Lessons
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These robust, ready-to-use classroom lessons offer breadth and depth, spanning essential social justice topics and reinforcing critical social emotional learning skills.

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“[Learning for Justice] provides me with the means to promote social justice, challenge bias, and engage students in discussions about diversity that would perhaps not happen otherwise.”

Grade Level
Social Justice Domain
Subject
Topic

126 Lessons

Mary McLeod Bethune

In this lesson, students will read an excerpt of an interview given by Mary McLeod Bethune and will learn that she founded the Daytona National and Industrial School for Negro Girls (now Bethune-Cookman College) in 1904. Through close reading, they will explore and discuss connections between events from Bethune’s life experiences and their own lives, and connections between past and current events.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
History
Social Justice Domain
May 17, 2012

Violence Prevention

Civil rights leader Malcolm X now appears in many history books and has been the hero of a feature film, but very few sources actually delve into the forms of leadership and resistance to oppression that Malcolm X advocated in the last year of his life.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
Social Justice Domain
July 6, 2009

Part of a Community Online

This lesson focuses on helping young children learn to participate in different kinds of digital communities. Students will solidify and work on what they know about being part of any community.
Grade Level
K-2
Subject
Digital Literacy
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
Social Justice Domain
September 25, 2017

Who, Me? A Scientist?

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.
Grade Level
3-5
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
Math & Technology
Science & Health
Social Justice Domain
April 18, 2016

Different Colors of Beauty

The overall goal of these lessons is to help students develop their racial or ethnic identities in a safe and open classroom environment. Each lesson capitalizes on a slightly different modality of learning. The lessons
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
SEL
Arts
ELL / ESL
Social Justice Domain
September 2, 2011

Maya Angelou

This lesson focuses on questions of identity as students read and analyze Angelou’s inspirational poem “Still I Rise” and apply its message to their own lives. Students learn how Maya Angelou overcame hardship and discrimination to find her own voice and to influence others to believe in themselves and use their voices for positive change.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
Social Justice Domain
May 3, 2012

The Color of Law: Winners and Losers in the Job Market

This lesson is the second lesson of the series The Color of Law: The Role of Government in Shaping Racial Inequity. In this lesson, students examine how government policies helped white people access economic benefits while preventing African Americans from accessing these same benefits.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
History
Economics
Social Justice Domain
October 10, 2019