Many textbooks mention the Trail of Tears, but fail to mention that this early displacement of an ethnic minority is only the one of many legally-sanctioned forced relocations. This lesson will address the displacement of American Indians through the Trail of Tears, the forced deportation of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, and the internment of Japanese American citizens during WWII.

How does media coverage of migration shape how Americans’ views of migration by youth? Why are so many young people trying to migrate to the United States? What are their journeys like? What happens when they get to the U.S.-Mexico Border? What role does U.S. policy play in this situation? These are the major questions that students will explore in this 4-day mini-unit, which results in media literacy and creative assessments.

These short films by Stourwater Pictures are accompanied by activities for classroom and remote teaching and learning about the story of Japanese American WWII exclusion and incarceration on Bainbridge Island and Washington State.

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members and their supporters, images, news footage, an interactive timeline, and other sources about an important campaign to secure the treaty rights and sovereignty of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Scroll to begin an exploration of the actions Native Nations took to address injustices.

This resource includes multiple lesson plans developed by Washington State teacher John Zingale and can be taught as part of in-person, hybrid, or remote instructional settings. The core content areas include social studies, civics, and media literacy and are designed for use with students in grades 6-12. Additional integrations include ELA, world languages, mathematics, physical education and science. These lessons integrate both state and national civics instruction using project-based and collaborative learning strategies. Features of these lessons include:student researchcollaborative learningdigital learning strategieslateral readingdesign and creation of infographicsTo support these lessons, additional resources are provided to help educators and families with understanding and teaching information and media literacy to young people. Resources include:introductions to media literacyeducator guidesparent guidesstudent learning standards

Students begin this unit by discussing their relationship with art, and the extent to which they believe art drives resistance movements. Students then participate in a Gallery Walk that highlights how members of the Puerto Rico community in the Young Lords used art to advance their ideas and preserve their culture. Students center the activism of Indigenous peoples in Puerto Rico by studying bomba music and murals. This helps them understand the roots of art—both visual and performance—as activism, and respond to the question: How can understanding Latinidad through art help us confront social and political injustices? Throughout this unit, students work in teams to create a poster series that inspires civic engagement and action on issues of social and political injustice.

In the first bend of this unit, students will closely read multiple perspectives on the “American Dream” in
order to collect information to use and integrate that information into an evidence-based perspective.
Students will examine primary and secondary source documents to make informed decisions about
what information to collect that may inspire their writing about “The American Dream.”

In the second bend of this unit, students will engage in a short-research process to create a draft of
argumentative speech on the “American Dream” with a specific purpose, audience, and tone in mind.
They will use their inquiry research questions from bend one to begin analyzing search results and citing
and gathering relevant, accurate, and credible information.

This document describes a series of lessons in the Social Sciences, all of which are tied to the exploration of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a Primary Source Document. They are designed to be given to 9th or 10th grade students in a World History, Cultural Geography, or similar social science class. They are specifically designed to teach the Common Core Standards for Literacy in the Social Sciences, and to engage higher order thinking skills.

In this media-rich, self-paced lesson, students explore some of the technologies designed to detect and treat inherited diseases and the ethical debate surrounding them.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students examine our growing waste problem and learn about strategies we can use to lessen the strain on our landfills and Earth's natural resources: reduce, reuse, recycle.