Resource Spotlights

January 2024: Work and Labor History

Happy New Year! This month, we are highlighting teaching resources, recent scholarship, and children’s books that honor the histories of work and organized labor in the United States and internationally. By teaching these histories through such resources as those included below, students are able to investigate and discover the many ways that work and labor shape their experiences of the world.

Monthly Highlights – December 2023

This month, we are highlighting teaching resources, recent scholarship, and children’s books that center the history of our home state, California. Although California history is explicitly taught in fourth grade, there are many opportunities to implement it in history-social science learning throughout K-12 education. Exploring the history of their state, cities, and communities can be both engaging and informative to students of all backgrounds and grade levels.

Monthly Highlights – November 2023

For the month of November, the California History-Social Science Project is highlighting Native American Heritage by featuring recent scholarship in Native American history and Native American Studies, existing teaching resources to support your lessons on Native American history, and with this new edition of Kate’s Book Club.

Monthly Highlights – October 2023

As we continue to highlight Latinx heritage this October and are looking forward to Dia de los Muertos on November 1, we are thinking about the many ways that family stories and celebrations continue to impact our students’ understanding of themselves and their histories. When people celebrate Dia de los Muertos, they engage in lived history by remembering family members who have passed on.

Monthly Highlights – September 2023

Today marks the start of Latina/o/x/é Heritage Month, which occurs each year from September 15th through October 15th.

Monthly Highlights – July 2023

This month, the California History-Social Science Project is hosting three Summer Institutes that focus on themes of justice, community, and civic engagement. 

Monthly Highlights – June 2023

As historians Leila Rupp and Susan Freeman argue in Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, “instruction about queer history…will inspire young minds to imagine and work for a more open and accepting future society.” This instruction begins by integrating the voices of LGBTQ+ people in the past and helping students understand the setbacks, triumphs, and celebrations the LGBTQ+ community faced in creating a more inclusive and equitable society.

The selected resources are designed to help students celebrate triumphs of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California, acknowledge the ongoing struggle for civil rights, and inquire into identity, citizenship, and community. 

Monthly Highlights – March 2023

March is Women’s History Month. This month, the California History-Social Science Project is focusing on the intersectional experiences of women in history. Intersectionality is the concept that describes the multiple, often layered identities and experiences that people live. By emphasizing intersectionality when investigating history, teachers support students with a more holistic understanding of historical people and experiences. 

As we leave behind a year with record inflation and interest rates, labor organizing trials and triumphs, and rumblings of recession rumors, students might benefit from historical context to begin to find their place within it.