As October is Connected Educator Month, we are pleased to announce Facing History's new partnership with Educator Innovator! Educator Innovator, powered by the National Writing Project, provides an online “meet-up” for educators who are re-imagining learning. Educator Innovator is both a blog and a growing community of educators, partners, and supporters. Read more about it on our sister blog Learn + Teach + Share.

Topics: Choosing to Participate, EdTech, Online Learning, Critical Thinking, Facing Technology

Sixteen years ago this month, on the night of October 6, 1998, two young men robbed, kidnapped, and tortured a young man named Matthew Shepard simply because he was gay.

Topics: Classrooms, Film, Bullying and Ostracism, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Safe Schools, Identity, Facing History Together, Facing History and Ourselves

Facing History and Ourselves Chief Program Officer Marc Skvirsky has received the 2014 Fellows Award from The Nantucket Project, an annual conference of leading thinkers and decision-makers working to spark meaningful conversation and meaningful change.

Topics: Choosing to Participate, Marc Skvirsky, Upstanders, Facing History and Ourselves

Stories matter. The stories we tell have the power to effect history. By sharing stories with students, we help them to see themselves as part of the human story, as individuals who can change the narrative by making positive choices and contributing to their communities and the world.

Topics: Civil Rights Movement, Books, English Language Arts, Choosing to Participate, Facing History Resources, Immigration, Identity, Holocaust, Memoir, History, Reading, Reading List

For decades, students, parents, volunteers, and community members have been inspired by their Facing History and Ourselves encounters – whether in the classroom, at public and private events in-person or online, or through any of the teachers or alumni who talk about their transformative experiences from bystander to upstander.

Topics: Classrooms, Contests, Choosing to Participate, Teaching, Schools, Facing History Together, Upstanders, Teachers

Forty-one years ago this month, a violent military coup in Chile led by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically-elected government.

Topics: Classrooms, Art, English Language Arts, Teaching Strategies, Democracy, Memory, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Facing History Resources, New York, Teaching, Identity, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, Teaching Resources, History

September 21-27 is Banned Books Week in the United States, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and to express our own views, and share the views of others.

Topics: Classrooms, Civil Rights Movement, Books, English Language Arts, Choosing to Participate, Immigration, Identity, Common Core, Holocaust

As any Facing History teacher will tell you, many of our lessons begin with stories of identity. To introduce identity, and to start thinking about the various aspects that make up our own identities, we often use an Identity Chart teaching strategy.

Topics: Back-To-School, Student Voices, Choosing to Participate, Teaching, Identity, Facing History Together, Race and Membership

I have been a teacher and assistant principal at Stuyvesant High School for 14 years.

Our school is located in lower Manhattan, just a few blocks north of the World Trade Center. We are one of New York City’s specialized high schools and draw students from all five boroughs. We have over 3,000 students in our 10-story building.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my express bus dropped me at the Center's North Tower and I walked up a few blocks to school. I settled in for a busy day in the first week of classes.

Topics: Classrooms, September 11, Back-To-School, Memorials, Teaching Strategies, Memory, Choosing to Participate, New York, Teaching, Teaching Resources, History

“I think my daughter is one of the most remarkable people I know. I would do anything in the world for her,” Facing History Cleveland office director Mark Swaim-Fox told the Cleveland Magazine blog last weekend, after participating in the 2014 Gay Games in her honor.

Topics: Cleveland, Bullying and Ostracism, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Identity