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Scholars are divided on the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the civil rights movement. This blogger, a history teacher, explains why this debate is a valuable lesson.

Every school year, my incoming students receive a welcome letter. Included in their packet is something a little different: a snack-sized baggie of sand. One student may receive some black volcanic sand from Japan; another gets green sand from Hawaii; still another receives the silky sand from Florida’s west coast; while another may get the pink sand found on Bermuda’s pristine beaches.

On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, Dorothy Height sat on the speakers’ platform and listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. She had helped organize the rally that brought about 250,000 people to the National Mall. In fact, she’d been in the forefront of the civil right struggle for decades as the president of the National Council of Negro Women.

This teacher dreads reducing her students to a few words on a progress report. So what would she rather tell them instead?

Following the president’s approval of the contentious Keystone XL Pipeline, students may be wondering what the decision means. Use this mini-guide to inspire discussions about this current event in your classroom.