No student is too young to participate in conversations about equality and social justice, but words are not the only means through which students can imagine a better future.
Hannah Sachs is a theater director, activist and educator. This summer, she is teaching and directing at Theatre Lab in Washington, D.C., prior to moving to the Czech Republic as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. She recently graduated from Smith College, where she studied theater directing with a minor in religion and a concentration in community engagement and social change. Hannah has previously taught third grade at East African Community Services in Seattle, Washington, and facilitated theater workshops at Kensington International School in Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition to
TT’s Teaching and Learning Specialist Jarah Botello offers some classroom discussion prompts and activities that can help students process the horrific tragedy in Orlando and move toward healing.
Kelly Hannon is a life coach and teacher at The Excel Center University Heights, a high school for adults in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in urban education at Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis. Kelly's interests include critical literacy, social justice and student activism. In her spare time, she loves to go hiking and camping, and is currently attempting to complete the 52 Hike Challenge by the end of 2016.
In this interview, Luis Rodriguez describes how the systemic demoralization he faced in school and society at a young age drove him to join a street gang and how writing his book, Always Running, was an attempt to call his son and other young people in similar situations to change their lives.
In this interview, Marian Wright Edelman expresses the importance of each American sending children “signals of fairness and tolerance” and helping to give them “a life that transcends boundaries of race, class, gender and other differences.”
In the graphic novel March, Congressman John Lewis documents his experiences as a young civil rights activist. Hear him describe his first arrest employing a nonviolent resistance strategy, as captured in the book.
In this essay, the author draws parallels between the "witch hunts" experienced in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts and in 1950 in the U.S. government at U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's urgings.