5 Tips for Talking About Race With Children

Posted by Sachi Feris on June 23, 2015

When my daughter was a baby, we would walk through the basketball court near our apartment building on the way home from the playground. Quite often, we would find a group of young boys shooting hoops. Usually, though not always, the boys were black. 

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Topics: Identity, Race and Membership, Raising Ethical Children, Diversity

7 Summer Reads: Selections from the Facing History Library

Posted by Tracy O'Brien on May 28, 2015

Whether you’re on the beach or preparing your syllabus for fall, check out these nonfiction and fiction titles that have the Facing History and Ourselves Library staff excited for summer reading!

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Civil Rights Movement, Books, English Language Arts, Poetry, Armenian Genocide, Race and Membership, Holocaust, Memoir, Survivor Testimony, History, Reading, Reading List

Putting the Baltimore Riots in Context

Posted by Marc Skvirsky on April 30, 2015

Violent riots and protests erupted in Baltimore, Maryland, this week, following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray after his arrest by police. As has happened much too often in the past year, current events are having an impact on the hearts and minds of our students

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Topics: Classrooms, Safe Schools, Race and Membership, Teaching Resources, Raising Ethical Children, Civil Rights

How Can History of Lynching Help Us Understand Issues of Race and Justice in “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

Posted by Julia Rappaport on April 2, 2015

In a blog post up now on the New York Times Learning Network, Facing History and Ourselves Senior Program Associate Laura Tavares pairs an article about the recent report documenting the history of racial lynching in America with an excerpt of To Kill a Mockingbird

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Professional Development, Facing History Resources, Teaching, Race and Membership, Teaching Resources, History

Facing the Past: Lynching and American Civic Memory

Posted by Karen Murphy on February 19, 2015

Sam Hose. Thomas Moss. Elias Clayton. Keith Bowen. Jesse Thornton. William Little. Jeff Brown.
They are just seven names of thousands of black Americans murdered by lynching, many of which were included last week in a report from Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) that identifies victims of lynching between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950. It's a list that could go on for pages and, yet, still to this day remains incomplete.

The history of lynching remains widely unknown today, especially among many white Americans.

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Reconstruction, News, Race and Membership, Teaching Resources, History

Talking to Students About Ferguson

Posted by Mary Hendra on November 25, 2014

As a teacher, you carefully prepare for your students, plan your lessons, develop curriculum that will meet expectations of administrators, engage students, and build critical skills for academic success. And then, there are the news items – local or global – that capture students’ hearts and minds

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Topics: Classrooms, Facing History Resources, Safe Schools, Teaching, News, Identity, Race and Membership, Teachers, Civil Rights

40 Years Later: The Legacy of Boston Busing

Posted by Jocelyn Stanton on October 15, 2014

What does it mean to face history in your own community? And how do you teach a history in a community where its legacies are still unfolding?

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Topics: Classrooms, Teaching Strategies, Events, Facing History Resources, Safe Schools, Teaching, Schools, Identity, Facing History Together, Race and Membership, Facing History and Ourselves, Teaching Resources, Teachers, Civil Rights, History

Choosing to Participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge

Posted by Daniel Braunfeld on September 12, 2014

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.

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

At Facing History and Ourselves, we value conversation—in classrooms, in our professional development for educators, and online. When you comment on Facing Today, you're engaging with our worldwide community of learners, so please take care that your contributions are constructive, civil, and advance the conversation.

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Welcome to Facing Today, a Facing History blog. Facing History and Ourselves combats racism and antisemitism by using history to teach tolerance in classrooms around the globe.

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