Teaching Hard History in Grades K-5

October is LGBTQ+ History Month. We hope these resources will help you and your students as you celebrate the diverse identities, experiences and histories of LGBTQ activists—and the continuing fight for LGBTQ equality.
We hope you’ll join us—this February and year-round—in teaching Black history beyond trauma and helping students recognize the brilliance, strength and love this history represents. Here’s why that’s so important.
Did you know that, in seven states, April is officially designated as Confederate History Month? Or that Confederate monuments can be found from Portland, Oregon, to the Bronx in New York? These resources can help you teach the real history behind the "Lost Cause" and public monuments in its honor—and explore how communities are challenging this false narrative.
We can teach young people the honest history of the United States in age-appropriate ways and help them understand commonalities across cultures to develop a strong sense of self and identity as they honor diversity. To support these conversations and learning experiences, we offer parents, caregivers and educators teaching strategies, talking points and activities.
The latest issue of Learning for Justice magazine focuses on the South in the fight for democracy and justice. That entails acknowledging those at the center of an unjust system, whose very survival served as a form of resistance. In these new stories, Amber N. Mitchell details the ways in which the Whitney Plantation experiential learning tour sheds light on the lives of the people whose enslavement generated great wealth for their captors, and Lolita Bolden celebrates her Southern roots in both prose and poetry.