As we continue to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we hope educators commit to uplifting the diversity of AAPI identities year round. These resources offer ideas for including AAPI stories and valuing the lived experiences of AAPI people in our learning spaces, regardless of our own identities and those of our students.
Started by the Campaign for Youth Justice, October is Youth Justice Action Month (YJAM), a time to “raise awareness and inspire action on behalf of young people impacted by our criminal justice system.” These resources explain how the school-to-prison and school-to-deportation pipelines all too often begin in the classroom. And they offer ways educators can interrupt these systems.
Celebrate Pride Month by taking action to support LGBTQ+ youth in increasingly hostile school environments and in our communities. The new spring magazine feature “A Refuge for LGBTQ+ Young People” explains students’ rights and how gender and sexuality alliance (GSA) clubs provide spaces for young people to thrive. This new article and these LFJ resources highlight that everyone benefits when inclusivity is intentional.
Women’s Equality Day commemorates the ratification of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920. It’s important to remember that many Black women and more women of color didn’t earn the right to vote until years later. Read Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” with its intersectional message delivered during her 1851 speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Also, check out an LFJ lesson featuring an accurate voting rights timeline, and identify ways to take a deeper look at women’s history this Women’s Equality Day—and beyond.