Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching
National Program
January 2005

Dear friends and colleagues,

Are you a teacher who is using Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching in your classroom? We invite you to participate in a global learning network project linking K-12 classrooms in dialogue and action on issues of civil rights, social justice, and people's movements. In this new K-12 global learning network project we will highlight the recently published "Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching curriculum guide". Your students can use new media like web design and digital photography to develop critical skills and become producers, not just consumers of electronic technology. Connect with classrooms in other areas to work together on this project and share community stories.

Collaborative activities will be drawn from the curriculum guide, including such lessons as:

• Big Shoes to Fill. This lesson examines how struggles for justice, equity, and freedom depend on traditions passed on and developed within communities and out of collective experience. Students consider the many kinds of steps that ordinary people can take to build solid pathways to greater human dignity and a more equitable world. This will be a good introductory activity so that students can learn about the young people in their partner classroom.

• What We Want, What We Believe. Students become acquainted with the Black Panthers Ten-Point Program and the demands of other social justice movements, including student rights movements, and then collaborate on a list of demands that reflects their own community needs. If teachers choose to do this activity, students from partner classrooms could exchange the lists they have developed and look for similarities/differences. They could also send questions from class to class to inquire about the demands listed, thereby motivating each respective class to further explain and support their demands.

• Painting a Picture of the Movement. Introduce the complexity and role of ordinary people in the Civil Rights Movement by learning about activist artists, painting a class mural, and practicing figure- drawing techniques. If this activity were selected, the murals from the respective classes would be posted on the website for all to appreciate.

• Where Is the Activism of the Hip-Hop Generation? Students discover and define their revolution by viewing the issues confronting their own lives and discovering how hip-hop and youth culture can become part of a resistance to oppression. Activities are centered around developing an analysis of the contemporary obstacles to activism, especially as it pertains to young people. This activity could lead to a dynamic philosophical exchange between partner classes.

We will consider ideas proposed by participating teachers, such as creating a Struggle for Freedom collaborative timeline of social movements. We also invite additional ideas you might have for participation in this interactive project. Locally based activities and investigations will be shared through online collaborative work.

This pilot project is being planned for January 2005. If you are interested or would like to learn more, please contact Kate Munning at: kmunning@teachingforchange.org or (202) 588-7206.

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, an anthology and curriculum guide, is published by Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), two Washington, DC-based non-profit organizations. As one of the most commonly taught stories of people's struggles for social justice, the Civil Rights Movement has the capacity to help students develop a critical analysis of United States history and strategies for change. Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching aims to go beyond the heroes approach to the Civil Rights Movement. The guide includes interactive and interdisciplinary lessons, readings, writings, photographs, graphics, and interviews, with sections on education, labor, citizenship, culture, and reflections on teaching about civil rights. For more information, visit the book s companion website at www.civilrightsteaching.org.

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