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Read about the origins of our school name change.

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East Bay Area students did their own investigation into the California mission system, concluding their school's namesake was no role model.

Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

The name Juan Crespi never meant much to eighth grader Anaya Zenad and her classmates, other than it was the name of their middle school in El Sobrante.

But after the students researched the Franciscan missionary - and his role in expeditions that paved the way for the brutally oppressive California mission system in the 1700s - they felt the name had to go.

Earlier this year, Zenad joined with faculty to lead a series of community meetings on the school's decades-old name and petitioned the West Contra Costa Unified school board to change it to something more in line with the school's values of inclusivity and anti-racism.

On Wednesday, the board voted unanimously to change the name to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School, after the 99-year-old East Bay activist who is also the country's oldest National Park ranger.

Zenad said the mission system's treatment of Indigenous children struck a chord with her. She learned about the physical and mental abuse that Indigenous children were subject to, such as being forced to labor at age 10.

She also learned that they were made to give up their own cultural practices and learn Christianity, making Zenad wonder why a school would bear the name of anyone associated with the mission system.

"I'm a person of color, and I don't want to be treated horribly in school where I want to learn," said Zenad, who is Mexican-American "If that represents our school, then why would I even come?"

The school's student body is majority Latino and Black, according to Ed-data.org.

Principal Guthrie Fleischman said the idea for the research project came about last year during America's racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd. That's also when faculty began talking about possibly changing the name in a way to "reimagine" the school for when students returned to campus. All Crespi students were assigned to do the project in January and encouraged to do their own research using accounts of Native Americans victimized by the mission system.

"Students have always been told a very whitewashed version of history. Essentially we wanted to provide an alternative perspective," Fleischman said.

Zenad's project focused on children victimized by the mission system, coming to the conclusion that Crespi was no role model.

"I thought our school was named after somebody hardworking, kind and caring," Zenad said. "It makes me angry that we didn't even know what our school name meant while seeing it every day."

Crespi was a key figure in Spanish colonization in that he was one of the main chroniclers of the establishment of the mission system. He accompanied Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolá on their expeditions and documented the voyages for the Spanish.

Zenad's enthusiasm for the project caught her teacher and Fleischman's attention, who asked her and another student to lead a community meeting in February on potentially renaming the school. Zenad also delivered her presentation to the West Contra Costa Unified school board on May 19, prompting the board to unanimously appoint a committee to rename the school.

Fleishman said he has not encountered anyone against getting rid of the name. On the contrary, he said, every parent, student and administrator he has talked to about it is enthusiastic to "re-imagine the school under a different banner."

"A name can be motivating, a call to action, or it can harbor trauma and violence and abuse," Fleischman said.

Having the names of Spanish explorers and Franciscan missionaries from the 1700s, such as Crespi, Junípero Serra, Gaspar de Portolá, and Juan Bautista de Anza is a way of valorizing them, said UC San Diego ethnic studies professor Ross Frank. Frank is one of the principal investigators on the Critical Mission Studies project, a group of University of California scholars working to surface indigenous perspectives on California colonial missions and their aftermath.

Crespi middle school isn't the only California school to try to rid itself of its old, controversial name. San Francisco Unified's school board voted in November to rename 44 of the district's 125 schools, though it reversed the decision in April 2021 saying the district would revisit the issue after students are back in school full time. In May, Tamalpais Union High School District's school board voted to change the name of Sir Francis Drake High School - named after the English explorer and slave trader - to Archie Williams High School, after a former math teacher at the school who had been a World War II flight instructor and an Olympic gold medalist.

"When things predominantly get named after Spanish people that were involved in the Spanish colonization of California and the mission system, that is implanting the narrative across the landscape, creating visible marks of history," Frank said. "So, we don't get (Indigenous scholar) Pablo Tac high school, or schools named after the prominent people who resisted the missions or other names of native leaders or people."

Pablo Tac was a Native Californian, born in 1822, who, before dying at age 19, wrote about the conditions of indigenous people and created the first writing system for Luiseño, his native language.

Crespi may not have had a mission named after him, Frank said, but his accounts of the establishment of the mission system became the dominant narrative in history.

"That's the story that sticks because it's the written story," he said. "It's not like California Indians, for the most part, got a chance to write their story in concert or parallel to what the Spanish were referring to."

Efforts to include more of a critical perspective of the mission system in California education gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s, during and after the tenure of conservative state Superintendent Max Rafferty from 1962 to 1970. Rafferty relied on "Cold War rhetoric, using scare tactics to call for a return to patriotism through traditional education" and supported "romantic mission stories" in history textbooks, wrote historian Zevi Gutfreund in his 2010 essay " Standing up to Sugarcubes, The Contest over Ethnic Identity in California's Fourth-Grade Mission Curriculum."

For decades, activists - mainly American Indian Historical Society founders Rupert and Jeannette Costo - fought for greater recognition of the fate of Indigenous Californians and against the sympathetic view of the Spanish colonizers in history textbooks. However, that's also when the now controversial fourth grade model mission project became more popular, though it was never part of the state-mandated curriculum.

In 1998, the State Board of Education mandated that fourth grade standards of the Spanish mission and Mexican rancho periods include stories of Indians, Mexicans and Spaniards, according to Gutfreund's essay.

In 2017, the state board released a new K-12 curriculum that urged against the mission project.

Fleischman said the Crespi project wasn't only a lesson in history but a lesson in what students can accomplish through a "collective interrogation of what has been taken for granted." By doing the projects, every student played a part in bringing about a tangible change.

He said he plans to take down the Crespi sign and order new staff uniforms the day after the school board's vote.

"By creating the opportunity for students to do the work, investigate something and create a product that was going to have real-world implications, it's more than just doing something for a grade," Fleischman said. "You're doing it because it will impact the future of a school. It's empowering kids, teaching them civic engagement. This is being a part of your community."
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How a California middle school's history project led to name change

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Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource The name Juan Crespi never meant much to eighth grader Anaya Zenad and her classmates, other than it was the name of their middle school in El Sobrante.

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This article gives information about Betty Reid Soskin and highlights our school's name change.

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During World War II, she worked as a file clerk helping Black workers. She was active in the civil rights struggle and founded a record store in Berkeley. Now, she helps teach park visitors about the contributions of women and African Americans to the war effort, and about the experience of Black home front workers - an otherwise "missing" part of the story, she wrote in an article for Newsweek.

"What gets remembered is a function of who's in the room doing the remembering," Soskin told NPR in 2014, recalling her involvement in hashing out plans for the park's creation in 2001.

As the only person of color at the planning table, Soskin said she drew deeper connections between Richmond's World War II-era home front historic sites that define the park, and those sites' histories of racial segregation. She said she was "the only person in the room who had any reason to remember that."

Soskin spoke to KQED in 2018, when her memoir " Sign My Name to Freedom" was released.

"Betty Reid Soskin is a national icon, leader, and symbol of inspiration in the WCCUSD community," WCCUSD trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy said in a statement.

"I am thankful to the now Betty Reid Soskin community to be a small part of the process of this renaming and to the families, communities, and especially the students who advocated for this change."
This story includes reporting from Bay City News, EdSource's Ali Tadayon and KQED's David Marks.

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Betty Reid Soskin, Groundbreaking Park Ranger, to Have East Bay Middle School Renamed in Her Honor | KQED

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During World War II, she worked as a file clerk helping Black workers. She was active in the civil rights struggle and founded a record store in Berkeley. Now, she helps teach park visitors about the contributions of women and African Americans to the war effort, and about the experience of Black home front workers - an otherwise "missing" part of the story, she wrote in an article for Newsweek.

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Videos, primary sources, and stories about the National Parks.

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An eight minute video on the life and times of Betty Reid Soskin with a focus on her work as a park ranger.

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This article includes a video that features our school and the reasons why our name has been changed.

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EL SOBRANTE, Calif. - The name of the building you work in, the bridge you cross, or the school you attend may not matter to some, but it's important to Anaya Zenad.

"Usually the name of a school is supposed to be something nice, and it's supposed to be something we can look up to. But we found out it's not something we can look up to," said Zenad.

Last school year, as an eighth-grade student at Juan Crespi Middle School in northern California, Zenad led a school-wide research project on the Franciscan missionary. Every student participated.

"Juan Crespi, he's associated with the mission system and he really didn't care about kids because he didn't care what the people were doing in the mission system, unless he got what we wanted, which was Christianity," said Zenad.

Juan Crespi was a Franciscan missionary who was charged with recording the history of one of the exploration journeys north from San Diego to San Francisco in late 1769.

Those explorations also helped establish the California mission system, a series of fort-like churches up the coast of California. Many of the missions were named for Christian Saints, like San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco which would later become the names of those cities.

"Most California schools touch on the mission system in fourth grade, and the most frequent thing, if you talk to anyone who went to school in this area, they probably took a shoebox and made a replica of a California mission. And that was they learned about the missions, right? But what that does is that sanitizes that history right? Awful things happened there and that's just truth," said Guthrie Fleischman, the principal at the middle school Zenad attended.

In his opinion, the current curriculum washes over some of the atrocities now associated with the missions.

Research from Umass Boston shows the population of indigenous people in California around 1769 was estimated to be as high as 700,000. That number declined to about 100,000 by the 1849 California Gold Rush.

Jack D. Forbes, a Native American scholar and activist, described the missions like this: "The purposes of the missions were several, but "Indian control" can be identified as the most important initial purpose. Subsequent purposes included the assimilation of the natives into Hispanic society."

"I found out that in the mission system that you had to deny your cultural practices, you had to learn Christianity, and people got their hair cut off, they got physically and mentally abused," said Zenad.

Zenad and her classmates learned Crespi was essential in the establishment of the California missions. The school decided it wanted to move on from the name.

"I'm a person of color and he didn't care for people of color, so I'm going to school where maybe the teachers don't really care for us because the school is named after somebody that doesn't really care for us," she said.

"We wanted there to be a local connection to the name. We wanted it to be a name for social justice. We wanted it to be a name that stood for equity and inclusion and a name that honored diverse perspectives," said principal Fleischman.

More than 45 new names were suggested by the community, but one rose to the top of the list.

"She's just really an amazing person and her life's story, her commitment to equity and justice and for human rights has really been profound," said principal Fleischman.

The school board voted to rename the school Betty Reid Soskin Middle School. She is the oldest National Park Service ranger and a long-time Bay Area resident.

"I like coming down, taking the place of someone who considers themselves revolutionary, who wasn't," said Soskin.

Soskin is still recovering from a stroke, but still has virtual visits at the Rosie the Riverter Memorial in Richmond, California.

Soskin has a long history of activism during the civil rights movement and beyond.

"I think that I have always been on the lookout, without realizing it, for where help was needed," said Soskin.

Zenad has had the chance to speak with Soskin and thinks she will represent the school's community and values better than the Spanish explorer.

"Oh she's wonderful. I love her," she said.

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Student-led project leads California middle school to find new name

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EL SOBRANTE, Calif. - The name of the building you work in, the bridge you cross, or the school you attend may not matter to some, but it's important to Anaya Zenad. "Usually the name of a school is supposed to be something nice, and it's supposed to be something we can look up to.

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Interactive lesson about women who risked their lives to fight against systemic racism in the United States during the Progressive Era using video from Unladylike2020.

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Fighting Racism: Civil Rights in the Progressive Era | Unladylike2020 | PBS LearningMedia

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In this interactive lesson, students take a closer look at some of the women who risked their lives to fight against systemic racism in the United States during the Progressive Era using video from Unladylike2020. For most of these women, it wasn't a choice. They didn't decide to become activists.

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Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Historical Park

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Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Historical Park

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Betty's work place with link to virtual talks with Betty.

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Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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National Park Service Logo National Park Service

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A trailer for the documentary about Soskin's life.

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No Time To Waste: The Urgent Mission of Betty Reid Soskin

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Latinx Contributions to the National Parks

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Latinx Contributions to the National Parks

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Two videos that highlight George Melendez Wright, a pioneer in wildlife preservation, and Juan Lujan, a member of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

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Latinx Contributions to the National Parks | The National Parks: America's Best Idea | PBS LearningMedia

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George Melendez Wright, a pioneer in wildlife preservation, and Juan Lujan, a member of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), contributed to a long and meaningful legacy of latinx leaders in national parks. Melendez Wright spoke out about the human treatment of animals in nature, while Lujan found meaning and identity in his work in national parks via the CCC.

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Soskin's biography is available through our school library, local library, and classroom libraries.

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Sign My Name to Freedom - Contra Costa County Library

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Sign My Name to Freedom A Memoir of A Pioneering Life (Book) : Soskin, Betty Reid : "In Betty Reid Soskins 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history.

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🎶Click play to listen while you browse the padlet. 🎶

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Ebooks about the Japanese Internment during WWII. Soskin advocated for the stories of ALL people to be told at the WWII Home Front National Park.

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Open a world of reading. Try Sora, the new reading app for students, by OverDrive.

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To learn more about the National Parks check out these books on Epic.

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instant access to thousands of great kids books.

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Instantly access 40,000 high-quality books for kids

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The leading digital library for kids offering unlimited access to 40,000 of the best children's books of all time. Sign up for a free 30 day trial to instantly access high-quality online books for kids, ebooks, audio books, quizzes, videos, and more.

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Soskin left New Orleans in 1927 because of historic flooding, and talks about the impact of Hurricane Katrina in her biography. Here are a collection of ebooks and audio books.

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Open a world of reading. Try Sora, the new reading app for students, by OverDrive.

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Interactive lesson on individuals and groups who stood up against racial segregation during the 1950s and 1960s.

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Activism in the Civil Rights Movement | PBS LearningMedia

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In this interactive lesson, students will learn about the historical background of racial segregation. They will also learn about a number of brave individuals and groups who stood up against segregation during the 1950s and 1960s.

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Lesson about 20th-century housing policies that bankrolled white wealth while halting Black social mobility.

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An 11th-grade student leaned back in his chair at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and said, "Absurd. That is the only way to describe those numbers. They are absurd." He and his classmates had just read statistics about the racial wealth gap in their Political Economy class: White households are worth at least 10 times as much as Black households; only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth while a third of Blacks do; Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. These numbers are absurd, and they are not accidental.

This lesson, " How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century," introduces students to the 20th-century housing policies that bankrolled white capital accumulation while halting Black social mobility - and contributed to the absurd injustice of the modern wealth gap.

The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law (Liveright, 2017), which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans. Students encounter stories about the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, redlining, blockbusting, zoning, racially restrictive deeds and covenants, and move-in violence. Students also meet many people who fought bravely against this dizzying array of racist policies.

This could be an introductory lesson in a unit on housing segregation, gentrification, the racial wealth gap, and/or reparations in a U.S. history, economics, or government course.

For more context and background on this lesson, read the online article, The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States by Richard Rothstein.

From the author of The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein:

I recommend this important Zinn Education Project lesson, "How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century," for use by middle school to college instructors.

Based on The Color of Law, it teaches about residential segregation in a fashion that is both accurate and creative. With it, teachers can correct the misinformation in textbooks that typically promote a myth that we came to be segregated by private actions alone. If younger generations finally learn the truth with a lesson like this, they'll be in a better position to redress the unconstitutional segregation and inequality that was created by our government.

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How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.

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Interactive virtual field trips to National Parks and many other resources.

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The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks - Google Arts & Culture

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Materials that connect National Park study to Science. This handbook is meant to accompany the movie National Parks Adventure.

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A collection of primary sources from highlighting the role of women during WWII including the different ways that women of various racial groups were affected by the war.

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The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

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Outstanding resource for teaching about history and science through the National Parks.

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Links to blogs, games, articles, collections, exhibits, and more: all related to the National Parks.

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Visiting the Halls of Gems and Minerals? All visitors are required to join a virtual line once onsite.

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This is one of Soskin's most recent interviews and includes a video of her speaking about her life and times.

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At age 85, Betty Reid Soskin started a new career. She took a job as a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, sharing her story and the story of Black women's and men's efforts during World War II with visitors who are often familiar with the white "We Can Do It!" propaganda figure - and little else.

Soskin grew up in Oakland in the 1920s and '30s, and well before she became the country's oldest park ranger, she found ways to contribute to her community. She has been a record store owner, a fundraiser for the Black Panthers and a political aide during her "ordinary extraordinary" life.

Now 99, Soskin has used her platform with the National Park Service to educate the public about crucial moments in history and highlight the sacrifices of those whose names are often left out of the retellings. As she approaches her 100th birthday this year, Soskin's wisdom and courage continues to have a positive impact on California residents and institutions.

This interview is part of Lift Every Voice, a series that connects young Black journalists with Black elders in our communities to celebrate and learn from their life experiences. The San Francisco Chronicle has joined Hearst newspapers, magazines and television stations to publish dozens of profiles as part of the project.
Q: In 2007, at age 85, you became the oldest national park ranger in the country. Why did you feel it was important to share your story with others?
A: I don't think that I took that going in as being my way to tell my story. I think that the story grew out of living those years; it grew out of the fact that the park was being planned to be an homage to the women who had worked (in the war effort during WWII), and by so doing, it was leaving out so many of the stories that should have been told.

It was my going into those stories around the planning tables (for the park) that I discovered that they were not known. There was the story of 120,000 Japanese Americans who were interned and put into concentration camps. There was the explosion at Port Chicago (in Contra Costa County) that lost 320 (mostly Black) men that had been forgotten. By bringing these stories up, I was able to remind the present people who were planning the park that these people had existed and that there were reasons why they were not recognized. To this day I'm sure that the park is so much more than it ever wanted to be, and that the National Park Service is grateful for it being there.

(During World War II) I worked in a union hall (for Black members). They didn't have Black members in unions, except that they had to enter this union. The Black men went to work in the shipyard in '43; the Black women went in '44. They didn't start training Black women to be welders until 1944 and '45. So these pictures that you see with Black women in them date from very late in the war, but no one knew that. The building itself was destroyed when the war ended. So by insisting that they had to include these stories, we were able to bring forth people who would not have been remembered.
Q: How do people react to hearing your story at the park?
A: I was amazed because they were actually grateful for learning. They wanted to know. It was not a case of fighting anyone; it was a case of including everybody and having everybody approving, and that's, I think, what had surprised me more than anything. Except for the women who had been Rosies. There were about six or eight of them who went along with me, and they acted as if none of this were true. That was the thing I think that got to me most of all, is that there are many truths. There are many truths. We have to somehow make room for all of them, because they are all true.
Q: Two-thirds of park rangers are men, and Black staff in the National Park Service is disproportionately low. Why do you think that is and how can we fix that?
A: I don't know how we fix it. I do know that there are many rangers who would love to be employed outside of Washington, D.C., where there are many rangers because there are so many stories that are in and around Washington, D.C. When you go out into the country, they disappear. I think that is changing. I think that there are more and more rangers now who are looking to tell the stories, but I don't think that we, as Black people, have accepted our role. I think that will probably change and is changing, but it's hard for it to change.
Q: In your book, you write about a family member who passed as white in their workplace. Why was it important for you to embrace being Black and to not pass as white?
A: I don't think it ever dawned on me. I don't remember even wondering because my race was not a problem to me. It was a problem to people I moved among, I suppose, but it was not a problem to me. I don't remember ever even being tempted.
Q: Why did you and your first husband, Mel Reid, pick Walnut Creek to build your dream home in 1952 after experiencing redlining in Berkeley?
A: I don't think that our choosing Walnut Creek to live had anything to do with redlining. I think that it was some place we chose to put our family, and we didn't realize this would not be accepted. We expected it to be objected to, but we also knew that this would be something that would pass, that we would go through to another side and that our children would not face what we were facing. Mel's family had built a house with a garden and a couple of horses out in Danville, and we used to take our children to ride the horses and visit their grandparents. We would go by this little lot, and Mel decided that this was where he wanted to be. It was just halfway between where our house was in Berkeley and Danville. That was all we needed to know.
Q: While you were in that area, you raised money for the Black Panthers. Did you view yourself as an activist at the time?
A: No. I don't think I ever viewed myself as an activist. I was acting, of course, but I was using everything I had according to the times that I was living in, and that's what the times demanded of me.
Q: You worked for a member of the Berkeley City Council and as a staffer for California Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-East Bay) in your 70s. What did you take away from your work in politics?
A: I took away a sense that I could demand to live the life I wanted to live. And by doing so, began to set down the kinds of things that I would accept. I think that is probably what I learned from Dion. Dion was perfect to work with me because she was strong enough as a woman to believe in herself, and by believing in herself she gave me the chance to believe in myself. I worked for her for a number of years. I don't think she second-guessed me at all.
Q: What has it felt like for you to see the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and the response to police violence over the past year or so?
A: That has been the biggest surprise of my life. I don't think I ever expected to see it, but now when I see people marching for justice, they're all colors. They are Black and white and green and gold, everything. And they're waiting to be told what to do in many cases. I think that is the most incredible thing that could've ever happened. It has only happened in the last five years.
Q: What advice would you give to young people who want to be a part of the change in their generation?
A: I get a feeling that change is going to come. No matter whether or not we want it to. I think that they've got to be open to what's right and ready for what's to come.
Betty Reid Soskin makeup by Tamra-Marie Artistry.

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Park ranger Betty Reid Soskin, 99, holds forgotten histories up to the light

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At age 85, Betty Reid Soskin started a new career. She took a job as a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, sharing her story and the story of Black women's and men's efforts during World War II with visitors who are often familiar with the white "We Can Do It!"

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Learn about Betty Reid Soskin's role as America's Oldest Park Ranger with a short bio of her life.

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Betty Reid Soskin.
Photo courtesy of Betty Reid Soskin

Article Written by Faith Bennett
Betty Reid Soskin is an East Bay-based civil rights activist, musician, and pioneering businesswoman. Through her work at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, she has also become a leading spokesperson for the diverse experiences of domestic war-effort workers during World War II. She was born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit, Michigan on September 22, 1921. However, she recalls her earliest memories from living amongst her family's Creole community in New Orleans between 1924 and 1927, where she survived the "Great Flood" of 1927.1 After the flood, Soskin's family relocated to Oakland, one of thousands of Black families who moved west during what came to be called the Great Migration. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since.

In 1945, Soskin founded one of the first Black-owned record stores in the California Bay Area, Reid's Records in Berkeley, with her first husband Mel Reid. Reid's Records had a humble beginning, with Soskin selling records through a garage door window, but it transformed into a Bay Area institution run by her children until its closing in 2019. She has had a lifelong love of music and is an accomplished songwriter. In 1964, Soskin wrote "Your Hand In Mine" about the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and in 2018 performed the song with the Oakland Symphony and Chorus. During the sixties, a period during which her performance and composition of music and poetry expanded, Soskin also marched with and fundraised for the Black Panthers.2 She maintained, however, that music was her primary means of processing the era of increased prejudice and political unrest. Even Betty's work with the National Park Service was inspired by her long career as an activist and musician.

Soskin began her career with the National Park Service shortly after attending a presentation on the development of Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California in 2000. The park's then-superintendent Judy Hart was surprised by Soskin's proclamation that "I have such a love-hate relationship with Rosie!"3 Soskin knew first-hand that the story of women who worked in wartime industry also included experiences with racial segregation and discrimination and that these stories needed to be included in the park's interpretive material and historical documentation. Soskin went to work for the United States Air Force in 1942. After learning that she was employed only because her superiors believed she was white, Soskin confronted a lieutenant who replied that everyone at the base was "willing" to work with her.4 Not wanting to be merely tolerated, Soskin promptly and defiantly left the Air Force and went to work as a file clerk at Local A-36, the Black auxiliary lodge of the International Boilermakers Union in Richmond, CA.

Believing that she had a responsibility to share with park visitors what she and other Black women had experienced during World War II, Soskin officially joined the National Park Service as a ranger in 2004.5 She quickly became a legend at the park and well beyond. President Barack Obama presented Soskin with a presidential commemorative coin at the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in 2015, and the following year she was honored with entry into the Congressional Record. Glamour Magazine named her woman of the year in 2018. In the forward to Soskin's memoir, friend and relative J. Douglas Allen-Taylor tells readers that though Soskin is often celebrated for her longevity, it is her remarkable ability to weave her music, storytelling, activism, and history together that inspires those who know her.6

Further Reading:

Soskin, Betty. Betty with a Guitar. Cbreaux Speaks. Betty Reid Soskin, August 28, 2016. https://cbreaux.blogspot.com/search?q=guitar. 1 - Soskin, Betty, Sign My Name to Freedom: a Memoir of a Pioneering Life. Edited by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor. (Carlsbad, Ca: Hay House Inc, 2018), 4.

2 - Soskin, Sign My Name to Freedom, 112.

3 - Soskin, Sign My Name to Freedom, 154.

4 - Soskin, Sign My Name to Freedom, 50.

5 - Soskin, Sign My Name to Freedom, 163.

6 - Soskin, Sign My Name to Freedom, xiv.

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Betty Reid Soskin (U.S. National Park Service)

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Article Written by Faith Bennett Betty Reid Soskin is an East Bay-based civil rights activist, musician, and pioneering businesswoman. Through her work at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, she has also become a leading spokesperson for the diverse experiences of domestic war-effort workers during World War II.

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A local news report features our school.

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Middle School In El Sobrante To Be Renamed After Betty Reid Soskin

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The West Contra Costa School District took a vote to change the name of one of their schools for the cause of social justice. But this time, it happened without a lot of argument.

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An online encyclopedia for your research questions. Accessible through Clever.

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Enter the Access ID and Passcode provided by your school to access Britannica School.

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Database with library guides and research tools for all grades including middle school. Accessible through Clever.

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ProQuest | Better research, better learning, better insights.

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ProQuest powers research in academic, corporate, government, public and school libraries around the world with unique content. Explore millions of resources from scholarly journals, books, newspapers, videos and more.

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Student version of Google search engine with search results for Betty Reid Soskin. Accessible through Clever.

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There's a page named Betty Reid Soskin on Kiddle encyclopedia. See also the other search results found.

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betty reid soskin - Kiddle - visual search engine for kids

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betty reid soskin - Kiddle - visual search engine for kids

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Betty Reid Soskin speaks at the San Francisco Public Library in this 45 minute interview.

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Betty Reid Soskin at the San Francisco Public Library

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Excellent article about how to teach students to develop research questions.

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Julie Grimm, a teacher at Salem Avenue Elementary School in Hagerstown, Maryland, was concerned that many of her 2nd grade students failed to become engaged in their research projects. She found herself spending lots of time trying to provide the right research framework for all students while guiding struggling students through the process.

Then Julie made one simple shift that disrupted her typical classroom practice and led to a more dynamic learning environment. She began to teach her students how to ask their own questions.

The Power of Question Formulation

We first became interested in the potential of questions two decades ago, when we heard from parents in a low-income community in Massachusetts that they were not participating in their children's education because they "didn't even know what to ask." This insight-that the inability to formulate questions can be a significant obstacle to effective participation-has guided our work ever since. We have researched, developed, and tested methods for teaching the skill of question formulation in the simplest way possible to a wide range of audiences, including residents in homeless shelters, patients in community health centers, participants in adult literacy classes, and Harvard University graduate students.

These years of research and refinement led to a protocol-the Question Formulation Technique-that makes it possible for anyone, no matter their level of income or education, to learn how to produce and improve their own questions and then strategize on how to use them.

The Question Formulation Technique includes the following steps:

Rigorous research on this strategy has been carried out in a range of settings outside the classroom. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) randomized control trial, for example, showed dramatic increases in patients' ability to participate in their health care and partner more productively with professionals when they used the Question Formulation Technique to ask better questions (Alegría et al., 2008). The NIH study and other research published in medical journals demonstrated that it is possible to deliberately teach the skill of question formulation to all people (Deen, Lu, Rothstein, Santana, &amp; Gold, 2011).

Would the same simple protocol work in the classroom? Could teachers easily adapt it to teach the skill of question formulation to students? Initial research on use of the Question Formulation Technique in a classroom environment has shown that "the development of these questioning skills and behaviors empowers the learners to conceptualize and express their thinking without having to depend primarily on teacher questioning to provoke or promote their natural curiosities" (Elves, 2013, p. 2). And teachers who have used the technique in primary, middle, and high school classrooms across all subject areas in a wide range of com munities have reported newly energized students who are excited by learning to ask their own questions.

Question Formulation in Action

Julie Grimm had an ambitious agenda for her 2nd grade students as she was about to plunge into her science curriculum on "weather concepts." She knew the content she was required to cover: information about different kinds of weather events (tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods, for example). She also wanted her students to develop specific research skills (including obtaining and accessing information, evaluating the usefulness of resources, and planning collaboratively) as well as better reading, writing, and thinking abilities.

In the past, when she assigned research projects to help students develop those skills, many students struggled or even disengaged from the process. She began to use the Question Formulation Technique at various points in her instruction. The following example demonstrates how, in one 45-minute lesson, she deployed the technique at the beginning of her weather unit to help students develop divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking abilities.

Step 1. The teacher designs a question focus.

Julie was accustomed to creating research prompts that were questions from her to the students. She typically spent a lot of time and effort figuring out the best questions to get students off to a good start.

The first shift she had to make in using the Question Formulation Technique, one that can at first feel awkward for both teacher and student, required presenting students with a focus for them to generate their own questions. Because she knew that students would differ in their prior knowledge, Julie decided to use a barebones question focus-just the names of the weather events she wanted students to learn about. She was not sure what her students would do with these terms, but she was curious to see what questions they would ask as they began their study.

Step 2. Students produce questions.

Julie posted the Question Formulation Technique's four rules for producing questions:

1. Ask as many questions as you can.

2. Do not stop to judge, discuss, edit, or answer any question.

3. Write down every question exactly as it was asked.

4. Change any statements into questions.

She asked students to discuss what might be difficult about following these rules. As the students reflected on their usual way of working with questions, they said things like, "When I hear a question, I want to answer it right away," and "It's hard to write down the question just the way it comes out." This discussion about the rules heightened the students' awareness that they were about to do something different from what they had done before.

Julie split the students into small groups of three or four according to their interest in specific weather events. She then had them write their question focus at the top of their big sheet of newsprint ( Hurricane or Tornado, for example) and gave them this simple instruction: "You have five minutes to ask questions. Make sure that you follow the rules. No discussion-just questions." Here are the initial questions produced by one group of students, whose focus was hurricanes:

Some groups moved more quickly than others. Some came to a pause after they had asked four or five questions. When Julie observed students slowing down, she prompted, "Try to think of more things you want to know." She refrained from passing judgment at this point on questions that she did not deem good research questions.

In this first use of the Question Formulation Technique, some students tried to pull her in, saying, "Can you give us examples of what kind of questions you want?" or asking what she thought about their questions. But from the outset, Julie intentionally stayed to the side of the process as a neutral facilitator. The goal in this initial step was to get students to do what she had rarely seen them do before: generate their own questions, generate lots of questions, and do it without help from the teacher.

Step 3. Students work with open-ended and closed-ended questions.

After students created their initial list of questions, Julie presented a simple explanation of the difference between closed-ended questions (those that can be answered with a yes or no) and open-ended questions (those that need more explanation). She then asked students to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of questions. This offered them an opportunity to discover how the way a question is asked can shape the kind of information that follows.

For example, students of all ages often say that closed-ended questions produce clear, quick answers and "then you know something and can move on quickly to something else." But they also realize that closed-ended questions might limit how much information they get. Similarly, they see that open-ended questions might yield more information and lead to further discussion, but the answer might be more than they can understand or may lead them off-track.

During this step, students also practice changing questions from closed to open and from open to closed. This task can be challenging for students and adults of any age. Julie wanted her students to get the best start on their research, so it was important to change some of their closed-ended questions to open-ended ones. For example, the students changed "Are hurricanes different from tornadoes" to " Why are hurricanes different from tornadoes?"

It is also valuable, however, to practice the reverse. For example, Julie's students went from "How do hurricanes start?" to a closed-ended version, "Do hurricanes start the same way every time?" The closed question was not necessarily better or worse than the open one, but as a strategy for doing research, it helped students think concretely about patterns and characteristics of a hurricane. Students can often use closed-ended questions as a way to unpack and get closer to an answer to a broader question.

In this step, the students were not yet working on choosing the final questions to guide their research projects. Julie was not judging their questions or telling them which ones they should be asking. Instead, she was helping them learn how to examine questions from different angles to figure out which ones would be the best research questions.

This is the kind of intellectual heavy lifting that scholars in any field must do. Stuart Firestein (2012), chair of the biology department at Columbia University, argues that a successful questioning strategy for young scientists "is one that provides them even a glimpse of what's on the other side of their ignorance and an opportunity to see if they can't get the question to be bigger" (p. 107). In the Question Formulation Technique, it's elementary, middle, and high school students who are doing that kind of high-level thinking.

Step 4. Students prioritize questions.

Because the teacher is aware of what the students will be using their questions for, he or she gives them specific instructions about prioritization. For example, if students are generating questions to do an experiment, the teacher may tell them, "Choose three testable questions" (which will be closed-ended).

In Julie's case, in which the purpose was to create questions for further research, the instructions were simply "Choose three open-ended questions you want to use in your research." By providing some parameters, yet avoiding being overly prescriptive, Julie gave students room to think about which questions would be most interesting and productive to explore.

Julie's students were becoming more sophisticated in their ability to discern which questions needed to be answered and when. As they looked closely at their list trying to choose their priority questions, they quickly concluded that they could not address Question 1 (Are hurricanes different from tornadoes?) until they worked on Question 3 (What do hurricanes do?). They also saw that there was a connection between Question 4 (Why does a hurricane have an eye?) and Question 9 (What is the eye of a hurricane?). They became curious about the eye, having thought about it from different angles, and they decided to make it a top question.

As they discussed the questions further, they also realized that rather than using Question 1, "Are hurricanes different from tornadoes?" they preferred the version they had created when they were practicing changing from closed-ended to open-ended questions, " Why are hurricanes different from tornadoes?" These students, who had never asked more than a couple of questions at a time, now realized that they were capable of producing lots of questions and refining their questions as they went deeper into the analytic process. In this case, they chose as their three priority questions:

Step 5. Teacher and students discuss next steps for using the questions.

Once students had chosen their top three questions, Julie told them that they would use their research to write books, create models, and make posters.

Step 6. Students reflect.

The students by now had produced their own questions, analyzed their list, categorized the questions, changed questions from open to closed and closed to open, prioritized the questions, and discussed how they would be using their questions. They had done a lot of thinking and work in about 45 minutes.

Julie completed the process by creating an opportunity for students to reflect. She asked the whole class just two simple questions: "What did you learn?" and "How did you learn that?"

This last metacognitive exercise is an important part of the Question Formulation Technique. The students look at the evolution and development of their questions and see how they arrived at their priority questions. One student talked about how "we learned a lot about hurricanes just by asking questions. I heard questions that I never would have come up with." Another student described how "I didn't know that you could change a question, and then you find out a lot more with your new question." Another said, "It was hard. You had to think a lot, but it was fun!"

A Catalyst for Deeper Learning

Julie Grimm's 2nd graders asked fundamental research questions about mechanics, causes, consequences, variations, protection, responses, and impact on life and safety of various weather events. They owned their questions and therefore owned the research process. It was a radically different experience than it would have been if they had been sent off to do research based on questions Julie had given them (even though her questions may have overlapped with some of theirs).

In the Question Formulation Technique, students sometimes discover, much like scientists in a laboratory or researchers in any field, that as they conduct their research they come up with new questions they want to explore. In the case of hurricanes, as students researched their initial questions, they became more and more curious about specific details. For example, as they became aware of the power and danger that hurricanes present, they wanted to know more about the people who put themselves in harm's way when studying hurricanes. They asked, perhaps with the Weather Channel in mind, "Why do people chase hurricanes?"

Julie noted that her students worked as true researchers and authors. She commented, "I used to laugh at getting students 'college ready' in 2nd grade, but now I think they are really building a lot of those skills-questioning, note taking, choosing text to read, and analyzing and synthesizing their research to produce specific products."

A Small but Significant Shift

When students first go through the Question Formulation Technique, some take to it more quickly than others. But teachers consistently report that they are struck by how students who traditionally have not participated at all seem to be most readily activated by this invitation. Soon, these students become experts at asking, refining, and prioritizing questions. They can take themselves through the question formulation process as part of a homework assignment. They can use it as a prereading activity on their own or in class with others. They can use it to analyze math problems and demonstrate new problem-solving abilities.

Question formulation promotes student voice and critical thinking. As students learn to produce their own questions, they are thinking divergently-that is, more broadly and creatively. When they focus on the kinds of questions they are asking and choose their priority questions, they are thinking convergently-narrowing down, analyzing, assessing, comparing, and synthesizing. And when they reflect on what they have learned through the process, students are engaged in metacognition -they are thinking about their thinking.

Students who learn to use all three of these thinking abilities become more sophisticated questioners, thinkers, and problem-solvers. One student succinctly expressed the effects of this simple but significant shift in traditional classroom practice when she declared that learning how to ask her own questions "made me feel like I was the teacher!"

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Julie Grimm, a teacher at Salem Avenue Elementary School in Hagerstown, Maryland, was concerned that many of her 2nd grade students failed to become engaged in their research projects. She found herself spending lots of time trying to provide the right research framework for all students while guidi

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Teaching resources to accompany the book Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Homefront in WWII.

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Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II

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Facts about Betty Reid Soskin with links to images related to her life.

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Betty Reid Soskin ( nee Charbonnet; born September 22, 1921) is an American Park Ranger with the National Park Service. Soskin speaks clearly about the importance of national parks. She says national parks are very important for telling American history that includes different people's experiences. She helped to develop the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. She works there as a ranger.

As of January 15, 2020, at age 98, she is the oldest National Park Ranger serving the United States.

Betty Reid Soskin is most famous for being a guide at the Rosie the Riveter World War II National Park. She talks about how the story of War War II that we hear is mainly white and male. She also promotes national parks and how they educate the public. Another thing she talks about is her and her family members' experiences with racism. She is also famous for being the oldest female park ranger.

Early life and family

Betty Reid Soskin was born on September 22, 1921, in Detroit, Michigan. She was a mix of Spanish, French, and African, but identified as black. Betty got married to Mel Reid and they had four kids shortly after graduating high school. She experienced racism and decided to get involved in the civil rights movement. The couple opened up a business called Reid's Records in 1945. They got a divorce after about 30 years of being married. Betty then married Bill Soskin in 1976 but their marriage ended after just four years. Betty joined the local task force and worked to make less drugs and crime in Berkley after that. She got a job as a businesswoman. After, she helped plan the Rosie the Riveter and World War II National Park in Richmond, California.

Images for kids

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Betty Reid Soskin ( nee Charbonnet; born September 22, 1921) is an American Park Ranger with the National Park Service. Soskin speaks clearly about the importance of national parks. She says national parks are very important for telling American history that includes different people's experiences.

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Teaching resources to accompany the book The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights.

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In the segregated military during World War II, Black sailors were responsible for... read more

In the segregated military during World War II, Black sailors were responsible for loading munitions at Port Chicago on the San Francisco Bay. They were given no training in how to handle the dangerous cargo, and often felt pressure to increase their speed. On July 17, 1944, a tremendous explosion resulted in the deaths of 320 sailors on the dock and in the ships being loaded. In the aftermath, surviving Black sailors were soon ordered back to loading munitions. A group of them refused, saying they would obey any order but that one, admitting they were afraid. Court-martialed and found guilty of mutiny, they were sentenced to 15 years hard labor in prison. Steve Sheinkin offers a mesmerizing account of individuals and events surrounding the trial of the men who became known as the "Port Chicago 50," revealing the impact of racism and segregation within the military at that time. Thurgood Marshall, then with the NAACP, sat in on the trail and appealed the guilty verdict, but the appeal failed: To reverse the decision would be to admit the original trial was unjust. Political and public pressure resulted in the men's release after fifteen months, but the mutiny convictions were never overturned. Sheinkin's compelling narrative, written from a social justice perspective, draws on the full transcripts of interviews done with members of the Port Chicago 50 in the 1970s as well as on the trial transcript. These accounts and other research sources are thoroughly documented in an offering that is sure to evoke strong emotional responses among young adult readers. (Age 13 and older)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2015

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The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

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In the segregated military during World War II, Black sailors were responsible for... read more In the segregated military during World War II, Black sailors were responsible for loading munitions at Port Chicago on the San Francisco Bay. They were given no training in how to handle the dangerous cargo, and often felt pressure to increase their speed.

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Woke Up This Morning

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This website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.

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The Zinn Education Project is my compass in a sea of corporate textbooks, packaged common core curriculum and standardized testing. My entire curriculum is based on lessons that can be found on the Zinn Education Project.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Portland, Ore.

Your support is needed to help more students learn people's history. 100% of Zinn Education Project funding comes from individuals like you. Donate today.

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

From voter ID laws to voter-roll purges, gerrymandering to poll closures to the deadly in-person voting conditions during a pandemic, the right to vote is under attack and the stakes are high. It is critical that students learn about the fight for voting rights, past and present.

Nov. 30, 1924: Shirley Chisholm Born...

Teaching About the Violence in Palestine and Israel...

I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don't BELIEVE in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don't need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.

-Howard Zinn

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Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

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The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people's history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn's best-selling book A People's History of the United States, the website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.

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Duke Ellington || Greatest Hits Full Album 2018