DCAESJ partnered with the African American Civil War Museum for a third year to host the #TeachTruth Day of Action rally at the memorial. The D.C. site was one of more than 60 sites across the country – plus more online events – each with a unique approach to uplifting educators in their commitment to teaching the truth.

On Saturday, August 20, more than 100 educators from across the D.C. area convened at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library for the inaugural DCAESJ Social Justice Curriculum Fair.

Teaching for Change and the Washington Teachers’ Union and Teaching for Change hosted a Decolonizing the Curriculum summer series July 27-August 12, 2021. This six-session series featured presentations disrupting the master narrative in classroom curriculum by providing hands-on strategies with lessons to be used in-person and virtually.

Students in Sam Chiron’s Introduction to Law class at Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS discussed images and text related to the questions: What is Black Lives Matter? What are the 13 Guiding Principles? The lesson was an introduction to a month-long unit on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Imagine a world rooted in justice. What would it look like? Zo Clement, special education teacher at Two Rivers Charter School in Washington, D.C., set out to answer this question with middle school students over the summer.

“How many Central Americans can you name?” Caneisha Mills, 8th- grade teacher at Hardy Middle School in Washington, D.C. asked her advisory. During Teach Central America Week, Mills used the remote learning Central America mixer template to explore the lives and experiences of Central American figures with students.

As schools across the country moved to emergency remote learning, Erin Coppola-Klein, 7th- and 8th- grade advisor and social studies teacher at Capitol Hill Day School, wanted to continue to provide interactive and engaging lessons for students. Coppola-Klein used the U.S. Mexico War lesson in the form of a mixer by Bill Bigelow with 22 7th- grade students.

When the pandemic closed the doors of global studies teacher Gregory Landrigan’s middle school classroom at Sacred Heart School in D.C., he decided to shelve the lessons he’d planned for the rest of the year. “What do you want to learn?” he asked the students. “What matters to you most?” With the answers to these questions, he invited students to explore a topic of interest to them through an independent study.

What are some tough conversations that you’ve had with students about racism, history, activism, and different perspectives on current events? This is one of many questions Teaching for Change staff reflected on with District of Columbia Public Schools 3rd through 5th grade teachers in a professional development workshop on Tuesday, January 28, 2020.

Twelfth-grade students in Bill Stevens’s social studies class at IDEA Public Charter School spent months conducting in-depth research and preparing multi-modal presentations that unpacked and delved into important topics in D.C. history that often do not get highlighted in the school curriculum.

D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice, Communities for Just Schools Fund, and the Early Childhood Initiative at the National Museum of African American History and Culture offered a workshop on hair representation in children’s books on November 2, 2019.

To honor Teach Central America Week, Marlena James used the Central America 101 mixer in her classes on Thursday, October 17th as an interactive activity for students to learn about significant figures in Central American history and current events.

Can you remember your favorite book growing up? Did it introduce you to a new world, either fictional or real? Did it stir you to think about a topic differently? Did you see yourself and your experiences reflected in it? What if that book was banned? Read more >>

If you had to put Christopher Columbus on trial for murder, would he be considered guilty? Students in Caneisha Mills’ 8th-grade U.S. History class at Hardy Middle School in Washington, D.C. grappled with this question when they were assigned the task of deciding who would be considered guilty for the deaths of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the 1490s. Read more >>

For attendees at the 2019 Indigenous People’s Curriculum Day and Teach-in, it was a day centered in learning and development to be able to better teach students about Indigenous People’s history and life today.  Read more >>

Beth Barkley, a finalist for the 2020 D.C. Teacher of the Year, encourages students to tackle social justice issues in their community and beyond through creative coursework and hands-on learning. Barkley teaches English at Cardozo Education Campus and spearheaded two elective courses, Global Perspectives and Human Rights and Social Action. Read more >>

On Thursday, May 9, high school students at Ballou High School celebrated the launch of their book, The Ballou We Know, a collection of essays and poems as part of The Ballou Story Project with Shout Mouse Press. Each student had a unique story and used their personal narrative to talk back to and counter negative and deficit conversations about their community in the media. Read more >>

As middle school students entered the auditorium at Sacred Heart School on May 8, they beamed when they saw Salvadoran novelist and painter, Mario Bencastro, sitting in the front row. Students diligently prepared for this momentous occasion by studying Bencastro’s work, focusing on his poem, Un Tren Llamado Esperanza. Read more >>

Can you name a historical figure from Central America? This was one of the opening questions Teaching for Change Executive Director Deborah Menkart asked a class of graduate students in Dr. Elizabeth Langran’s Cross-cultural/International Curricula class at Marymount University. Read more >>

Jerome Foster II opened the Third Annual D.C. Area Climate Justice Summit with a moving speech that encouraged his peers to take a stand and speak up about the importance of climate justice. The summit, organized and run by Youth Climate Summit USA, is completely youth led. This year’s D.C. area event took place on April 24th at the Silver Spring Civic Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Read more >>