At a workshop for teachers about educating children on American slavery, one instructor grew angry and insisted that Thomas Jefferson – who fathered biracial children with an enslaved woman on one of his plantations – was an advocate for racial equality.
José Vilson co-founded the EduColor collective the same year that George Zimmerman – who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin – was acquitted of murder, and #BlackLivesMatter was born.
While disturbing incidents of hate and bias in schools are regularly reported in the news media, the incidents are just a fraction of what educators are encountering in schools across the country, a new study by the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project finds.
When middle school teacher Kristin Heavner shared a photo on social media of a colorful makeup bag filled with disposable menstrual products, she had no idea how people would react.
Nearly 20 years after Matthew Shepard’s murder drew widespread attention to violence against people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, many LGBTQ youth still do not feel safe in their schools and communities.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has joined forces with 14 other education advocacy groups to counter hate in American schools.
Danna Lomax had been teaching middle school for 10 years – and thought she was at the top of her game – when an eighth-grader asked her a question that prompted her to change her entire approach.
As young people increasingly depend on social media and the internet for news and information, the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project is offering a suite of classroom-friendly resources to help teachers improve their students’ digital literacy.
Oct. 31 is typically a day students associate with ghosts, goblins and candy, but at thousands of schools across the country – and around the world – today, Halloween will also be an opportunity for students to step out of their cliques and get to know someone new as part of the 16th National Mix It Up at Lunch Day – an annual school event sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project.
In the wake of the deadly violence in Charlottesville, the “alt-right” movement is continuing to use social media and pop culture to indoctrinate young people with its hateful ideology, but teachers can take action in the classroom to counter its influence, according to the latest issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance magazine released today.
