Haitian Migrants at the US–Mexico Border
This Teaching Idea uses images and firsthand accounts of Haitian migrants to humanize the events happening at the US–Mexico border and give shape and nuance to the news.
Different Perspectives on Migrant Detention
In this Teaching Idea, students gain insight into migration and the systems surrounding migrant detention by considering the perspectives of migrants, an immigration lawyer and advocate, a border guard, and an immigration judge.
Why Do People Migrate?
In this Teaching Idea, students reflect on stories of migration and learn about migration from El Salvador to the United States as a means of exploring the underlying factors that drive migration.
What Is Our Obligation To Asylum Seekers?
Help students understand how the United States’ complex asylum process works. Invite them to consider the question, who has an obligation to asylum seekers?
What is Migration? An Explainer
This Explainer presents statistics on migration around the world and defines key terms such as migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker.
Brave Girl Rising: A Refugee Story
Created in partnership with Girl Rising, this teaching idea invites students to engage with the story of a young refugee and to consider the power of storytelling to spark empathy.
The Many Faces of Global Migration
Use recent photographs to help students connect to the experiences of migrants and to better understand the scale of global migration.
Family Separation at the U.S. Border
Inform students about the Trump administration’s family separation policy and help them emotionally process the human side of this news story.
The Continuing Debate Over Immigration
Use the following lesson and activities with your students to provide context for the 2018 U.S. immigration debate over who can come to the United States, who can stay, and what it means to be American. Recent news and debates may seem especially combative, but they echo earlier moments in US history when Americans questioned who could become a citizen.
Current Events Teaching Tools and Strategies
Use these teaching strategies and resources to strengthen your students' media literacy skills.
How to Read the News Like a Fact Checker: a Media Literacy Strategy
Reading “laterally” is a key media literacy strategy that helps students determine the quality of online sources. This Teaching Idea trains students to use this technique to evaluate the credibility of the news they encounter on social media feeds or elsewhere online.
News Article Analysis
Help students identify and analyze the key characteristics of the three most common types of news articles.
Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age
Help students become informed and effective civic participants in today's digital landscape. This unit is designed to develop students' critical thinking, news literacy, civic engagement, and social-emotional skills and competencies.
Partner Resource: Checkology
Our partners at the News Literacy Project developed the media literacy resource Checkology, a set of lessons designed to help students learn how to critically evaluate and interpret news sources.
Where Do We Get Our News and Why Does It Matter?
Explore media bias using recent news coverage of controversial events and help students think about what healthy news habits they want to adopt.
Past Highlights
Explore past teaching idea resources we created to address breaking news stories.
After Parkland, Students Choose to Participate
As students take action after Florida's school shooting, introduce a framework for civic participation in your classroom. Facing History has also created suggested discussion questions to help you have the difficult conversations that follow traumatic violent events. Use these questions as a starting point to spark a dialogue around the ways youth can get involved, be Upstanders, and make their voices heard in their own communities.
The Kavanaugh Hearings
Provide students with a chance to process, reflect, and deliberate with others about the US Senate hearings in the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.
Responding to The Tree of Life Shooting in Pittsburgh
The mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue capped off a week of hate crimes and political violence in the United States. These teaching ideas help teachers and students process the events and reflect on what they mean for them and their communities.
Understanding #TakeaKnee and Athlete Activism
Explore the origin and legacy of the Take A Knee protest in the NFL, the significance of the more recent athlete boycotts, and the long history of athletes protesting racial injustice in the United States.