New Lessons

Check out our new and revised people’s history lessons. We welcome your feedback and teaching stories.

	Teaching About the Violence in Palestine and Israel Resources to help students probe the long history of colonialism and resistance in Palestine and Israel — and the role that the U.S. government has played. Includes lessons, films, K-12 books, news media, podcasts, and more. ▸ Read more.
	Water and Environmental Racism By Matt Reed and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca This mixer activity, inspired by the Democracy Now! documentary Thirsty for Democracy, introduces students to the struggle of residents to access safe water for drinking, cooking, and bathing in the majority-Black cities of Flint, Michigan; Jackson, Mississippi; and Newark, New Jersey. ▸ Read more.
	Reconstructing the South: What Really Happened By Mimi Eisen and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca This follow-up lesson to “Reconstructing the South” uses primary source documents to reveal key outcomes of the Reconstruction era. The activity directs students’ curiosity and excitement from the role play into the process of finding out “what really happened.” ▸ Read more.
	The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Teaching Guide Following the release in 2021 of the young adult book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and a new film with the same title — both based on the Parks’ biography by Jeanne Theoharis — this collection of lessons and teaching ideas utilizes this new material to help students better understand Parks’ lifetime of activism. ▸ Read more.
	Deportations on Trial: Mexican Americans During the Great Depression By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca In this role play students analyze who is to blame for the illegal, mass deportations of Mexican Americans and immigrants during the Great Depression. ▸ Read more.
	The People vs. Columbus, et al. By Bill Bigelow with contributions from members of the Taíno Community A trial role play asks students to determine who is responsible for the death of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the late 15th century. ▸ Read more.
	Teaching With *Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All* By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca Students engage in an interactive activity with short excerpts from Martha Jones’ book to learn about the leading role of Black women in the fight for voting rights throughout U.S. history. ▸ Read more.
	Teaching With Seizing Freedom To facilitate bringing the Seizing Freedom podcast to the classroom, we are sharing teaching ideas for selected episodes, beginning with “A Powerful Black Hand.” ▸ Read more.
	Lives in Our Lineage: A Lesson on Oral Histories By Cierra Kaler-Jones In this lesson, students use key excerpts from How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith as inspiration for a project where they tell their and their loved ones’ stories. ▸ Read more.
	How We Remember: The Struggle Over Slavery in Public Spaces By Bill Bigelow, Jesse Hagopian, Cierra Kaler-Jones, Ana Rosado, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca In this lesson, students receive information about each of the sites of memory in How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith and imagine how they might choose commemorate what occurred there. They then compare that to how the respective site is commemorated and described by docents. ▸ Read more.
	Echoes of Enslavement By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca Students discover “echoes of enslavement” in their own state — discrete sites of remembering, forgetting, honoring, lying, or distorting — in this lesson based on the book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. ▸ Read more.
	Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca In this mixer lesson, students meet 27 different targets of government harassment and repression to analyze why disparate individuals might have become targets of the same campaign, determining what kind of threat they posed in the view of the U.S. government. ▸ Read more.
	How the Word Is Passed: Discussion Questions, Writing Prompts, and Teaching Ideas By Bill Bigelow Teaching ideas and discussion questions for How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. ▸ Read more.
	From the New Deal to the Green New Deal: Stories of Crisis and Possibility By Suzanna Kassouf, Matt Reed, Tim Swinehart, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, and Bill Bigelow The stories of twenty people whose lives were touched by the New Deal of the 1930s come to life in this classroom activity, intended to open students’ minds to the possibilities of a Green New Deal. ▸ Read more.
	No Option Except Escape: A Role Play on the Struggles of Climate Refugees By WorldOregon’s Young Leaders in Action In this role-play, students explore the challenges and perspectives of people — climate refugees — who have “no option except escape” from homes devastated by climate change. ▸ Read more.
	Teaching Climate Disobedience: Using the Film Necessity in the Classroom By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca A lesson about multiple cohorts of climate activists: Indigenous leaders in the Climate Justice Movement, valve turners using civil disobedience to stop the flow of oil, and the legal team that uses the “necessity defense” as a political tool in the courts. ▸ Read more.
	“Riots,” Racism, and the Police: Students Explore a Century of Police Conduct and Racial Violence By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities. ▸ Read more.
	Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca In this lesson, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for African Americans. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative. ▸ Read more.
	Who’s to Blame? A People’s Tribunal on the Coronavirus Pandemic By Caneisha Mills This people’s tribunal begins with the premise that a heinous crime is being committed as tens of millions of people’s lives are in danger due to COVID-19. But who was responsible for this crime? Students weigh the evidence. ▸ Read more.
	The Rebellious Lives of Mrs. Rosa Parks By Bill Bigelow In this mixer lesson, students learn about Rosa Parks’ many decades of activism by taking on roles from various times in her life. ▸ Read more.
	Films with a Conscience An annotated list of more than 100 films that can help students gain insights into how the world works. ▸ Read more.
	Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca Unit with three lessons on voting rights, including the history of the struggle against voter suppression in the United States. ▸ Read more.
	How to Make Amends: A Lesson on Reparations By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna Students meet dozens of advocates and recipients of reparations from a variety of historical eras to grapple with the possibility of reparations now and in the future. ▸ Read more.
	What Caused the Great Depression? The Widget Boom Game By Adam Sanchez A simulation helps students understand the causes of economic crises. ▸ Read more.
	Who Made the New Deal? The Economic Recovery Conference Role Play By Adam Sanchez Through role play, students explore how different social groups influenced New Deal legislation. ▸ Read more.
	Meet Today’s Climate Justice Activists: A mixer on the people saving the world By Matt Reed and Tim Swinehart Students learn the names and stories of dozens of climate justice activists. ▸ Read more.
	How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans. ▸ Read more.
	When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa A mixer role play that explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction. ▸ Read more.
	What We Don’t Learn About the Black Panther Party — but Should By Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian A mixer role play that introduces students to the inspiring and largely untold history of the Black Panthers. ▸ Read more.
	Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution By Adam Sanchez A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. ▸ Read more.
	COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca 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. ▸ Read more.