How might social educators encourage civic reasoning and genuine dialogue across different perspectives? Disagreements about policy and appropriate action are part and parcel of democratic societies, and yet identifying and working through the roots of those disagreements are tricky skills for students (or anyone, for that matter). In this piece,…

What do people think of when they hear the word "census"? For some, the word prompts them to think of representation in Congress; others think of genealogy and family history. For still others, the census is viewed as something strange or foreboding. Yet for teachers and students, census records can help create a meaningful and relevant…

Part of media education is showing students other ways of being, knowing, and making change away from social media. Such experiences can allow youth to reflect not only on the benefits and drawbacks of social media, but how they change the flow of our lives. They are then better positioned to choose when to use, or not use social media. Educators…

On a hot July day in 1854, 24-year-old schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings, accompanied by a friend, attempted to board a horse-drawn trolley to attend Sunday church services in Lower Manhattan. The Irish conductor refused, telling Jennings, who was African American, to await a horsecar for "her people." When Jennings resisted, the…

The nationwide commemoration in 2020 of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is an opportunity to explore not only women's long struggle to achieve this landmark moment, but also to engage in an exploration of women's civic engagement during the woman suffrage movement. The terms "woman suffrage" and "suffragist" often…

The amplification of women's voices and enfranchisement of their rights is a global issue that has gained momentum in the last century alongside the expansion of democracy. Women have seen their political presence increase in recent history, whether it be through suffrage and voting rights, parity of representation in governmental bodies, or…

In early February 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) named a new kind of media consumption ailment, saying, "The 2019-nCoV outbreak and response has been accompanied by a massive 'infodemic'--an over-abundance of information--some accurate and some not that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when…

In this article, the authors begin by describing a classroom activity from part of the Diplomacy Challenge unit in their Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Advanced Placement (AP) World History Curriculum when students discover and analyze the history of the Early Modern Era (1450-1750). In this article, they explain how they have adopted PBL, its…

A close look at artifacts from September 11, 2001, can spark a powerful classroom lesson on the historic attacks. Some artifacts are massive, some fit in the palm of a hand, all serve to tell the story of what happened on 9/11 and in its aftermath. Throughout the year, students use these artifacts, and the stories behind them, to examine the…

The 2016 presidential election was the first since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in which full voting protections were not in place for historically marginalized voters. This shift was largely due to a 5-4 decision in "Shelby v. Holder" (2013) in which the Supreme Court ruled that states with a history of voter discrimination…

Differences of opinion are inherent in controversial issues, because controversy arises when reasonable people disagree about the best way to reach a solution to a problem. However, social studies teachers tend to shy away from disagreements because they want to avoid upsetting students or parents by bringing up controversial topics in the…

In the early twentieth century in the American South, Black women teachers were especially dedicated to the creation of community and local institutions. They not only supported and taught Black history, but also created key texts that enabled a more accurate accounting of Black history. Educational leaders such as Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary…

A project-based approach to studying the civil rights movement can stimulate student engagement and their sense of connection to this historic period. The authors taught this project-based learning (PBL) unit on the American civil rights movement multiple times in the past 10 years to classes of middle school, high school general education,…

This guided inquiry combines a structured approach to collecting and organizing data with substantial student autonomy in the important cognitive tasks of analyzing and drawing conclusions from the data. While the teacher decides on the compelling question, students are responsible for generating supporting questions. The detailed emphasis on…

In 1957, a civil rights organization called Fellowship of Reconciliation created a comic book to teach America's youth about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Entitled "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story," the comic book was enormously successful. John Lewis, a young civil rights activist at the time, recalled that the book was…