Working for Justice & Taking Action for Elementary Kids

Which are you more likely to notice: a person’s character or his or her clothing? Hoca has a witty response when the latter is true at a dinner he attends after a day of hard work.

This story speaks of the importance of giving. When hard times fall on his land, Buddha reaches out to the wealthy, asking them to help feed the poor. The rich people grumble and refuse until a young, well-to-do girl steps forward and offers to take her bowl from house-to-house to be filled for those less fortunate than herself. Supriya succeeds and many in the land fill her bowl and their own to give to the poor.

In this excerpt, Garang tells his story of how he became a lost boy when war destroyed his village. Walking with thousands of other orphaned boys, Garang travels thousands of dangerous miles from southern Sudan to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

Brother Pedro meets Juan on a dusty road and sees that the man is very troubled. The priest helps Juan secure medicine for his sick wife. After many years, a prosperous and happy Juan returns to Brother Pedro to help him, yet it is Pedro who shows Juan another miracle.

The Peacock Fairy needs to choose an apprentice, but all of the peacocks look alike. To stand out, most of them decide to add things to their feathers, but the Little Peacock doesn't follow suit, and his actions succeed in catching the Peacock Fairy's attention.

“Connected to Everything” is a story written by Jennifer Greene and published in the Fall 2009 issue of Teaching Tolerance. This story is adapted from a traditional tale of the Bitterroot Salish, a Native American tribe in Montana.

“My father went to work in a chocolate factory. When he'd come home, his hair was all full of chocolate; his pillows were all brown.”

Protesting the death of Alton Sterling and the Baton Rough Police Department’s request for Black Lives Matter demonstrators to clear roadways, Iesha Evans stands in the middle of a street as two Louisiana state troopers, dressed in riot gear, approach to arrest her.

Doreen Rappaport tells the story of a young Suzie King Taylor and her brother who attended a secret school for black children in Georgia in the mid-1800s. Later on, Taylor would become the first black woman to teach openly in a freedmen's school.

Sean McCollum gives an account of writer Julia Alvarez's move to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a young girl. Although Alvarez struggled to fit in in this unfamiliar place, she finally found a comfortable niche in her writing.

Hussein, the narrator of My Name Was Hussein, lives in Bulgaria. His Muslim family takes great pride in their religion and traditions. But soldiers soon arrive in their village and force all of the Muslims to adopt Christian names, thereby inhibiting their freedom and identities.

Based on a true person, this story is told from the perspective of a little girl whose dad took her to the Million Man March—where she saw the tears, happiness, and chants of men banding together for a common purpose.

These two images depict segregated classrooms before the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Summoning President Kennedy's inaugural address, the artist of this cartoon requests, "Fear not what my turban can do to you. Fear what your ignorance about my turban can do to me."

In this story, Antonio learns that words have power, and that can be both a good and bad thing. As Mother’s Day approaches he must decide how to show his love for his mother and her partner and whether he wants that declaration to be public.

Two friends who attend different schools in the same community learn that one of their schools has no instruments for their music program, while the other has multiple different kinds. They use their friendship and musical abilities to confront this inequity and try to bring about change.