As social media engagement among youth continues to rise, students are becoming increasingly exposed to and involved in hashtag campaigns related to themes of identity, diversity, justice and social action.

In this lesson, students will explore how technology can be a useful tool for active citizenship.

At the beginning of each term, in junior- and senior-level courses, I have my students get to know each other.

In this lesson, students will describe aspects of their identities such as race, gender, class, age, ability, religion and more. They will watch two video clips featuring Marley Dias, an eleven-year-old girl who started the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign, a book drive with the goal of collecting 1,000 books featuring African-American girls. After learning about the campaign, students will review illustrated books in their classroom and school library and analyze whether the characters in the books reflect their own identities or the identities of their families and friends. Finally, students will write a book review on one of the books and examine how the book’s characters are similar to or different from them.

The last week of September is Banned Books Week. Many teachers use the event to talk about free speech with their students. I also use it to begin a conversation about discrimination.

What is needed to end mass incarceration and permanently eliminate racial caste in the United States? Legal and policy solutions alone are not enough to dismantle racial caste because the methods of racial control within this system are “legal” and rarely appear as outwardly discriminatory. A social movement that confronts the role of race and cultivates an ethic of care must form or else a new racial caste system will emerge in the future.

How do you ensure students get the most out of black history and Black History Month? Here are some suggestions.

In this lesson, students examine voting rights in the early years of the United States and the causes and effects of the first major expansion of voting rights, which took place in the late 1700s and first half of the 1800s. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to explain where various groups of Americans stood regarding the right to vote before the Civil War, and will hypothesize about what they expect happened next.

After introducing the story of Emmett Till, students will break into small groups and be given one of the three Emmett Till stories (past, present or future). In small groups, students will read their particular story.

This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information.

This lesson helps students understand the concepts of strengths, struggles and what it means to help.

Examine identity and assimilation with an activity that asks the essential question: Was there ever a part of your identity you had to hide?

This lesson is intended to help guide children to respond to literature with an eye toward social justice.

This lesson helps students appreciate diversity among their peers and the diversity of immigrants all over the world. Through hands-on exercises, students will discover similarities and differences they share with other children.

Fact or Opinion asks students to demonstrate their explanatory and analytical writing skills.

Students work in groups to role-play or tell stories about real life situations related to fairness, community, diversity or social justice themes. Students then perform their skits or stories for others as part of a class-wide “fairness fair.”

Because this lesson involves family interviews, plan to use two different class periods to give students time to conduct an interview in between the two class periods. An alternative would be to invite one family member into the classroom and do a collective interview during a class session. Students could then conduct similar interviews with their own family members as an optional homework assignment.

This handout accompanies the lesson "Farmworkers and the Union." A Spanish version is included.

The four lessons in this unit explore different aspects of gender for today’s girls and women. Each lesson identifies barriers that limit girls’ and women’s opportunities and asks students to explore how those barriers can be dismantled.