Current Events In Your Classroom
Teaching Ideas, Activities, and Strategies for Middle and High School Students
Teaching current events can be challenging: the news cycle moves quickly, the issues can spark strong feelings, and classroom time is tight. Yet engaging with current events is an essential part of educating young people to be informed and humane participants in a democracy.
Use our resources to foster thoughtful classroom conversations and build your students’ capacities for critical thinking, emotional engagement, ethical reflection, and civic agency.
Our White Nationalism explainer comes with a classroom handout and describes key characteristics of white nationalist ideology and clarifies related key-terms, such “alt-right” and “white power.”
View our checklist of things to consider before you start teaching current events, including recommended news sources, teaching strategies, and media literacy tools.
In this webinar, we'll share media literacy tools, tips for making meaningful connections between current events and your curriculum, and strategies for navigating partisan politics in diverse classrooms.
About Our Current Events Content
What is a Teaching Idea?
Our Teaching Ideas help you address specific events and issues in the news. With a variety of accessible resources and engaging teaching strategies, they can be used for all or part of a class period.
What is an Explainer?
New for the 2019 school year, our printable “Explainers” introduce key terms and ideas that are essential to understanding today’s news.
Going Deeper
Sign up below for our biweekly current events emails to receive links to additional videos, readings, historical sources and lessons to enrich your teaching of current events and connect to your curriculum.
View Current Events Teaching Resources
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Teaching Current Events: Global Immigration
There are more than 250 million migrants around the world, including more than 65 million refugees. Explore the policies, debates and human stories of immigration around the world.
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Teaching Current Events: Democracy and Civic Engagement
Democracies across the globe are increasingly fragile. Examine the health of democracy, voting and elections, and the pivotal role civic participation of young people plays.
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Teaching Current Events: Hate, Violence and Injustice
Hate is in the headlines around the world. These resources offer sensitive entry points to confront troubling violence and injustice, including terrorism, genocide, and attacks on human rights.
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Tools and Strategies for Teaching Current Events
Find flexible tools to adapt for your classroom. Discussion strategies, media literacy lessons and recommended news sources can help you address a range of current events topics.
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Search Our Global Collection
Everything you need to get started teaching your students about racism, antisemitism and prejudice.