Most students leave high school without an adequate understanding of the role slavery played in the development of the United States — or how its legacies still influence us today. In an effort to remedy this, we developed a comprehensive guide for teaching and learning this critical topic at all grade levels.
Grades K-5
Our youngest students deserve a truthful, age-appropriate account of our past. These resources for elementary educators include a first-of-its-kind framework, along with student texts and teaching tools and professional development for anyone committed to teaching this hard history.
Grades 6-12
Teaching Hard History resources for middle and high school educators include our popular 6–12 framework, as well as student-facing videos and primary source texts. Educators will also find teaching tools and professional development resources.
Teaching Hard History Videos
In each Key Concept video, a scholar or historian explores one of 10 central ideas that serve as the foundation for Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery. These short videos help students understand concepts like the critical role slavery and the slave trade played in the early American economy and the revolutionary and everyday resistance of enslaved people to a system that would dehumanize them.
Teaching Hard History Podcast
Efforts to dismantle public education and to erase and alter our country’s history have intensified, making this podcast series on the hard history of the United States even more essential now.From Learning for Justice and host Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ph.D., the Teaching Hard History podcast series brings us the crucial history we should have learned through the voices of leading scholars and educators.
About the Project
Teaching Hard History: American Slavery is the product of a multi-year collaboration among Learning for Justice, educators and scholars. Learn more about the Teaching Hard History Advisory Board, the institutions and individuals who support this project and where you can find even more sources for teaching your students about American slavery.