Classroom Resources

This activity will help students identify similarities and differences between the U.S. Muslim population and the entire U.S. population. It will also help dispel common stereotypes about Islam.

This lesson explores the concept of fairness through questions such as: What is fair? Should all people be treated the same? What would you do if you saw someone treated unfairly? Students are encouraged to reflect upon fairness in their own lives and communities.

This lesson is an excerpt from the accompanying teacher's guide to One Survivor Remembers, a teaching kit built around the incredible life story of Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein.

In these activities, students will imagine themselves in the role of these women and weigh the risks and potential benefits of their actions. In the process, they will develop an understanding of undocumented workers that goes far deeper than the caricatures that are often part of the debate over policy.

These activities will help students make connections between the foods they eat every day and the harsh experiences of the undocumented female workers who play an essential role in bringing that food to them.

About 4 million undocumented immigrant women live and work in the United States. They live in fear of job-site immigration raids and deportations, which result in personal and economic costs both here and back home. In this lesson, students will learn how current immigration policies are tied to those costs.

These lessons provide a framework that will help students talk about their own and others’ families in safe, caring ways.

In this lesson, students will use a primary source—an NBC news report from 1961—to investigate the Freedom Rides. The lesson will also explore segregation in the South and the tenets of nonviolent protest. 

In this lesson, students will explore the ways people with a critical health condition or disease might feel, as well as various ways they can support and show compassion toward those who are living with an illness.

In this lesson, students will gain a better understanding of what it means to be empathetic and be able to identify behaviors that show empathy toward others.

Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice is a series of 12 lessons. Each lesson focuses on a contemporary social justice issue. These lessons are multidisciplinary and geared toward middle- and high-school students.

Photographs may tell a story or make a statement about a greater concept or ideal. Sometimes photographers use the subjects in a photo to convey a message. This lesson is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

In this lesson, students compare and contrast two photographs of women. In doing so, they evaluate how a photo creates a mood and how photos can encourage or challenge stereotypes. This activity is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

In this lesson, students will analyze a photograph of people protesting what they see as an unjust law: A law prohibiting marriage equality in California. This lesson is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

In this lesson, students analyze a photograph of Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Loving—the interracial couple that took the case of their marriage all the way to the Supreme Court—as a springboard for exploring the case, and for thinking about analogous issues today. This lesson is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

This is the final lesson in the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series. Preceding lessons explored a variety of social justice issues through the lens of photographers and their pictures. This activity will offer students several different options for showcasing their understanding.

This lesson is the third in a series called “The Different Colors of Beauty.” The goal of these lessons is to help students develop their racial or ethnic identities in a safe and open classroom environment, while being aware of our multicultural and diverse world.

This lesson is the fifth in a series called “The Different Colors of Beauty.” The goal of these lessons is to help students develop their racial or ethnic identities in a safe and open classroom environment, and appreciate the broad spectrum of beauty in our diverse, multicultural world.

Increases in obesity and diet-related diseases are major health problems in the United States. During the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in the nation’s obesity rates, correlating with increased rates of cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, Type 2 diabetes, increased health-care costs, reduced quality of life and increased risk for premature death.

One of the cornerstones of American democracy is the right to vote. Yet the history of voting rights in the United States is complicated. Although the original Constitution explained who could run for national office and how often elections were to be held, it remained silent on the subject of exactly who could exercise the right to vote. In the nation’s early years, that decision was made by individual states.

This lesson is the third in a series called Expanding Voting Rights. The overall goal of the series is for students to explore the complicated history of voting rights in this country. Two characteristics of that history stand out: First, in fits and starts, more and more Americans have gained the right to vote; and second, the federal government has played an increasing role over time in securing these rights.

The overall goal of these lessons is to help students recognize and accept differences among each other and within the larger community and how their own unique family contributes to a richer society. As they begin to understand themselves more thoroughly, learning opportunities likely will open up to explore their own biases and prejudices. The series consists of the following four lessons.

This lesson is the second in a series of lessons called “Issues of Poverty.” Students explore the causes of poverty in the United States and the structural factors that perpetuate it. Students will examine the ways poverty is closely related to economic and political policy, and will work to discover why it disproportionately affects members of non-dominant groups—that is, groups that have historically oppressed groups.