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On rainy, dreary days, an announcement breaks into my class around 11 a.m. “Please excuse the interruption. Recess will be held indoors today.” From around the room, there are scattered cheers. My students are often happy to have indoor recess. I’m happy, too, because I see this as a positive time for my students to build friendships and interact. It wasn’t always this way.

Graphic novels and comics are a great way for students to express themselves and their social views. Help your students plan and create their own social justice comics!

The day after Valentine’s Day 2008, I watched my 1st period students file into the room. They were uncharacteristically quiet. When the bell rang, they all looked at me, waiting to hear how I might make sense of the previous night’s tragedy when Steven Philip Kazmierczak opened fire in Cole Hall on Northern Illinois University’s campus, shooting 21 people and killing five.

Incorporate the ABF into your community and classroom with these activities.

Conducting an interview is an important part of many kinds of projects. Along with research, an interview can be a valuable source of information. It also provides you with a rewarding chance to interact with a person

Visual imagery is a powerful way to work for as well as against justice. In this toolkit, teachers will learn ways to help students express their love and appreciation of others by engaging visual arts and design.

This toolkit for “Why Talk About Whiteness?” offers nine steps to engage high school students in a guided viewing of The Whiteness Project. The Whiteness Project, an “interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as ‘white’ experience their ethnicity,” is available for free online.

An important step in gauging attitudes toward race in your school is assessing school climate. School climate questionnaires can be used to: uncover differences in teacher and student perceptions; open professional

When I was in elementary school, it was common to overhear adults say that children were from “broken homes” if they lived with a single mom or dad or sometimes with grandparents. One of those families belonged to my friend Ellie, who lived with her mom. So I asked my father, a Congregational minister, why some people thought Ellie’s family was broken? Dad gently explained that strong families, Ellie’s included, have three characteristics: love, connectedness and commitment.

This toolkit for “Shifting Out of Neutral” focuses on historical thinking development through critical literacy and builds on author Jonathan Gold’s call for educators to acknowledge and teach about power and bias.