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The Social Justice Standards allow educators to use backward design when planning lessons and provide a framework for discussing social justice topics at every stage of K-12 instruction. Get to know the anchor standards, grade-level outcomes and the four domains of anti-bias teaching and learning—Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action—with the resources in this edition of The Moment.

National Suicide Prevention Week is September 8-14. And while educators can’t—and shouldn’t—act as mental health professionals, they can advocate for students. They can help create schools and communities where all children know they’re valued and loved and where support is available if students find themselves in crisis. We hope these resources will help.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights. Hundreds of activists, students and educators organized and marched bravely in the face of racist violence and arrests. Use these resources to teach how the Selma organizers achieved one of the most significant victories of the civil rights era: the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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.

Anti-Blackness is pervasive and has material consequences for all people, including and especially Black children whose presence is often overlooked—and, ironically, villainized—in favor of all things that uphold white supremacy. These LFJ resources offer specific actions educators, parents, caregivers and communities can take to insist upon the well-being of Black children.

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.

The annual National Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action for 2023 is February 6-10. The guiding principles behind this event can be an important frame through which to reimagine more liberatory educational spaces for Black children and—as these LFJ resources indicate—for all children. This Black History Month, be intentional in countering censorship efforts.

To understand the complexities of the present, we must connect with the hard history of our country’s past. And we can learn about that honest history outside the classroom—in museums and field trips—because “No educator can accurately map out the whole landscape of our history alone. We are all stronger when we traverse the terrain together.”