Zinn Education Project News

From Brussels to Lahore, from Syria to the Trump campaign, the world can seem an increasingly chaotic and scary place. More than ever, teachers need people's history resources to help students ask deep and critical questions ---- and to surface the grassroots activism for justice that is always there, but too often buried in the official curriculum.

The Zinn Education Project is pleased to announce the posting of five articles originally published in Rethinking Schools magazine that help to bring history and current events to life, and that help equip students to make sense of their world.

Two of these, by Rethinking Schools editor Adam Sanchez, are role plays that explore the roots of global crisis. "Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War" examines the neglected economic war the United States waged on Iraq ---- a war that helps explain so much of today's chaos there. "Tè Tremblé: An Unnatural Disaster" is a trial role play that shows how the impact of the devastating 2010 Haitian earthquake can only be understood historically.

"Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance" is a story of how teachers at June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco helped students describe and understand the growing inequality of their city as they developed academic skills. Similarly, teacher Brian Gibbs shows how he used his own East Los Angeles school, Roosevelt High School, as his "textbook," and helped students learn the stirring history of the 1968 Chicano Student Blowouts.

Elementary teacher Willow McCormick also connects her students to the hidden local stories of the Civil Rights Movement in a teaching article that tells how she draws on the knowledge of students' own grandparents.

Please download these, use them, and share with colleagues.

Foreign Policy

Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War

By Adam Sanchez

"When we teach about wars, even from a critical standpoint, too often we focus only on the military aspects. But whether it's Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, there is always an economic dimension. Inspired by Naomi Klein's groundbreaking article for Harper's Magazine, 'Baghdad Year Zero,' I wrote a role play that examines the economic dimensions of the Iraq war."

Tè Tremblé: An Unnatural Disaster: A Trial Role Play Probes the Roots of Devastation in Haiti

By Adam Sanchez

"As I learned about the role the U.S. government had played in Haitian affairs----the multiple occupations, the support for dictatorships, the CIA backed coups----it seemed to me that the 'aid' effort had to be viewed in the light of this history."

Economics
Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance: High School Students Use Math to Reflect on Social Inequality By Adam Renner, Bridget Brew, and Crystal Proctor "We wanted our students to have conversations about the statistics that seem to prove the racism that many of them experience, what that means for their communities, and what they might do about it."

Civil Rights

Our Grandparents' Civil Rights Era: Family Letters Bring History to Life

By Willow McCormick

"'You know,'" I said, 'we could write letters to our grandparents, asking them to share their memories of the Civil Rights Movement.' If the children could connect their learning in the classroom to their lives outside of school, and see that the Civil Rights Movement's crescendo wasn't so long ago, they might begin to better understand the continuing reverberations, the work that remains to be done."

The History All Around Us: Roosevelt High School and the 1968 Eastside Blowouts

By Brian C. Gibbs

"I realized that the impromptu tour helped students
see their campus and their school differently. They were actually looking at the campus. It was no longer just a run-down school that was chafa (East LA-speak for cheap)."

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	The goal of the Zinn Education Project is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history. www.zinnedproject.org

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