Teaching Hard History: Grades K-5

Our youngest students deserve a truthful, age-appropriate account of our past. These resources for elementary educators include a first-of-its-kind framework, along with student texts and resources for anyone committed to teaching this history.

Queer People Have Always Existed—Teach Like It

Educators must commit to undoing the systemic silencing of queer figures throughout history. Revisit this article for some ways to more inclusively explore the past.

Why it matters: “For queer students who have been made to believe that queerness is an aberration or a 20th-century invention, evidence to the contrary is validating. It offers all students a more complete history—one that has always included the full fabric of humanity that surrounds them.” —Cory Collins

History Moves With Us

In this article, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ph.D., introduces an abridged version of Charles E. Cobb Jr.’s essay that offers insightful observations on teaching civil rights history.

“My experiences in the movement and in the classroom have convinced me that if we want civil rights history to be useful to young people, then what we teach has to portray Black people in meaningful ways. This can and should be done at every educational level, for it is the usefulness of history—what history teaches us to understand about ourselves—more than classroom exercises or syllabi that determines a history lesson’s ultimate value.” —Charles E. Cobb, Jr.