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Hello, fellow teacher. Below, I offer you three lists. In each one, you’ll find, on the left, a list of some of the most commonly taught “classics” in high school curricula, especially in AP English Literature Curricula. On the right, you’ll find alternatives. Unlike the “classics” on the left,…

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

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Calendars, Pyramids and Numbers: The Mayas Had it All

The Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras.

Maya mathematics constituted the most sophisticated mathematical system ever developed in the Americas. The Maya counting system required only three symbols: a dot representing a value of one, a bar representing five, and a shell representing zero.

Lesson Plans, Activities and Ideas for your Classroom

Mayan Mathematics and Architecture (50 pages, 213 KB)
Students in grades 5-8 explore Mayan mathematics and architecture in this cross-curricular unit of eight lessons.

Concepts in Number Theory
Students in grades 9-12 learn basic Mayan arithmetic and develop an understanding of the Mayan calendar and Mayan mathematic achievements over three class periods.

Writing in Mayan Glyphs (45 pages, 2.96 MB)
Using Chapter 2 in this PDF, students in grades K-12 can learn to write their names in ancient Mayan glyphs.

Why Civilizations Fall: Interpreting the Evidence
Students in grades 6-8 explore factors that contributed to the collapse of the Mayan civilization and learn how archaeological evidence is gathered and interpreted.

Ancient Maya: Knowledge Through Art
Students in grades 9-12 explore Mayan culture, and our knowledge of it through its art, architecture, and the heritage of modern Maya people.

A Classical Maya News Report
Students in grades 9-12 explore the ancient civilization of the Maya during the classical period, from A.D. 300 to A.D. 900.

Background Resources

Online Activities

Printables

Video

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The Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras. Maya mathematics constituted the most sophisticated mathematical system ever developed in the Americas.

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70+ Picture Books about Mixed Race Families

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70+ Picture Books about Mixed Race Families: Diverse Children’s Books featuring multiracial families; African, Asian, Hispanic, Native American; Ages 0 - 10

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Jabari Jumps

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Inspiring Others -

The ALA Awards Program annually awards recipients for outstanding service to the profession. This program provides continuing education through scholarships, grants for future projects, and awards for distinguished service. It is our intent that all Award winners will share in their achievement by nominating colleagues or individuals for an award.

Prestige -

Recognition is made for individual achievement of high order in some area of librarianship. In addition, recognition and assistance are given to individuals and groups selected to conduct special studies or projects. Honorary membership, ALA's highest honor, is conferred in recognition of outstanding contributions of lasting importance to libraries and libararianship. Honorary members are elected by the ALA Council upon recommendation of the ALA Executive Board.

The ALA General Awards are administered by the American Library Association's Governance Office and are commonly referred to as Recognition Awards. There are also awards, which include Book/Media Awards, Grants & Fellowships and scholarships offered through various divisions, offices and roundtables of the ALA. ( Award seals are available for some publications.)

Award Juries -

Serving on an Award Jury can be a rewarding experience. See the Jury Information and Volunteer Form for more information. A copy of the ALA Awards Manual can be seen here.

Winners of ALA Awards for individual achievement constitute a "Hall of Fame for Librarianship." For more information on award winners, go to the specific award for a listing of winners.

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The ALA Awards Program annually awards recipients for outstanding service to the profession. This program provides continuing education through scholarships, grants for future projects, and awards for distinguished service. It is our intent that all Award winners will share in their achievement by nominating colleagues or individuals for an award.

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1. Engage in Vigilant Self-Awareness

People who are white or perceived as white have more privilege and fewer barriers to resources than Black people and other people of color. If we do not know our power, we can abuse it unintentionally or fail to leverage it toward antiracism. Constant self-reflection enhances our ability to disrupt white privilege when we see or enact it. Some questions to ask yourself include

How does your identity provide or prevent access to necessary resources?

How does your power and privilege show up in your work with students, take up space, or silence others?

What single narratives are you telling yourself about students, and how does that affect grading, behavior management, and other interactions?

Do you and the academic materials you use uphold whiteness or lift up the voices and experiences of people of color?

2. Acknowledge Racism and the Ideology of White Supremacy

Acknowledging the social construct of race and racism and the ideology of white supremacy recognizes the problem so that we are not harmful in our ignorance and so that, together, we can strive for solutions. For educators of color, the work means continuing to call out racism and recruiting white coconspirators to join in antiracist work.

3. Study and Teach Representative History

No matter what subject you teach, history (including African American history, which is U.S. history) is important. Knowing our country's whole history helps us make sense of how our current education system perpetuates inequity.

For too long, we have taught U.S. history devoid of a true depiction of Black excellence and have focused on erasing the truth of racial oppression and uplifting whiteness. Our curriculum superficially talks about slavery and civil rights (notably, textbook provider McGraw-Hill called enslaved Africans "immigrants" and "workers" ), and teaching practices risk traumatizing Black students by enacting mock slave auctions, slave games, and underground railroad games. Alternately, resources such as Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s PBS documentary series on Reconstruction or The New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project provide a comprehensive opportunity to learn and discuss history and race with colleagues and students. The Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools also have teaching materials that explore topics like the Tulsa race riots and colonization.

4. Talk About Race with Students

To open up conversations with young people, use stories from history and literature as a starting point, and ask students to take on the perspective of a character about whom they are reading. Reading literature and role-playing enhance empathy and other social cognitive skills. Teaching Tolerance's resource, " Let's Talk: Discussing Race, Racism, and Other Difficult Topics," includes suggestions for working through discomfort. The Educational Leadership article " Helping Students Discuss Race Openly " also has a great list of steps to begin the conversation. (And the September 2019 issue of this newsletter includes guidance from educator Liz Kleinrock on how to lead students through challenging topics like race .)

5. When You See Racism, Do Something

Most important, when we see racism-whether at the individual or policy level-we must have the courage to act. White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo provides guidance for engaging in gentle but firm conversations with offenders that prevents the defensiveness that race conversations inspire. Share data on specific practices and use stories to humanize the data. Build partnerships with racial-justice organizations in your communities to integrate their work in teaching and learning. Form a taskforce to assess data, policies, and practices with an antiracist lens to disrupt systemic decisions that historically have disenfranchised people of color. Be mindful that these efforts should not be carried solely by the people of color in your school, who are living and struggling with racism on a daily basis.

Shape an Antiracist Future

In his book How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi writes, "The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' ... One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'" (p. 9). Teaching for an antiracist future starts with us, the educators. An antiracist educator actively works to dismantle the structures, policies, institutions, and systems that create barriers and perpetuate race-based inequities for people of color. Educating students to see and respect the humanity and dignity of all people should be a national imperative, especially if we want to heal-and have a future-as a nation.

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Educators have an obligation to confront the harm of racism, says one social-emotional learning expert.

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Last year, I realized that I didn't have my first black teacher until I went to college. In fact, every educator who taught me-from pre-school through 12th grade-was white-identifying.

What is crazy to me is that this fact didn't strike me as relevant until I was 30 years old. As a child, and later as an adult looking back, I didn't see color in these moments-but not because it wasn't there. I didn't see it because I didn't have to, because I viewed whiteness as normal.

Too often, I and other white educators like me don't see the impact of race on our practice. But that doesn't mean it isn't there. In his iconic 1962 piece " A Letter to My Nephew," James Baldwin wrote to his 15-year-old nephew about the degree to which white supremacy has shaped white people's understanding. "They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand," he wrote. "[A]nd until they understand it, they cannot be released from it."

So how do we start to understand? Teaching Tolerance offers several great jumping-off points for defining whiteness and for considering what it means to be a white anti-racist. If you are interested in doing a deep dive, the "Seeing White" podcast from Scene on Radio offers a 14-part look at the history of whiteness in the United States and its implications for today's world.

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How Can We Build Anti-Racist White Educators?

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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American Indians in Children's Literature

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American Indians in Children's Literature

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American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL)

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Designed to help readers develop a critical eye about representations of American Indians in children's and young adult books

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Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | TED Talk

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In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools’ dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.

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Buy your own copy here!
How to Tell the Difference: A Guide for Evaluating Children's Books for Anti-Indian Bias by Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin and Rosemary Gonzales explains Oyate's very basic criteria for evaluating books about native peoples, or that engage Native themes. This book has been helpful to so many authors, parents and educators over the years that we believe we have helped raise our collective expectations, which in turn has enriched the publishing industry.

was published in 2000 and the content is reproduced in How to Tell the Difference A Broken Flute. Since then, we have continued to compile and clarify criteria to help us discern honest portrayals of our peoples in children's books containing retellings of traditional Indian stories, as well as contemporary stories and representations of Native peoples. You can buy your own copy of How to Tell the Difference from Oyate.

A.1) In ABC books, is "E" for "Eskimo" or "I" for Indian present? A.2) In Counting books, are "Indians" counted? A.3) Are children shown as "playing Indian"? A.4) Are animals dressed as "Indians"? A.5) Do "Indians" have ridiculous names, like "Indian Two Feet," or "Little Chief"?
B.1) Are Native peoples portrayed as savages, or primitive craftspeople, or simple tribal people, now extinct?

B.2) Are Native societies oversimplified and generalized? Are Native people all one color, one style?

B.3) Is the art a mishmash of "generic Indian" designs?

Select Only Books which pay attention to accurate, appropriate design and color, and in which are clothes, dress, houses drawn with careful attention to detail.

C.1) Are there insulting overtones to the language in the book? Are racist adjectives, like "primitive," "pristine," "simple," "Injun" or "savage" used to refer to Indian peoples?

D.1) Are Native people depicted as stereotypically alike, or do they look just like whites with darker faces?

E) LOOK FOR DISTORTION OF HISTORY

E.1) Is there manipulation of words like "victory," "conquest," or "massacre" to justify Euro-American conquest of the Native homelands? Are Native Nations presented as being responsible for their own "disappearance?" Is the U.S. government only "trying to help?"

F) LOOK FOR VICTIMIZATION
F.1) Does the story encourage children to believe that Native peoples accepted defeats passively? F.2) Are Native heroes limited to those who, in some way or another, are believed to have aided Europeans in the conquest of their own people (Examples include some popular depictions of Pocahontas, or La Malinche)?
G) LOOK AT THE LIFESTYLES

G.1) Are Native cultures presented in a condescending manner? Are there paternalistic distinctions between "them" and "us?" Are Native peoples depicted as needing aid from outsiders, and having no ability to govern their own land and people effectively?

G.2) Are Native peoples discussed in the past tense only, supporting the "vanished Indian" myth? Is the past unconnected to the present? (Be thorough - use of the past tense is a pervasive issue in books about Native peoples. Remember that any general reference to a tribe which is not explicitly to historical events, should be written in the present tense. For example, the sentence "Many California tribes used acorn in their meals" should actually have been written in the PRESENT tense, as this is still a widely consumed food among many California Natives.)

G.3) Is a society portrayed in a distorted or limited way? Are religions described as "superstitions," with backward or primitive connotations?

G.4) Is there an ethnocentric Western focus on material objects, such as baskets, pottery, rugs? Examples include depicting these objects strictly as "art," or as a means to trade with Euro-Americans.
G.5) Are Native peoples shown as "relentlessly ecological"? H.1) Do the People speak in either a sort of "early jawbreaker," broken English, or in the oratorical style of the "noble savage"?
I) LOOK FOR STANDARDS OF SUCCESS

I.1) In modern times, are Indian people portrayed as childlike and helpless? Does a white authority figure - pastor, social worker, teacher - know better than Native people themselves what is "good for them?" Are Indian children "better off" away from their families?
I.2) Do Native people and their communities contrast unfavorably with the "norm" of white middle-class suburbia? I.3) Does it require Native people to adhere to "white" values and standards in order to get ahead or experience success?
J) LOOK AT THE ROLE OF WOMEN

J.1) Are women completely subservient to men? Do they do all the work, while the men loll around, waiting for the next hunt?

K) LOOK AT THE ROLE OF ELDERS

K.1) Are elders treated as a dispensable burden upon their People, to be abandoned in times of trouble or famine? Are they portrayed as querulous, petulant, demanding, nagging, irritating, or boring?

L) LOOK FOR THE EFFECTS ON A CHILD'S SELF-IMAGE

L.1) Is there anything in the story that would embarrass or hurt a Native child? Are there any explicit or implicit lessons that would be harmful if instilled upon a child, Native or non-Native?

M) LOOK AT THE AUTHOR'S OR ILLLUSTRATOR'S BACKGROUND

M.1) Is the background of the author and illustrator devoid of qualities that enable them to write about Native peoples in an accurate, respectful manner? Is there an ethnocentric bias that leads to distortions or omissions?

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Buy your own copy here! How to Tell the Difference: A Guide for Evaluating Children's Books for Anti-Indian Bias by Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin and Rosemary Gonzales explains Oyate's very basic criteria for evaluating books about native peoples, or that engage Native themes.

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Available in:

Publication Date: August 10, 2020

ISBN: 9780942961089

"Teaching is hard work, and teaching with a social justice perspective is even harder. This book, with its wisdom, inspiration, and resources, could not have come at a better time! Every teacher - novice, veteran, and in-between - will love Planning to Change the World. This is one that should be in every teacher's backpack."
- Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"...an imaginative and innovative idea in the field of education. It is something that teachers all over the country who have social consciences will find useful because it will give them an opportunity and a framework for putting into practice what they believe. I hope it will be widely adopted."
- Howard Zinn (1922-2010), author of A People's History of the United States

"Finally, after 18 years in the classroom, I have found a planning book that treats teaching as an art form. On virtually every page of this book, I find myself challenged and inspired to think more deeply about the importance of what I do every day in the classroom. Some of the greatest gifts we receive in our lives are the tools that help us chisel the path to freedom, justice, and equity for ourselves and our communities. Thank you for sharing this tool with me so that I might keep chipping away at that path."
- Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Assistant Professor of Raza Studies and Education Administration and Interdisciplinary Studies at San Francisco State University and high school teacher

"It has never been more important for our classrooms to be in conversation with the world around us. Planning to Change the World is an incredible resource that gives teachers and students a set of tools with which to develop the critical consciousness necessary to interrogate the world as it is, and to imagine the possibilities of a better one."
- Clint Smith, writer, scholar, and author of Counting Descent

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Planning to Change the World 2020-2021 - PDF - Rethinking Schools

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Publication Date: August 10, 2020 ISBN: 9780942961089 "Teaching is hard work, and teaching with a social justice perspective is even harder. This book, with its wisdom, inspiration, and resources, could not have come at a better time! Every teacher - novice, veteran, and in-between - will love Planning to Change the World.