You are invited to an event featuring the new book Thunder of Freedom: Black Leadership and the Transformation of 1960s Mississippi at the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum on Thursday, June 20, 2013, 7-9 pm. Presentation: Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS). Welcome: Frank Smith, Director of the African American Civil War Museum. Speakers: Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner and Cheryl Reitan. Read more.

Please join us for a special reception for students 
and their teachers from McComb, Mississippi on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 6:00-8:00pm at the African American Civil War Museum
. Sixteen students and their teachers from McComb will be in D.C. for the National History Day (NHD) competition. This is the second time McComb has participated in National History Day. They won at the state level and now they are coming to DC for the national competition. One of their entries… Read more.

Do you love listening to StoryCorps? We do. And so will your students. StoryCorps U is looking for teacher and/or whole high school partners in Washington, DC. Here is a an overview of what they offer including a 29-unit curriculum, training, and coaching. The curriculum makes great use of StoryCorps’ database of 45,000 interviews, drawing on stories that can be connected to a range of topics in your curriculum. The curriculum is also designed to promote peer listening and… Read more.

On Wednesday, April 24th, at 9:30am, Teaching for Change will present our highly effective approach to turning the tables on parent-school relations at the monthlyNational Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE) meeting. América Calderón, bilingual parent organizer, and Allyson Criner Brown, associate director, of Teaching for Change, will present recent research about Teaching for Change’s approach to parent-school engagement called Tellin’ Stories, including… Read more.

As D.C. students prepare for the DC Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS) test, Seattle’s Garfield High School prepares to continue its stand against the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) exam. Garfield High School has become the latest battleground for high-stakes testing with its January 2013 boycott of the MAP exam, with teachers including Jesse Hagopian leading the charge. On April 15, 2013, Teaching for Change, DC Social Justice Teaching Network…Read more.

These past couple of months have been filled with powerful presentations and dialogues with a host of noted authors. Here are just a few that Teaching for Change has helped to schedule and co-host at Busboys and Poets. Read more.

We are pleased to announce that Teaching for Change was selected by Fair Chance as one of six new partners for organizational development assistance in 2013. Fair Chance’s mission is to “partner with promising community-based nonprofits serving children, youth and families in Washington, D.C to improve their capacity, strengthen their sustainability, impact and success.” This was a competitive multi-step application process involving interviews… Read more.

High school students studying U.S. history at the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School learned about labor history during a January 29, 2013 Labor Walk led by Metro Council Union Cities Coordinator Chris Garlock. “It was easy to see the now and then relationships for labor movements and other issues,” wrote one student. The students saw the AFL-CIO lobby mosaics, the old CIO headquarters, and Bonus Army and Occupy DC sites. They also heard Garlock, along with Metro Council Political/Legislative… Read more.

Harvest of Empire is one of the most important films to see and discuss this year. At a time of heated and divisive debate over immigration, Harvest of Empire examines the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today. Based on the groundbreaking book by award-winning journalist Juan González, Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played… Read more.

Teaching for Change is honored to co-host host a fundraiser for the Mississippi Young People’s Project at Busboys and Poets called Critical Literacies: An Intimate Discussion with Bob Moses and Junot Díaz. 

Please get your tickets today for the reception on Thursday evening, March 28 in Washington DC with The Young People’s Project, SNCC Legacy Project and Busboys and Poets. During the reception, we will hear… Read more.

Close to a hundred music and social studies teachers took advantage of the unique opportunity to learn from the leading luminaries and scholars in go-go including Christopher “Geromino” Allen, Sugar Bear, JuJu, Sweet Cherie, JB, Stanley Cooper, Kenneth Carroll, Melvin Deal, David “32” Ellis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Donnell Floyd, Natalie Hopkinson, Kip Lornell, Maurice Shorter, and Charles Stephenson… Read more.

The cornerstone of an effective parent engagement strategy is building relationships between parents, teachers, and administrators—but schools are becoming increasingly aware that traditional conferences and meetings with parents are not exactly engaging. “How to Have Better Parent Meetings,” Teaching for Change’s third Cross-City Parent Coordinator Training of the school year, detailed the essentials for a successful parent meeting. Twenty local parent coordinators, parent leaders…Read more.

Teaching for Change was a proud partner with StoryCorps on its Teacher Initiative last year. We recruited the participants for their DC area educator interviews. As part of our ongoing partnership with StoryCorps, we are pleased to participate in the launch of their latest animation called “Eyes on the Stars.” As StoryCorps explains  “On January 28, 1986, NASA Challenger mission STS-51-L ended in tragedy when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff…. Read more.

Teaching for Change co-hosted author-illustrator Ricardo Cortés on a panel about his new illustrated book, A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola (Akashic Books, 2012) on Jan. 9, 2013. Cortés was joined by Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Carlotta Youngers, Senior Fellow with the Washington Office on Latin America. Using a good mix of anecdotal history and policy discussion, each panelist demonstrated… Read more.

Here are some of our favorite children’s and young adult titles from 2012. Please read and share. Read more.

Publishers Weekly responded to the Dec. 4, 2012 New York Times article on the lack of classroom books written by and featuring Latinos. While the scarcity is a big problem, the New York Times left out the independent publishers who have taken the lead in trying to fill that gap for many years including our friends at  Arte Público Press, Cinco Puntos Press, Lee & Low Books, Wings Press, Groundwood Books, and more. Teaching for Change’s executive director… Read more.

For many schools, parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school night, and report card day are the only attempts to bring parents and teachers together. Typically, these meetings do little to foster sustainable parental engagement and sometimes the format even hinders meaningful collaboration. Teaching for Change’s Tellin’ Stories initiative offers a powerful alternative with its signature activity,parent-teacher grade level dialogues. Grade level dialogues are… Read more.

We were saddened to learn of the death of lifelong activist and freedom fighter Lawrence Guyot, who died on November 23, 2012. Born in Pass Christian, Mississippi, Guyot dedicated his life to the fight for voting rights, first with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and most recently in Washington, DC. We at Teaching for Change were honored to work with Lawrence Guyot in his role as an advisor… Read more.

The following testimony was given Thursday, November 15, 2012 by Teaching for Change’s Associate Director, Allyson Criner Brown, before the D.C. Council to oppose Bill 19-734, the School Closures and School Boundary Review Act of 2012. More than one hundred parents, students, teachers, and community members attended the public hearing, which was scheduled from 4-8pm. Testimony from the public did not begin until after 7pm and lasted until after 11pm.… Read More.

Teaching for Change welcomes Sarah Markes to discuss and sign her new book, Street Level: A Collection of Drawings and Creative Writing Inspired by Dar es Salaam. Street Level was selected as 2012 Honor Book for Older Readers by the Children’s Africana Book Award Program, affiliated with the African Studies Association. The introduction to this extraordinarily beautifully illustrated book gives a fascinating overview of the history and architectural heritage of Dar es Salaam, and an insight… Read more.

Since 2001, schools across the country (and in fact the world) sign up for the annual national  Mix It Up at Lunch Day campaign launched by  Teaching Tolerance. The goal is to “encourage students to identify, question and cross social boundaries.” As Teaching Tolerance explains, “It’s a simple act with profound implications. Studies have shown that interactions across group lines can help reduce prejudice. When students interact with those who are different from them… Read more.

For the past several years, I have been the music teacher at Shepherd Elementary School in Washington, D.C. This has given me the chance to combine two passions: music and social justice activism. I teach students the civil rights songs, peace songs, and union songs that I learned throughout my life. And I make links between the songs and peace and justice movements… Read more.

The Washington Nationals playoff game in Washington D.C. against the St. Louis Cardinals was held on October 10, 2012. According to the majority of the mainstream media and baseball press, it was the “the first postseason baseball game in Washington since 1933.” They were wrong.

This oft repeated line omits the championships of the legendary  Homestead Grays, the winners of the last Negro League World Series in 1948. During their era, the Grays were denied the opportunity to play against… Read more.

Teaching for Change is pleased to have been selected as a “charity” for the  Combined Federal Campaign – National Capital Area. Please spread the word and ask anyone you know who is a federal employee in the D.C. area to designate Teaching for Change. The Teaching for Change CFCNCA number is  25947. Your pledge impacts the lives of the students, parents, and teachers who use our programs and educational resources… Read more.

On September 26, just days into Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month, Teaching for Change hosted an event at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. featuring author/historian  Jeff Biggers in a new show on immigration, civil rights, and states’ rights. The event was a stop on Biggers’ 30-city nationwide book tour for the release of his latest book,  State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream, in which the performance is based… Read more.

Teaching for Change is honored to participate in the  Institute of African American Affairs conference at New York University called “A Is for Anansi: Literature for Children of African Descent ” on November 9-10th, 2012 .

This is the second conference hosted by the Institute of African American Affairs to “deepen and diversify the cannon, conversation and scholarship of the literature as told by its most influential critics… Read more.

Shop, mingle, and enjoy the sounds of DJ Jahsonic at the Planet Maud Vintage & Co. trunk show benefiting Teaching for Change on  Sunday, October 14. Just steps from the Teaching for Change bookstore, shop for out of this world vintage and handmade goods  from 2-6pm at Restaurant Marvin  in Washington, D.C.’s  historic U Street Corridor. Read more.

In Washington, D.C. and in cities across the country, cultural and language barriers present some of the biggest challenges  to building effective home-school partnerships. Teaching for Change’s parent empowerment initiative has a few methods for overcoming this stumbling block: providing translation services for parent meetings, recruiting multilingual parent leaders, and promoting cultural understanding through community building and professional development are among them. Read more.

Teaching for Change launches campaign to provide K-12 teachers 
with free resources on the untold history and literature of Central America.

More than 3 million Central Americans reside in the United States today, yet the resources on Latino heritage in most schools focus on Mexico, South America, or Spain. Central America is simply a strip of land on a map connecting North and South America. Students are left to imagine that their Central American heritage, or that of their peers, is insignificant. Teachers know little about the history and there is a scarcity of literature in the school libraries. That is why for National Latino… Read more.

Teaching for Change is pleased to co-sponsor two events with the Américas Book Award in early October in Washington, DC. The first is an awards ceremony at the Library of Congress on Friday, October 5 from 3:00-5:30pm. Receiving awards will be Monica Brown (author) and Julie Paschkis (illustrator) for Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People and Margarita Engle for Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck. The ceremony is free and open to the public. Read more.

In a promising start to the 2012-2013 school year, parents at  Strong John Thomson Elementary  (D.C. Public Schools) convened for the first of many discussions with Principal Carmen Shepherd.

Just after the start of the school day on September 7, about 30 parents—a few with toddlers or infants in tow—gathered in the large meeting room for the first Principal Coffee & Chat of the year. The hour long monthly meetings over light breakfast were established… Read more.