Category: Uncategorized

Contextualizing and Extending Source Based Lessons in The Monterey Bay Region

Our presentation will feature classroom lessons and resources that engage students in making sense of multiple sources (both local & from the Library of Congress) to understand local histories. We will use the idea of geographical and chronological scale to guide curriculum design around silenced histories of Black & Indigenous Santa Cruz, student-led movements, and…Continue Reading Contextualizing and Extending Source Based Lessons in The Monterey Bay Region

Data Visualizations in the Classroom (Part 2 of Re-imagining W.E.B. DuBois’s Data Portraits)

Join The History & Civics Project, Educators, and the Santa Cruz Black Health Matters Initiative for Part 2 of this series. Come learn about and explore: Date: February 27, 2025  Time: 4:00 pm (PST) Location: on Zoom (a Zoom link will be sent closer to the date) Register here…Continue Reading Data Visualizations in the Classroom (Part 2 of Re-imagining W.E.B. DuBois’s Data Portraits)

Interrogating and Re-Imagining Artistic, Literacy, and Historical Representations

Ethnic Studies Coordinator Mark Gomez introducing an activity

Mid Year Update Since launching our Interrogating and Reimagining Representations project for Ethnic Studies, we have been thrilled with the level of excitement and engagement from educators and community members. Taking inspiration from across various disciplines, local educators have been developing Ethnic Studies lessons that prompt students to reimagine dominant narratives that show up in…Continue Reading Interrogating and Re-Imagining Artistic, Literacy, and Historical Representations

Teacher Inquiry Groups: Focusing Collaboration

Historical events and individuals, cross-cutting themes and concepts, essential skills and dispositions, connections to multiple communities and the present—a history/social science teacher’s course and scope and sequence is far-ranging and crowded to say the least. To teach their students well, teachers know all kinds of things and are both generalists and specialists. But there is…Continue Reading Teacher Inquiry Groups: Focusing Collaboration

Can thinking historically about race and whiteness serve as an antiracist pedagogy? 

Flyer for Workshop: Thinking Historically about Race and Whiteness: Possibilities for Antiracist Pedagogies

This past summer (2021), over 90 teachers and several renowned scholars came together to explore the history of racial categories for a three-day workshop supported by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program. We  looked at different historical case studies to explore how race has been constructed, how it’s changed over time,  and…Continue Reading Can thinking historically about race and whiteness serve as an antiracist pedagogy? 

Bell Removal Ceremony

When the Mission Bells Rang cover

  The last of three commemorative mission bells in Santa Cruz was removed August 28, 2021 from where it has stood since 1906. This act of healing signals concerted efforts by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to remove these symbols celebrating the colonial past and the brutal missionization of California. The Critical Missions Project aims…Continue Reading Bell Removal Ceremony

The Civic Seal is Here!

California adopted the State Seal of Civic Engagement in the Fall of 2020. It is designed to honor and award students who demonstrate extended and deep civic engagement through meeting five criteria. We are excited about this initiative, not only because it explicitly recognizes the importance of civic learning and education for California’s youth, but…Continue Reading The Civic Seal is Here!

What Makes a Democracy?

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In the Summer of 2020, we produced What Makes a Democracy, a Teaching with Primary Sources workshop sponsored by the Library of Congress . In the midst of a global pandemic and an unprecedented racial reckoning, with all the uncertainty and unsettledness that that meant, we still had more than 50 educators show up to…Continue Reading What Makes a Democracy?

Telling the truth about the California Missions During Native American Heritage Month

If you were raised in California, perhaps you remember choosing a mission to learn about and subsequently constructing a model out of popsicle sticks or clay during your fourth-grade year. Today, learning about the California mission system continues to occupy a central place in fourth grade curriculum despite new understandings of the cruelty wrought against…Continue Reading Telling the truth about the California Missions During Native American Heritage Month

The Struggle Over Suffrage—Then and Now

Three weeks from an election that many argue will determine the future of our democracy, teachers are grappling with how to adequately guide their students through the constant stream of news about efforts to imperil voting for specific groups. From felons’ voting rights being restored and subsequently limited due to penalty fines, to the closing…Continue Reading The Struggle Over Suffrage—Then and Now