After exploring their connection to the Black Lives Matter movement in previous activities, my 11th and 12th grade students at Thurgood Marshall Academy worked through the #LastWords lesson.

Go-go artist “Sweet” Cherie Mitchell visited Langdon Elementary School in connection with Teaching for Change’s Teach the Beat program. This is the second year that the program has been able to visit Langdon, a partner in Teaching for Change’s Tellin Stories parent engagement project. At the January parent-principal meeting, parents participated in an icebreaker where they were asked to consider: what does go-go music mean to you?

Watkins Elementary School 4th grade teacher Monique Sullivan used Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence as a way to explore who is centered in history and what stories are left out.

Second graders in Katie Soffer and Kina Gee’s classroom at Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS learned about activism as part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

In “crews” of four to five, students each picked up an instrument from Ju Ju’s percussion section of cowbells and several types of drums. Then as a whole class, with drumsticks in each hand, Ju Ju taught the students to tap out a go-go “pocket beat” and a “bounce beat” that is popular among younger go-go performers and listeners.

Go-go musician Sweet Cherie, keyboardist and singer for the all-female Bela Dona Band, joined the music class at Anacostia HS as part of the 2020 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. A highlight of the visit was when Sweet Cherie led the room in Junkyard Band’s go-go classic, “Sardines.” One of the drummers joined her in the circle and midway through the song added a bounce beat to the rhythm.

I led students in a “See, Think, Wonder” routine of a photo of a Black man drinking out of a water fountain labeled “whites only” and then asked them why do they thought I was wearing this on a day where we would be talking about the Black Lives Matter Movement. Then students broke out into groups to discuss one of the 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.

William “Ju Ju” House led a class on the go-go pocket with second graders at Beers Elementary as part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action and the and the Teach the Beat project to bring go-go to D.C. classrooms.

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.

Teacher artist Alex Huttinger led the 2nd annual Social Justice Printmaking Workshop, hosted by D.C. Area Educators for Social Jusitce at Halcyon Arts Lab for the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

Teacher Yolanda Whitted led her eighth grade English students at DC International School through a visual rhetoric exercise where they analyzed Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video. This was a lesson during the DC Area Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in February, 2020. 

On Monday, February 3, Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS 1st through 5th graders participated in a community meeting to kick off the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

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.

Acclaimed children's author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh visited Bruce-Monroe ES at Park View in September 2019 for a powerful conversation with 50 students where he discussed his path to becoming an artist, the creative process, photo editing and much 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 >>

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 >>

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 >>