtime Zinn Education Project (ZEP) supporter—a retired social studies teacher and teacher union activist—came to us with a proposal: "I want to help the Zinn Education Project reach hundreds of thousands more students. We need to provide every teacher with a people's history alternative to their textbook."

The recent If We Knew Our History article, “Time to Abolish Columbus Day,” has gone viral, as the call to change the name to Indigenous Peoples’ Day gains support across the country. The article has received more than 140K Facebook likes on Common Dreams and the Huffington Post. It has also been referenced in national news media, including MSNBC, The Washington Post, Nonprofit Quarterly, and Common Dreams, and was posted on AlterNet.

With every passing day, the climate crisis announces itself with greater urgency. The drought in California. The wildfires in the West. The summer of 2015 was the hottest ever recorded. What's next? The good news is that activism is on the rise, too. The movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is growing by leaps and bounds.

With all the hate speech and misinformation from presidential candidates about Muslims, we revisit the Zinn Education Project article by Alison Kysia, "A People's History of Muslims in the United States." Kysia writes, "Most of my students reference 9/11 as the first time they heard of Muslims. Mainstream textbooks do little to correct or supplement the biases that students learn from the media. These books distort the rich and complex place of Muslims throughout U.S. history."

As educators in Seattle lead the city’s first teacher strike in 30 years, we share this interview with Rethinking Schools associate editor and history teacher Jesse Hagopian and Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant.

We thank everyone who voted for the Zinn Education Project on the CREDO donation ballot in July. The results are in. Thanks to your votes and outreach, we received a donation of $59,162 from CREDO/Working Assets.

As Pope Francis prepares to canonize Junípero Serra on September 23 despite widespread protests, we share the Zinn Education Project's If We Knew Our History article by Deborah Miranda,“Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians." Miranda exposes what's missing from the textbooks when students learn about California Missions.