Happy holidays to all who celebrate — and happy holiday break to all the teachers in our network! We hope you can all take the break you deserve and spend some downtime relaxing or enjoying the company of family and friends.
In the spirit of spending time with loved ones, we’ve chosen to focus this month’s newsletter on community history. Listed below are some teaching resources and reading recommendations that center family and community stories. Click on any of the links to learn more!
Last year, in 2023, California passed Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 58, officially recognizing April as Arab American Heritage Month. This resolution recognizes California’s role in Arab American history as the state with the largest Arab American population - numbering upwards of 700,000 people. Dr.
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.
Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution began on September 28, 2014 when police clashed with pro-democracy protestors (and the latter employed umbrellas to block the tear gas and pepper spray). But the roots of the protests go back much further, to Hong Kong’s former status as an economically vibrant, and disenfranchised, British colony; its current “one country, two systems” administration following the 1997 return to Chinese control; and its growing income inequality.
Since declaring an Islamic Caliphate three months ago, the Sunni militant group Islamic State (IS) has gained territory in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria. Estimates place IS fighters in the two countries at a total of 31,000. The group has terrorized non-Muslims, and Muslims out of step with IS, by driving them from their homes and conducting brutal killings. In response, a coalition of more than 60 countries - including several Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and U.A.E. - has formed to oppose Islamic State.
After three consecutive dry years, a full 58% of California is experiencing what is known as an exceptional drought. California, like most states west of the 100th meridian, is arid, with average annual rainfall around 30 inches or below. But the term “average” is misleading, as rainfall varies dramatically not only from the northwest corner of the state to the southeastern desert, but from one year to the next. And in years with little snowfall or rain, drought strikes hard against California, the state that supports the largest population and economy.
