Teaching Resources
These Teaching Ideas and other resources are designed to help educators integrate support for students’ social and emotional well-being into classroom learning and to help students understand the complexity of the ongoing pandemic.
Back to School 2021: Building Community for Connection and Learning
This collection of teaching resources will help you lay a foundation of community and care as you return to the classroom after a year of unprecedented challenges and disruptions.
The Common Good in Times of Crisis
This Teaching Idea invites students to explore how their actions and the actions of their leaders can help promote the common good in a time of crisis.
Co-design Your Classroom with Your Students
This Teaching Idea asks students to start the school year by designing their ideal learning space.
COVID-19: How Can We Make Choices That Promote The Common Good?
This Teaching Idea features Google Slides with activities that prompt students to reflect on the difficult ethical questions we’re all facing during the coronavirus crisis.
Reimagining School after COVID
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.
Student Journaling During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Journals provide students with space to process their thoughts, feelings, and uncertainties during this difficult time. Use the tips and writing prompts in this resource to help your students establish a practice of journaling.
Why Is the Coronavirus Disproportionately Impacting Black Americans?
Help students explore the underlying causes of racial inequity in coronavirus outcomes with the activities in this Teaching Idea.
Create a Toolbox for Care
This Teaching Idea invites students to think about the “tools” they have access to during the coronavirus pandemic that can help them take care of themselves, others, and their wider community.
Teaching Strategies for Remote and Hybrid Learning
Use these adaptations of Facing History teaching strategies to support student-centered learning in remote or hybrid settings.
Assigning Roles for Group Work (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy, designed for use in remote classrooms, to foster collaborative group work in virtual breakout rooms.
Big Paper (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy in remote settings to help students explore a topic in-depth, slow down their thinking, and focus on the views of others.
Contracting for Remote Learning
Contracting is an effective strategy for building a reflective and respectful community, especially in remote or hybrid learning environments.
Gallery Walk (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy, designed for use in remote classrooms, to help students explore multiple images or texts using an interactive slideshow.
Graffiti Boards (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy in remote settings to help students “hear” each other’s ideas and gives them space to process emotional materials.
Identity Charts (Remote Learning)
Adapted for use in remote classrooms, this strategy uses a graphic tool to help students consider the many factors that shape identity.
Journals in a Remote Learning Environment
Consider how you can bring a practice of student journaling into your remote or hybrid classrooms.
Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn (Remote Learning)
Designed for remote settings, this discussion strategy is especially useful when having conversations about controversial topics.
Save the Last Word for Me (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy in remote settings to facilitate online small-group discussions where students practice speaking and listening.
Wraparound (Remote Learning)
Use this strategy in remote settings to invite all students to share brief responses during a synchronous session or asynchronously.
Taking Found Poems Online
Learn how to implement the Found Poems teaching strategy in an online learning environment. This strategy helps students review material and synthesize their learning by creating a found poem.
Taking Big Paper Online
Learn how to implement the Big Paper teaching strategy in an online learning environment.
Taking Barometer Online
Learn how to implement the Barometer teaching strategy in an online learning environment. This strategy asks students to take a stand on an issue in an online class discussion.
Educator Reflections
Learn how educators have navigated teaching and learning through the pandemic.
On-Demand Webinars
View a free on-hour professional development webinar and get introduced to remote teaching strategies and approaches to creating community and trust and sustaining student-centered learning.
Fostering Civil Discourse in the (Remote) Classroom
Explore ways to critically examine your identity as an educator, examine teaching strategies to build community and trust, and share methods to facilitate reflective conversations.
Teaching Through this Pandemic: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Explore resources for bringing closure to an extraordinary school year, helping students stay connected to learning, and rebuilding community when school resumes.
School Closures and Online Learning: Creating Community, Centering Students
Explore remote teaching strategies and approaches to creating community and sustaining student-centered learning in a digital environment.
Coronavirus: Teaching Complex Current Events and Supporting Student Well-Being
Learn about interdisciplinary connections, media literacy, strategies for supporting students' social-emotional well-being, and resources to probe deeper questions about community, responsibility, and the common good.
Go Deeper with Your Professional Learning
Explore our full calendar of upcoming live online events, ranging from free one-hour webinars to in-depth facilitated courses.