Join us for the annual Social Justice Curriculum Fair on Saturday, August 17, 2024 from 8:45AM–12:15PM in person at Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS (200 Douglas Street NE).

Gearing up for the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action is no small feat. While educators in the D.C. area likely have already been uplifting BLM at School work with participation in the Year of Purpose, the Week of Action is often taken as an opportunity to engage in more and perhaps larger scale efforts to uplift the guiding principles and national demands…

On Saturday, January 21, 2023 Teaching for Change hosted a virtual curriculum fair featuring workshops, a keynote speaker, and time for educators to learn more about the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, taking place February 6-February 10, 2023.

On Saturday, January 21, hundreds of educators gathered virtually to connect, collaborate, and prepare for the 2023 National Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action (February 6–10) and Year of Purpose.

On August 24, 2022 Teaching for Change’s Teach Central America program specialist Jonathan Peraza Campos and Vanessa Williams, D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice’s program manager, co-facilitated a professional development for D.C. public schools entitled “Central American Literature in the Classroom.”

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.

On Saturday, April 17th, the DCAESJ People’s History Curriculum Working Group met to reflect on fugitive pedagogy, try out a new lesson on Brown v. Board, and to foster community care.

Tiffany Mitchell Patterson opened the session, welcoming newcomers, and noting ”It is so important to be in community with each other. I hope everyone can use this time to find inspiration and motivation for the upcoming weeks.” She engaged everyone in a spirited round of people’s history Kahoot. The last question acknowledged the vital role of everyone in the sessions: Which group of people work the hardest and contribute the most to a just future for this country? (a) Politicians (b) Corporate executives (c) City planners (d) Classroom teachers.

On February 15, 2021, 36 preservice teachers from Gallaudet University, Kendall Demonstration Elementary School, and the Maryland School for the Deaf, gathered for a virtual workshop presentation titled Teaching about the Black Lives Matter 13 Guiding Principles in Early Childhood Classrooms.

By Lila Chafe
On the warm Wednesday evening of March 3, 2021, early childhood educators joined the DCAESJ Anti Bias ECE Working Group’s monthly meeting. As they logged on, participants shared memories from years of collective joy and action, preparing for the departure of the working group’s coordinator, Rosalie Reyes.

On January 30, 2021 Teaching for Change and the Howard University School of Education co-hosted an annual curriculum fair to help educators to learn more about the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action and Year of Purpose. More than 500 educators from 42 states and the District of Columbia deepened their practice as they learned from the keynote speakers and participated in workshops.

By Lizzie McCord
During the 2021 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action Curriculum Fair, Jaimee A. Swift led a workshop building on her work at Black Women Radicals, the organization she founded to uplift the stories of Black women and gender expansive people’s activism.

By Lila Chafe
Almost one hundred participants attended Dr. Shari Berga’s workshop, co-facilitated by Akailah Jenkins McIntyre, titled “Teaching, Loving, and Believing Black Girls.” Both facilitators are part of the Wells Collective, a collaborative of diversity practitioners that focus their work on empowering women.

By Ashley Bryant
After a busy morning of attending the BLM at Schools Virtual Curriculum Fair on Saturday, January 30, 2021 with powerful conversations about teaching resistance and oppression, global issues of restorative justice, and displacement and protest in Washington D.C., Dekebra’s presentation titled “Mindful Moments: Radical Wellness for Black Lives” was a welcomed and much-needed call to self-care.

From Maryland to Missouri, Oregon, New York, North Carolina to the District of Columbia; over 100 attendees joined Peta Lindsay, Charla Johnson, and Cyrus Hampton, leaders of the Ida B. Wells Education Project, in a panel discussion via Zoom on “Joy in Resistance: Teaching about Oppression with Hope and Inspiration” as part of the Teaching for Change and Howard University’s 2021 Black Lives Matter at School Curriculum Fair.

By Leah Danville
Dr. Tiffany Mitchell Patterson is an Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies in West Virginia University’s College of Education & Human Services Department of Curriculum & Instruction (CILS). On Tuesday, February 2, she hopped on her two-hour Zoom class with 12 pre-service secondary social studies teachers for the first monthly lesson on how to implement a Black Lives Matters (BLM) curriculum into their future classrooms. The class, comprised of people in their 20s and 30s who are almost all white, quickly identified similarities between the BLM movement and guiding principles in their own lives.

On Saturday, August 29 at 2pm EST, the DC Area Educators for Social Justice (DCAESJ) is hosting a workshop for up to 40 DC area teachers on using the lesson Poetry of Defiance. DCPS Middle school teacher Caneisha Mills will model how to teach the lesson using remote instruction.

The second series of the D.C. Educators for Equity book club began in early January of this year. Classroom educators, librarians, media specialists, and school coordinators gathered at Tubman Elementary (DCPS) school to explore Cornelius Minor’s We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest To Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be.

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.