The History-Social Science Project at the University of California, Berkeley seeks applications for a Director/Coordinator of Public Programs.
The UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project is part of the California History-Social Science Project, headquartered at the University of California, Davis, and one of dozens of discipline-based programs in the California Subject Matter Projects, administered by the University of California, Office of the President.
by Brianna Tafolla Rivière, edited by Vanessa Madrigal-Lauchland
This month, the California History-Social Science Project invited Brianna Tafolla Rivière to write a guest post about bringing indigenous history into your classroom. Brianna is a historian and PhD candidate specializing in Native American History at UC Davis. Her research focuses on the Red Power Movement and activism in Hollywood during the twentieth century. We are grateful that she agreed to share her expertise along with a few resources that have helped her in the classroom.
Latinx students make up nearly 55% of all K-12 students across California, and every year students are asking for more lessons that reflect their experiences. We educators and people of color hear the need to show students the diversity of people who lived and shaped our history–people that students relate to and we know how important it is for students to see themselves reflected in their educational experience.
Multiple studies have documented the benefits of picture books for young children. Researchers have determined that when adults read picture books, it promotes children’s “language comprehension and literacy,” according to Rutgers’ University’s Vanessa LoBue.
This month marks an historic moment in California - Governor Jerry Brown and the State Water Resources Control Board Issued the state's first-ever mandatory reduction in urban water use. This development comes sixteen months after the governor declared a drought state of emergency, in what is now the fourth consecutive year of drought conditions and the lowest ever recorded snowpack (at only 5% of average), and after Californians, as a whole, have made only modest voluntary reductions in water use. The new mandate calls for a 25% reduction in urban water use.
The United States and Cuba are moving toward repairing a strained relationship that has persisted for more than half a century. Barack Obama and Raúl Castro have announced their intention to restore diplomatic relations, indicated by their decisions in December 2014 to release political prisoners. In a lead-up to this historic decision representatives from both countries met under the encouragement and facilitation of Pope Francis, who, as the first Latin American pope, has an inherent interest in the region.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine has now lasted for nearly a year, and pro_Russian separatists have made strategic territorial gains as they seek to break ties with Ukraine. Europe and the United States, alarmed by Russia's large-scale use of force across a border (the first of its kind since the Cold War), seek to bring a peace settlement to this volatile region. Russian president Putin has continued to eny Russian involvement in the fighting, however.
Recent protests in communities across the country reflect frustration, anger, and disbelief over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two African Americans who have been killed by white police officers, and the officers’ cases that have ended without indictment. The protests, which have taken many forms, boil down to the issue of race and racism, and the conditions that allow for an unarmed black man to seemingly pose enough of a threat to a white police officer that the latter can kill with impunity.
