Equity Resources for the Classroom

Whether you teach or volunteer with K-12 students or adult learners, equity and social justice are challenging topics to tackle. These three classroom resources provide readings, lesson plans, and teaching strategies for creating space in the classroom for courageous conversations.

Zinn Education Project

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. For more than ten years, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. This website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and grade level. Based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States, our teaching materials emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history.

Teaching Tolerance: Let's Talk!

Educators play a crucial role in helping students talk openly about the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of social inequality and discrimination. Learning how to communicate about such topics as white privilege, police violence, economic inequality and mass incarceration requires practice, and facilitating difficult conversations demands courage and skill—regardless of who we are, our intentions or how long we’ve been teaching. Use the strategies in this resource as you prepare to facilitate difficult conversations about race and racism. You can also use them to build competency when discussing other types of discrimination, such as gender bias, ableism, and religious or anti-LGBT persecution. The end of the guide contains links to a variety of other Teaching Tolerance tools and articles on the above topics.

#IamABE Curriculum

#IamABE is a 3 lesson standards-aligned curriculum, developed at three different levels, geared towards Adult Basic Education students. Designed to be easily implemented in any classroom, lessons and materials are available at the beginning, intermediate, and Advanced/GED levels.

Lessons range from understanding First Amendment rights, to voicing one's political opinions on social media. This project based curriculum builds towards launching a social media campaign to elevate student voices.