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. 

It is difficult to overstate the power of visual images, particularly historical primary source photos, to provide a window into the past. Here, the authors outline how educators can utilize historic photos to provide students with a deeper understanding of the past. When students do not see their heritage and culture represented in images, the development of their historical understanding can be incomplete or fragmented. Historical understanding can be enhanced, however, when students “see themselves” in the primary sources presented to them.

National Council for the Social Studies is hosting the 2019 Summer Leadership Collaborative (SLC) from July 15-18, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. SLC aims to synergistically define advocacy priorities and to advance organizational capacity to lead social studies in troubling times, and discuss the role social studies can play in safeguarding democracy, bridging partisan divides, encouraging critical inquiry, promoting civil discourse, and inspiring civic action. Who should attend: Leading educators, administrators, academics, researchers, policymakers Leaders of NCSS…

This first article in a series on 100 years of NCSS leadership in social studies recounts the organization’s establishment and examines its initial mission.

The exploration of the trajectory of Shirley Chisholm’s political life can be a springboard into a classroom lesson on suffrage that connects issues of race, class, and gender.

The books that appear in this annotated list were evaluated and selected by a Book Review Committee appointed by National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and assembled in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council (CBC). NCSS and CBC have cooperated on this annual bibliography since 1972. Books selected for this bibliography were published in 2016 and were written for children in grades K-12. The Book Review Committee looks for books that emphasize human relations, represent a diversity of groups and are sensitive to a broad range of cultural experiences, present an original theme or…

A close look at the history of African American voting rights can launch a lively classroom discussion about present-day democratic struggles.

Studying the nineteenth-century educator and civil rights leader Octavius Catto can help students move beyond the simplistic U.S. narrative of racial progress to a more complex understanding of race and resistance in America.   

AP economics courses are a positive-sum game students gain important skills and learn to determine the most advantageous combination of costs and benefits.