On February 5, 2019, U.S. History teachers completed the fourth session of a five-part series facilitated by Facing History and Ourselves called “Identity and Agency in U.S. History,” designed to support the roll-out of SDUSD’s new high school US History course by the same name. Twenty eight teachers from all over the District analyzed three events: Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, and Japanese Internment, and located where they and the nation stand in terms of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Facing History and Ourselves https://www.facinghistory.org/ has free resources and lessons for teachers around social justice topics. The materials include culturally responsive teaching strategies that get students moving around the room, participating in conversations with partners and the whole class, and push students to figure out who they are, using rigorous and engaging primary and secondary sources.Pictured on the left is a great teaching strategy called “Human Timeline.” While history is not all about dates, chronology does matter. Teachers put themselves in the role of their students and walked around reading different events in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life in order to connect how she came to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a great activity to engage reluctant readers in historical chronology. The fifth and final session of the series culminates on April 9, 2019 with “Choices and Civil Rights: A Case Study of Little Rock, Arkansas.”
