Lessons

This lesson challenges students to analyze and to reflect on messages presented in songs — and to express their own views about important issues addressed in some songs.

In this lesson, students use data to analyze the participation of white, black, Asian and Hispanic men and women in STEM careers as compared with their participation in the general workforce. They then discuss the possible reasons identity groups are unequally represented in STEM careers.

In this lesson, students explore the varied work of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians, and discuss character traits common to all of them. Students meet a diverse group of scientists—inventors, problem-solvers and those who explain the world around us.

In this lesson, students get in touch with their “inner scientists,” first by viewing a video of a 4-year-old solving a complex problem and then by working together to explain a discrepant event. Students also consider attributes shared by many scientists: curiosity, perseverance and the ability to problem-solve.

“The New Mad Men” explores how changing demographics in the United States have changed the face of advertising. In particular, the focus is on the purchasing power of the 54 million Latinx people currently living in the United States. The episode visits the headquarters of LatinWorks, an advertising agency in Austin, Texas, with a specialty in multicultural advertising.

This lesson is the fourth in a series called Expanding Voting Rights. The overall goal of the series is for students to explore the complicated history of voting rights in the United States. Two characteristics of that history stand out: First, in fits and starts, more and more Americans have gained the right to vote. Second, over time, the federal government's role in securing these rights has expanded considerably.

This lesson centers on the invaluable work and activism of Bayard Rustin. Rustin was not only dedicated to orchestrating the civil rights movement; he was also one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest advisors, and the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

In this lesson, students will revisit the life of James Baldwin, an African-American literary writer and critic, as well as an icon for civil and gay rights.