On a blustery day in March 2021, a line of bundled-up, masked first graders walked from school to a house on the National Register of Historic Places in their south Minneapolis neighborhood. For these 23 young learners, it wasn’t just a walk. This Covid-era field trip was a culminating activity in a series of lessons, “Unearthing Histories,” that empowered the students to be historians, dig into their complex local history, and then take action to help create a more just future.

In this piece, the authors unpack a heuristic developed by the Great First Eight curriculum for helping young children to recognize and act on injustice.

In the first article in this issue, “Why are People Marching? Discussing Justice- Oriented Citizenship using Picture Books,” Jessica Ferreras-Stone and Sara B. Demoiny outline how teachers, in accordance with NCSS guidelines, can use picture books to spur discussions about justice-oriented citizenship, including protest marches, as a means to understand the past and present. William Toledo and Jody Hollins present key concepts related to civic perspective- taking in their piece, “Localizing Civics: A Collaboratively Designed, Second Grade Unit of Study.” The authors’ hope is that their work…

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…

Tina M. Ellsworth and Toni Gates center their article around stories of Black joy, agency, and resistance of Black Kansas Citians. Ellsworth and Gates’ collaboration demonstrates how educators can effectively construct partnerships between schools and grassroots organizations. The authors of this piece will guide educators in ways to find local Black history in their cities, show how to draw on the IDM example, and provide lesson suggestions.

This article offers examples of classroom texts as vehicles for teaching each BHC principle as encouragement for teaching Black histories long beyond Black History Month. For summaries of the texts suggested in this article, see the Pullout in this issue, which pairs each Black Historical Consciousness principle with children’s books and ideas for further investigation.