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

105 Lessons

Jim Crow as a Form of Racialized Social Control

How did Jim Crow function as a mechanism of racialized social control? Throughout its history, the United States has been structured by a racial caste system. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, these forms of racialized social control reinvented themselves to meet the needs of the dominant social class according to the constraints of each era.
Grade Level
Subject
Social Studies
Civics
History
Social Justice Domain
October 13, 2014

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

Why Local Elections Matter

In this lesson, students explore the ways that decisions by local government affect their lives. They’ll review research and data about a few recent local elections to push back against the myth that a single vote doesn’t count. They’ll learn how laws in their state encourage or suppress voter engagement. And in an extension activity, eligible students learn how to register to vote.
Grade Level
Subject
Social Studies
Civics
History
Social Justice Domain
October 8, 2020

News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

This lesson focuses on PEN America's News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. Students will read the bill of rights, rephrase some of the rights and responsibilities, and rank the rights in order of importance. Finally, students will work together to construct a short dramatic skit that shows the significance of one right of their choosing.
Grade Level
Subject
Digital Literacy
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
Arts
ELL / ESL
Social Justice Domain
February 12, 2018

The Color of Law: Developing the White Middle Class

This lesson is the third and final lesson of the series The Color of Law: The Role of Government in Shaping Racial Inequity. In this lesson, students examine policies that supported and cultivated the creation of the white middle class and the practices that excluded black and nonwhite people from economic development.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
History
Economics
Social Justice Domain
October 10, 2019

Cliques in Schools

In this lesson, students will examine the cliques within their school community. They will also explore ways to integrate the student body and form relationships across, and in spite of, controlling cliques.
Grade Level
Subject
Reading & Language Arts
Social Studies
SEL
ELL / ESL
Social Justice Domain
July 10, 2017