For a pre-kindergarten (preK) class, designing a 3-D map of a newly constructed playground offered authentic opportunities to participate, deliberate, and solve an authentic problem. Responding to the compelling question—“How do we build community spaces that are welcoming to, representative of, and sustaining for all community members?”—the class was able to reimagine the purpose of a neighborhood park with the help of scaffolded inquiry. Through active deliberation (e.g., voting what items to include in the park) and participation (e.g., surveying classmates and families about what they…

In elementary classrooms, teaching immigration often begins and ends at Ellis Island—without discussions of racist migration policies or engagement with current issues.This exploration of Southeast Asian (SEA) deportation community defense provides opportunities for young people to understand the relationship between power, migration, and citizenship.

In this article, the authors share how children’s literature can be used to center the contributions of Asian Americans to the ongoing work of civil rights activism while disrupting harmful/racist stereotypes about Asian Americans.

The Educating for American Democracy initiative introduces an inquiry framework, or roadmap, organized around themes and questions to advance excellence in civic and history education. 

The authors provide the reader an opportunity to see how second-grade children can use a twelfth-century painting as historical evidence to identify transportation modes, economic activities, and cultural features of Bianjing, an ancient Chinese city. They compare Bianjing with their community using modern mapping technology. Through this approach, art, history, geography, economics, technology, and civics are integrated into an engaging inquiry lesson.

The authors highlight two first-grade teachers who teach in New York City. Using a read-aloud, they explore differences between equity and equality and then engage children in a real-world scenario that engages concepts of fairness when allocating resources to disparate groups of people.