Resources
The resources below are drawn from our community of partners, facilitators, and supporters. These include primary source materials, sample lesson plans, and links to additional materials. Please feel free to save the sources that are most useful for you in your planning and instruction. All materials are completely free.
-
Speak only when spoken to or when the teacher acknowledges your raised hand. Ask to use the bathroom–except during a test. Follow instructions and limit your questions–unless you want to be labeled a “problem.” These are some of the lessons millions of students learn in public and private school institutions where behavior is prized over meaningful learning. The outcome is that many students feel imprisoned in their classrooms. Yet classroom practices mirror the controlled social engagement found in our nation’s carceral system in more ways than we fully comprehend.
This virtual conversation with Christopher “Talib” Charriez, Christopher Etienne, and Lacey Hunter discussed how to recognize and challenge these patterns and foster learning through new strategies.
Resources:
Teaching While Muslim, a network for Muslim educators and platform for the fight against discrimination, implicit bias, and institutional racism in public schools
Abolitionist Teaching Network, an organization to support educational liberation and utilize the intellectual work and direct action in the classroom
Implicit bias video (Vox), a video highlighting the implicit bias that exists in classroom behavior management practices
-
In the Using Poetry to Teach Black Queer History workshop, participants explored poetry as historical text and history as poetic text. The workshop focused on helping students critically and closely read poetry through reading exercises that encourage thoughtful dialog. This session also emphasized active listening as a method for creating and utilizing oral history in classroom content. Please feel free to download the sources and activity guide for inclusion in your classroom.
Articles and Essays
Works from scholars about the importance and pedagogy of poetry:
Audre Lorde–Poetry is Not a Luxury
John Keene–What Can Black Studies Teach Creative Writing?
Sheila Maldonado–Teaching with Blues Poems
Finding the Poetry by Dmae Roberts
Classroom Activities and Readings
Giving Poems a Voice is a classroom exercise to help students analyze poems through personal, literary, and historic lenses.
-
In the Teaching with Local Stories workshop, participants explored Queer Newark Oral History Project as a useful resource for implementing New Jersey’s LGBTQ+ curriculum mandate. Queer Newark’s repository is an asset for LGBTQ+ historical inclusion that provides many thematic inroads into local, state, and national history. This workshop included focused activity ideas that take advantage of the project’s free online archive.
Articles and Essays
Selected chapters from the book Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History:
Daniel Hurewitz–Putting Ideas into Practice
Catherine Jaquet–Queer History Goes Digital
Susan K. Freeman and Leila J. Rupp–The Ins and Outs of History
Classroom Activities and Readings
Learning About the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Through Oral History is a history lesson plan that helps students explore the AIDS epidemic through a variety of primary sources.
-
In the Courageous Conversations workshop, participants explored supportive non-fiction, secondary, resources for guiding and engaging students in conversations about marginalization and discrimination. This session emphasized strategies that help students develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively discuss and analyze social injustice.
Articles and Essays
Recommendations and scholarship for teaching about marginalization and discrimination:
Education Resource List for Talking About Race 2022-2023 (NJ Bar Assoc)
Ereka Willams–A Critical Conversation Remembering Culture in the Teaching of the Whole Child
Brenda Campbell Jones et. al–Prepare to Engage
Classroom Activities and Readings
Talking About Race is a series of lesson plans that help guide classroom conversations about race and racism through literature, videos, cartoons, and other media.
-
Why is disability so often left out of the curriculum— and what difference does this make? How can disability studies engender transformative teaching and learning for all? In this session participants learned about the field of disability studies, its connections to related justice movements, and discussed demonstration lessons for your own classroom instruction.
Articles and Essays
Scholarship about disability in the classroom:
DAN GOODLEY–Thinking about Schooling through Disability
JENENE BURKE–NOT JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT Children’s Constructions of Disability
-
This session discussed and practiced how to use non-fiction texts to develop students’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively discuss and analyze social injustice through an equity lens.
-
In this workshop, participants explored the rhythms of resistance and resilience with songs that encouraged marginalized people to continue their fight for social justice and change.
-
This session encouraged participants to broaden their focus from legal compliance to understand accessibility and disability as complex and central to collective liberation.
-
In this workshop, participants explored diverse methodologies using spoken word and performance poetics through the Nuyorican poetry school to encourage students’ creative critical thinking and engagement.
-
This workshop focused on an overview of the Queer Newark Oral History Project and practical lesson ideas for using oral history to teach intersectional queer history.
-
This workshop provided strategies and resources for implementing lessons on indigenous worldviews and land education into social studies, science, and literacy classes to tell a more balanced history and the presence of the Lunaape/Lenape of New Jersey.
-
These resources were developed by Teaching Against Erasure contributors in response to the requests of educators.
William Dorsey Swann: The First Drag Queen is a history lesson plan that connects the story of William Dorsey Swann with the tradition of Black queer resistance.
Queer Before the Civil War is a list of important figures and moments from queer history before 1861 and suggested activities to incorporate these stories in the classroom.
Incorporating Disability into the Classroom is a list of important figures and moments from disability history and culture and suggested activities to incorporate these stories in the classroom.