February 1, 2022

Honor Langston Hughes on His Birthday as BHM Begins

Today, on the first day of Black History Month, we also celebrate Langston Hughes’ birthday. Honor Hughes by teaching his poem “I, Too,” which is featured in our Learning for Justice text library along with text-dependent questions for your students. Find this and works by more Black writers in our text library. 

Black Minds Matter // Coshandra Dillard

A Trauma-informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus // LFJ Staff

What Is the Model Minority Myth? // Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn
How to Avoid Whitewashing the Civil Rights Movement
While revisiting familiar themes or introducing new projects during Black History Month, resist reducing topics to feel-good factoids devoid of context. This includes the civil rights movement—which students deserve to fully and truthfully understand. LFJ Senior Writer Coshandra Dillard recommends five practices to help teach a more accurate account of the movement. 

Students Lose When Black Women Aren’t Supported

Are you supporting Black women in school leadership roles? In her latest piece for Learning for Justice, Jamilah Pitts shares her experience of choosing herself and abruptly resigning from her school leadership position—and why schools “must honor Black women who say no and move away from disparaging a woman who seeks to value herself and, ultimately, her students.”

It’s Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action!

This week marks the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. Established in 2016, the Week of Action is inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and charts a path of solidarity in the pursuit of equitable curriculum and experiences for Black students. Read this Learning for Justice story to learn more about the history of the Week of Action and ideas for getting involved.

Responding to Hate and Bias in Your School

Several recent incidents of antisemitism, hate and violence—including people touting Nazi ideologies and iconography in Florida over the weekend—are not isolated. Such events can spill over into schools and leave students feeling unsafe. Use our publication Responding to Hate and Bias at School to assess your school climate, respond to crises and more.

Check Out What We’re Reading

“It is thanks to decades of painstaking, difficult work that we know a great deal about the scale of human trafficking across the Atlantic Ocean and about the people aboard each ship. Much of that research is available to the public in the form of the SlaveVoyages database.” — The New York Times

“Conservative parents have swarmed school board meetings in Texas and across the country in recent months to call for the removal of library books that deal with race, racism, sex, gender and sexuality. ” — NBC News

“In the largest opioid settlement for Native Americans, the country’s three major drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $665 million to tribal communities devastated by the public health crisis, which has killed them at a disproportionate rate compared with non-Natives.” — The Washington Post
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