What We Do – Teaching for Change

Our Mission

Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write, and change the world.

By drawing direct connections to real world issues, Teaching for Change encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms; build a more equitable, multicultural society; and become active global citizens. Our professional development, publications, and parent organizing programs serve teachers, other school staff, and parents. Our main focus is national and we have dedicated programs in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Programs

Teacher Resources

Teaching for Change offers professional development, develops lessons, and curates resources to help classroom teachers supplement pre-K–12 curriculum. Our areas of focus and projects to help students think outside the textbook include:

The D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice helps build and nurture a network of social justice educators in the D.C. metro area with teacher-led working groups, institutes, workshops, and school-based resources.

Read a description of each of the educator resources.

Publications

Since its founding, Teaching for Change has vetted and promoted social justice books for children and adults in response to the wide diversity gap in children’s books and the publishing industry. We curate SocialJusticeBooks.org to identify and promote the best multicultural and social justice children’s books, as well as articles and books for educators. On the SocialJusticeBooks.org website, we provide K-12 booklists on a range of themes and book reviews. We also engage in campaigns to hold publishers accountable in response to specific titles or collections.

Our own publications include Beyond Heroes and Holidays, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, and the Caribbean Connections series.

Family Engagement

Teaching for Change designed a nationally recognized approach to family engagement, called Tellin’ Stories based on the concepts of racial equity, popular education, community organizing, and research on family engagement. School-based meetings and activities provide families, teachers, and school administrators with unique forums to bridge differences and achieve shared goals. By building relationships and capacity between parents and educators, the Tellin’ Stories approach increases families’ access to schools and broadens their school-based roles as supporters, educators, advocates, decision-makers, and ambassadors. This program is not currently in operation; however, the resources are available.

Learn More

To learn more about Teaching for Change and to access our resources for teachers, visit our websites.

 

Awards

Teaching for Change has won organizational awards from the D.C. Humanities Council, the National Multicultural Institute, and the National Association for Multicultural Education.

Past Teaching for Change news can be viewed online.