Civil Rights and Social Movements

The Civil Rights and Social Movements Project highlights the recently published resource guide "Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching." The project links classrooms together to share coordinated activities, resources and community stories on the issues of human rights, social justice, and people's movements.

The Civil Rights Teaching Global Learning Network allows teachers to share resources with other like-minded educators, spark dialogue between their students and other classrooms and integrate technology into their classroom, using web design, digital photography and film production, while teaching about human rights. The online campus includes facilitators who have been working with participating classes to help create meaningful conversations on social justice and respond to the needs and questions of the educators involved in the project. Participants learn how to combat injustice by examining other social movements and are corresponding with one another through the online campus.

The project is an initiative of Learning, Equity, Achievement and Reform Network (LEARN) at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus and LEARN Partner, Teaching for Change, Washington DC. The project also collaborates with the iEARN-Orillas Center.

Possible project/classroom activities:

"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 classrooms.

"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 revolve around developing an analysis of the contemporary obstacles to activism, especially as it pertains to young people. For more information, see http://www.civilrightsteaching.org/CRTglobal.htm

Facilitated by: Ilana Sabban, Kevin Rocap, Kristin Brown in the USA

Ages: Ages 10-18, and university-level future teachers

Contact: For more information about participating in this or other iEARN projects, write to iearn@iearn.org