Current Events In Your Classroom
Teaching Ideas, Activities, and Strategies for High School and Middle 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.
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This series of Teaching Ideas is designed to help students think critically about the long and troubling history between law enforcement and Black Americans, while not stereotyping or criminalizing all police officers.
This Teaching Idea asks students to reflect on how education has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and to propose changes they would like to see in schools when the pandemic ends.
View our checklist of things to consider before you start teaching current events, including recommended news sources, teaching strategies, and media literacy tools. This checklist was updated for the 2020 school year with remote and hybrid learning in mind.
In The News Now
Blog
Race in US History
Helen Zia on the Asian American Movement
Violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) peoples has persisted for centuries in the United States, but it was not until a constellation of events in the 1980s that the Asian American Movement as we now know it emerged onto the public stage. A leading voice in this movement for many decades has been Helen Zia—a Chinese American author and activist working at the intersections of struggles for racial and LGBTQ justice, among other issues.
Teaching Idea
Race in US History
Accountability, Justice, and Healing after Derek Chauvin's Trial
Help students reflect on the verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial while exploring the complicated concepts of justice, accountability, and healing.
Teaching Idea
Democracy & Civic Engagement
Race in US History
The Power of Representation: Patsy Takemoto Mink, Shirley Chisholm, and Kamala Harris
Use this Teaching Idea to help students learn about the groundbreaking careers of Patsy Takemoto Mink and Shirley Chisholm and to consider the significance of Vice President Kamala Harris’s election.
Teaching Idea
Democracy & Civic Engagement
Reflecting on Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb"
Use these activities to help students reflect on the themes in Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Day poem and consider how their unique experiences and voices can help America “forge a union with purpose.”
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?
Our printable “Explainers” introduce key terms and ideas that are essential to understanding today’s news. View our latest explainers.
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.
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Everything you need to get started teaching your students about racism, antisemitism and prejudice.