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The Learning Center
The Learning Center is LFJ’s online popular education space, offering learning for civic and political action to build an inclusive, multiracial democracy.
August 21, 2024
4,338 Results
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Literature
Mum Bett’s Freedom Tale
Mum Bett hears the cries for American freedom from British tyranny and launches her own American Revolution against slavery in Massachusetts.
January 8, 2019
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Becoming the Minority Offers New Insight
Have you ever been the only (fill in category) person in the room? Race, class, gender, age, body type, marital status—any number of identifiers can place us outside the norm, depending on the room. Otherness is a specific experience, especially for those who don’t live it every day. A couple of my students unwittingly placed themselves squarely into the role of “other” in an assignment outside our classroom, and I suspect learned a more powerful lesson than I ever could have taught them in class. The assignment was to find, attend and write an article covering an event. When two students proposed attending a senior citizen fundraising fashion show on the other side of town, I immediately approved the idea.
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Helping All Kinds of Families
It was meet-the-teacher night at my elementary school. The room was ready for a new class of second-graders. The rubric for grading paragraphs and stories was on the wall around the writing center. A scientific method poster hung on the wall in the science corner. Essential questions for numbers and operations were on the chalkboard in the math area. And a picture commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education was on the social studies wall. I was ready to help my children become successful students.
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Pledge to Participate!
Everyone can participate in our democracy, regardless of voter eligibility. Use this pledge to encourage your students and their families to use their voices and their votes.
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Change Starts Here (With Me): Day of Action, March 2025
Join us for a Day of Action on March 7 (or any day in March that works for you) — and organize with young people in your community. As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, it is your time to step forward, just as the young people did then, and say, “Change starts here.” Your voice, your energy and your activism are essential in shaping today’s movements for justice.
- Change Starts Here (With Me): Day of Action Toolkit
- Introduction to Action Planning: Toolkit
- Youth Learning For Justice
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Democracy Requires Learning and Teaching Accurate and Honest History
How can history help us resist hate in society today and work toward a more inclusive future? Opposition to equality is, unfortunately, not new to the history of the United States. Recognizing the relevance of history to today’s justice movements is crucial for understanding and countering current pushbacks against democratic values. And with the intense efforts to dismantle public education and to erase and alter our country’s history, teaching accurate history — including the hard truths of our nation’s past — is essential.
- Teaching Hard History Podcast Series
- History and the Power of Place
- Resisting Hate in Education
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Being a Good Sport When the Race Is Rigged
After hearing talk of the presidential election being rigged, this teacher, swim coach and TT Award winner began reflecting on a race that actually is rigged—the one his students face every day.