Too often, texts present “great individuals” in a way that leaves readers feeling small by comparison.  “I could never do that,” is the message students can easily take away. 101 Changemakers focuses on extraordinary individuals, but in the context of the broader movements and events that sparked and nurtured their activism.

The editors feature the famous — like John Brown, Mary Beth Tinker, Rosa Parks, and Cesar Chavez — along with the less celebrated — like Harry Hay Jr., Mary and Carrie Dann, and Constance McMillen. Along with 500 word profiles, written by teachers and activists across the country, each selection includes a timeline of the changemaker’s life, provocative questions, and suggestions for further research.

Sample page.

Written for middle school students, but great for high school students, too.

Authors

Michele Bollinger lives in Washington, D.C., where she teaches high school social studies.

Dao X. Tran is an editor based in the Bronx, New York. Dao is currently working on the Domestic Worker Oral History Project. When not reading for work and pleasure, she enjoys time with her daughter Quyen, a changemaker of a different sort.

ISBN: 9781608461561 |Haymarket Books

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Henry Dumas, just days before his death, by Clem Fiori. Source: Henry Dumas Estate

‪On May 23, 1968 Henry Dumas (1934–1968), a critically acclaimed author, was fatally shot for unknown reasons by a New York Transit policeman. This is one of countless stories in the long history of police brutality against African Americans. ‪

Dumas’s family moved to Harlem from Arkansas when he was ten years old as part of the Great Migration. He went to public school, joined the military, and attended Rutgers University.

Dumas became active in the Civil Rights Movement, transporting food and clothing to civil rights workers in Mississippi and Tennessee.

Henry Dumas in the mid-1960s. Source: Eugene B. Redmond

Most of his writing was published after his death and includes “Ark of Bones” and Other Stories (1974), Play Ebony: Play Ivory  (1974), Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988), Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas (1989), and Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003). Read selected poems by Dumas at the Poetry Foundation.

Source for this entry: Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Learn More

Henry Dumas (1934–1968) by Phillip Howerton at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Henry Dumas Wrote About Black People Killed By Cops. Then He Was Killed By A Cop by Beenish Ahmed at Codeswitch

#‎BlackLivesMatter‬

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Poetry has a lot to offer a world in crisis. For centuries poets have given voice to our collective trauma: they name injustices, reclaim stolen language, and offer us courage to imagine a more just world. In a world out of balance, poetry is an act of cultural resilience.

It’s impossible not to find poems in this fine volume that could be used across the curriculum. This is not an “Isn’t nature beautiful!” book. It begins with colonial dispossession, and includes chapters on the environmental crime of war, food and culture, resource extraction, resistance, and the Global South.

Although the book features great stylistic diversity, the link between people, power, and nature weaves through the book, as in June Jordan’s “Focus in Real Time”: “Who grew these grains/Who owned the land/Who harvested the crop/Who converted these soft particles to money/Who kept the cash. . .” [Description from Rethinking Schools]

Contributors include Homero Aridjis, Brenda Cárdenas, Natalie Diaz, Camille T. Dungy, Martín Espada, Ross Gay, Joy Harjo, Brenda Hillman, Linda Hogan, Philip Metres, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tolu Ogunlesi, Wang Ping, Patrick Rosal, Tim Seibles, Danez Smith, Arthur Sze, Eleanor Wilner, and Javier Zamora.

ISBN: 9780820353159 | University of Georgia Press

The post Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The authors lay out compelling arguments for why that is the case, but perhaps most significantly, they offer readers a treasury of novels, nonfiction books, stories, films, and teaching activities that show how to bring climate issues to life in the language arts classroom. An entire chapter focuses on “Literature and the Cli-Fi Imagination,” offering valuable suggestions.

A chapter on “Writing About Climate Change” features a quote from the writer Amitav Ghosh, who describes a time when “most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognizing the realities of their plight.” That pretty accurately captures the conventional curriculum.

Through classroom examples and resource suggestions, Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents offers teachers tools to cut through those modes of concealment. [Description by Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools.]

Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference

Chapter 1: Why Teach about Climate Change In English Language Arts
Chapter 2: Getting Started in Teaching about Climate Change
Chapter 3: Creating Climate Change Curriculum
Chapter 4: Literature and the Cli-Fi Imagination
Chapter 5: Writing about Climate Change
Chapter 6: Critical Media/Digital Analyses of Climate Change
Chapter 7: Using Drama and Gaming To Address Climate Change
Chapter 8: Interdisciplinary Teaching about Climate Change
Chapter 9: Acting in the Present: Changing the Future

ISBN: 9781138245259 | Co-published by the National Council of the Teachers of English and Routledge.

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This lesson is published in Teaching a Peoples History of Abolition and the Civil War (Rethinking Schools, 2019).

From the beginning, Black men and women resisted their enslavement . . . under the most difficult conditions, under pain of mutilation and death, throughout their 200 years of enslavement in North America, these Afro-Americans continued to rebel. Only occasionally was there an organized insurrection. More often they showed their refusal to submit by running away. Even more often, they engaged in sabotage, slowdowns, and subtle forms of resistance which asserted, if only to themselves and their brothers and sisters, their dignity as human beings. — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

For too long, historians painted a picture of the idyllic old U.S. South with paternalistic slave owners and docile and content slaves. Though challenged in the 1930s and ’40s by historians like W. E. B. Du Bois and Herbert Aptheker, this remained the dominant narrative of slavery until the late 1960s and ’70s. Today, any discussion of slavery should be coupled with the myriad and heroic ways enslaved people resisted their enslavement.

In this lesson, students create a collective poem, drawing on stories of resistance to slavery.

It’s also important to put this resistance in the broader context of how the U.S. economy was built on the backs of enslaved people. Students should grapple with how central the labor, knowledge, and skills of enslaved people were to the entire Southern economy. The stakes for maintaining slavery were high and any resistance was often met with brutal retaliation.

Nevertheless, enslaved people, with great courage, engaged in all sorts of resistance. While this pre-Civil War resistance did not ultimately topple the deeply entrenched institution of slavery, it challenged pro-slavery arguments that enslaved people were happy and content and provided fuel for abolitionist denunciations of slavery. Maybe more importantly, it established a tradition of defiance that was built upon during the Civil War and Reconstruction when wider acts of resistance became possible.

Find more remote-ready lessons here and refer to our remote teaching guide.

This lesson introduces students to several of these concepts, establishes the various ways that enslaved people resisted, and celebrates that resistance, culminating in a collective poem. To write the poem, students will break into groups and each group will express in poetry what they’ve learned about resistance. This lesson provides seven types of resistance as a guide:

Group 1: Theft and Property Destruction
Group 2: Maintaining the Family
Group 3: Culture, Music, Religion, and Education
Group 4: Resistance at Work
Group 5: Running Away
Group 6: Verbal and Physical Confrontation
Group 7: Revolt

This lesson is published by Rethinking Schools in Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War.

Teacher Stories

Honoring enslaved people by learning how they resisted slavery based upon the @ZinnEdProject Collective Poem lesson and readings @Prairie220 @AnneSchmittBMS #prairiepride pic.twitter.com/TYGvpsKtuB

— MrsSchmittHistory (@BMSHistSchmitt) April 12, 2022

Caneisha Mills

Caneisha Mills with Teaching a Peoples History of Abolition and the Civil War.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Washington, D.C.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this powerful resource.

I started using Zinn Education Project teaching materials three years ago, particularly for the beginning of the year in my 8th grade U.S. history course.

Last year, I wanted my students to have a deeper understanding of the legacy of resistance before, during, and after the Civil War. So, I decided to teach the Poetry of Defiance lesson. I wanted to dismantle the idea that African Americans were bystanders in the fight against oppression.

Lesly Torres, one of the students who participated in the Poetry of Defiance lesson.

The lesson was so well-received and sparked such great dialogue amongst my students that now I am attempting to use at least one Zinn Education Project lesson during every unit.

I used the lesson at the end of the school year. I remember how tired and emotionally exhausted my students were after almost a month of standardized testing, and yet when I taught this lesson they became so energized that they wanted to compile their poems to read to the class.

One student, who had not done extra projects before, offered to type up the poems during her lunch period. We displayed their work in the hallway on small boards and the students all came by to read the poetry of their peers. The words below of my students speak for themselves.

Write that I sang my sorrows away using that written word learned at night and worked not to my fullest capacity but moved slowly as the moon. 

Write that we all enslaved people resisted slavery by coming up with our own plans to eventually rebel against our “slave masters.” We would pull down fences, sabotage farm equipment, break elements, and damage boats. 

We gather as a whole with axes, clubs, knives to fight back, burn down crops, kill masters, freedom will come one day praying to god.

Write that I wouldn’t ignite the life of an enslaved person for revolt or punishment 

Write that I witness children taken from the chest of women. Forced to work like males, only to give our fruits of our labor to our monster. Tired I was, when I got the plan, I made sure my master won’t get the fruit. I plowed and swallowed, and cracked the tool. When the whip came down, I knew it was worth it. The fruit of our work today was ours. 

Write that I was bound with chains from the moment I ventured too far. Then thrust into a life of pain where I felt I was slowly sinking deeper into tar. 

Write that we enslaved people were treated harshly and were being sold to many people. To the whites we were known as savages and animals.

Write that I have seen the brutal beatings performed by the slave owner to those of us they call their property. I have seen their attempts to silence our struggle. But we will rise. 

Write that I saw my family run towards the freedom but blocked by violence but we did not give up and we never will.  

Write that I write my spirituals, our thoughts we have spread to all that need it. Let our thoughts inspire others and let our words be a motive for them to do what they want.   

Write that I needed no pass to get around, to ask a man and his power could I get around. Write that I walked outside the plantations with my free will and head high. Write that I no longer had that, as I walk along the fence in the plantations with dirty feet and low head. 

Write that I will never be free knowing that I will still wake up every morning with hope. Write that through my life I have never known what freedom felt like, my only freedom would be my dreams or nightmares. 

Write that I watched the light in my son’s eyes go out, write that I felt, the hot sun pushing me down, write that I waited but nothing… nobody came to save me. 

Write that enslaved people were beaten day by day, nonstop work endless hours of doom. 

Listening to the bold words of the enslaved outside, and the master’s whips going about. Tonight was gonna be a night of excitement, we were planning something big, so big that they wouldn’t know what hit them. Most run away or even asked for freedom, some had hidden messages in their religious singing. But we are using our ability to sabotage their workings. This will be amazing. 

Classroom Stories

Adapting Adam Sanchez’s lesson, Poetry of Defiance: How the Enslaved Resisted, for online learning was a labor of love. The Rethinking Schools/Zinn Education Project’s mixer activities have been a catalyst for understanding in my classroom; I couldn’t imagine any space — even at a distance — that didn’t include that power.

The first hurdle to overcome was the difference in participation between a captive audience in class and students logging in when they can at home. There are the logistics of asynchronous participation which come from any online learning scenario. And there is particular care to be taken specifically during the COVID-19 outbreak, when families are experiencing stress and upheaval at home. . . . Continue reading

—Rachel Toon

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Before I taught Zinn Education Project lessons about resistance to enslavement, my students were under the impression the only types of agency enslaved people could exercise were running away or violent revolt. Some thought that if you didn’t run away or fight violently, then enslaved people must have accepted their condition of enslavement. The most popular or well known African Americans from this time period are Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom ran away. By the time students reach my class, these are often the only stories young students hear about resistance. It was time to set the record straight and expand their understanding of enslavement and resistance.

I chose the lesson Poetry of Defiance: How the Enslaved Resisted from the phenomenal teaching tool, Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War. After learning about the variety of ways enslaved people resisted their enslavement, they came away with new understandings about how resistance exists on a continuum and that resistance can take many different forms as well as the fact that how a person chose to resist varied widely due to many different circumstances they faced. This has been one of my favorite lesson to teach from ZEP and I look forward to keeping it in permanent rotation when I teach about the lives of the enslaved. Thank you!

I have included a link to one of my student’s poems here.

—Ami Byrne

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Cupertino, California

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Smith, who is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University studying incarcerated youth, explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates Black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the reader on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward. [Description from the publisher.]

• Winner, 2017 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award
• Finalist, 2017 NAACP Image Awards
• One Book One New Orleans 2017 Book Selection

ISBN: 9781938912658 | Write Bloody Publishing

The post Counting Descent appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Take a deep breath in.

Hold it for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Now let it out.

This is what I tell myself as I feel my anxiety start to rise along with the temperature of our tender planet — and this is what I tell my class of 7th graders as we begin our first conversation about climate change. I want my students to understand the very real threat human actions pose to our planet, and I also want to give them tools that will help them be brave — instead of paralyzed — when fear arises. I want them to talk about places that are sacred to them so that they may better understand places that are sacred to others, and better connect with this critical problem we call climate change.

I first discovered Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner in 2014. She had just spoken at the U.N. Climate Change Summit and her poem, “Dear Matafele Peinam,” was going viral online.

That summer I attended the Oregon Writing Project, and together with fellow teacher Patricia Montana, developed a lesson using her poem. Jetñil-Kijiner’s powerful piece blended dire reality with unwavering certainty that our actions matter. It was a perfect opening for our first conversation about climate change.

I open by telling my students we are going to start taking a mindfulness minute at the beginning of every class. I have them sit up in their chairs and tell them to have their feet flat on the floor, or at least pointed toward it.

“Put your hands on your desk or on your knees,” I say, “and have your eyes open or closed.” I wait until they are ready, gently coaching students with a gesture or smile to sit up a little straighter, or put their head down on their desk if the temptation to look around is too great.

“OK,” I say. “If this is the first time you’ve done this, it may feel a little weird at first, but just trust me, I got you.” A few of the boys giggle, but they stop, and I begin. Continue reading and download lesson.

This teaching activity originally appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of Rethinking Schools.

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ISBN: 9780810133853 | Curbstone Press

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Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice 

ISBN: 9780942961614 | Rethinking Schools

Praise for Rhythm and Resistance

“At a time when teachers feel under attack from policymakers searching for ways to raise student achievement and insure school safety, the authors of Rhythm and Resistance show us how easily both objectives can be pursued if we simply open up opportunities for students to write about their lives and share their stories with each other. This powerful and practical collection of essays shows educators how to engage and empower their students through strategies that inspire them to develop a love of learning. Teachers who can do that will experience the joy and power of teaching even during these trying times in education.” —Pedro A. Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education; Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, New York University

“There are far too few books written on teaching by people that have actually earned the right to write about teaching. In Rhythm and Resistance we have just such a book, striking a powerful balance between theory and practice, edging the two ever closer together in ways that will profoundly impact the day-to-day work of countless teachers. This book has me wondering aloud, again, about why the voices of our nation’s most gifted classroom educators are so muted in policy and practice discussions about the direction of our field.” —Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Associate Professor of Raza Studies and Education, San Francisco State University

“The power of poetry has never been so eloquently revealed as in this powerful collection of writing from poets both famous and unknown. Add to this the stirring words of Linda Christensen and Dyan Watson and we have a book that will move teachers and their students to speak their truths and to know that their words, their thoughts, and their lives matter.” —Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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These include Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice, Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, and Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated.

Teachers will find the lessons in this teacher’s guide to be a rich source of provocations to engage with human rights dramas throughout the world. [Description by Rethinking Schools.]

Published by Voice of Witness.

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