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.
Ursula Wolfe-Rocca has taught high school social studies since 2000. Based in Portland, Oregon, she is on the editorial board of Rethinking Schools and works full time for the Zinn Education Project as an organizer and writer. She has written lessons and/or textbook critiques on McCarthyism, voting rights, Red Summer, reparations, redlining (in consultation with Richard Rothstein), deportations, COINTELPRO, climate justice and the Cold War, and she contributed to a series of lessons for How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith. In addition to Learning for Justice and Rethinking Schools, her work
What are the most salient similarities between mass incarceration and Jim Crow? Mass incarceration is a system of racialized social control that, like slavery and Jim Crow before it, operates to discriminate and create a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom.
The digital literacy resources in this toolkit, which can be integrated across all subject areas, are designed to meet present-day challenges in navigating online information and countering online hate.
In this lesson, students will learn some common myths about voting today, think through who these myths might benefit, learn why these myths are incorrect and consider how people might ensure every eligible citizen has a chance to vote. In an extension activity, students learn how to register to vote.
This toolkit explains five “shifts” classroom teachers can make in their teaching practices and their interactions with students to help disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.