Anti-Racist Teaching in Higher Education: Teaching Resources

"Information Wanted ads are rich primary sources for teaching the histories of slavery, domestic slave trade, emancipation, literacy, communication, and migration. Teachers can use these ads in numerous ways to show students the effect of the domestic slave trade on those who experienced it firsthand. Written by formerly enslaved people, Information Wanted and Lost Friends ads reveal the voices of thousands of people otherwise absent from the historical record."

"Dr. Frank Leon Roberts is an educator and political organizer on the frontlines of the contemporary movement for black lives. A Native New Yorker, he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from New York University where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on James Baldwin. He is the Founder of Black Lives Matter Syllabus, the nationally acclaimed, public educational curriculum that provides resources for teaching BLM in classroom and community settings. Frank’s pioneering work as the “Black Lives Matter Professor” has been featured in Fader Magazine, NPR, CNN, and an extensive variety of other national media outlets."

"Black Minds Matter addresses the experiences and realities of Black males in education, drawing parallels between the Black Lives Matter movement and the ways that Black minds are engaged in the classroom. The course will balance a discussion of issues facing Black male students as well as offer research-based strategies for improving their success."

"I compiled this list to help White Americans do so. One positive to emerge from these difficult times is the wealth of resources now available for White Americans. Never have I seen so many ideas, options, and concrete steps to take action against racism."

Includes strategies and resources to use in the classroom.

"Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students."

"From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE."

"Faculty sometimes find themselves in the position of responding, in our classrooms, to critical local, national, and international events. If we don’t seize those opportunities, students may assume that we don’t care. Even if you’re not sure what to say, simply acknowledging painful events and leaving time to reflect on them can help students understand that they are supported by our community. Although your approach may differ depending on your personality, discipline, class size, experience, or other factors, the resources that follow can help you address national events in your courses."

"Teachers traditionally turn to literature, history and current events to open up these conversations, but it’s always helpful to have a bigger toolbox to tackle such important and difficult issues. That’s why we pulled together these 26 short New York Times documentaries that range in time from 1 to 7 minutes and tackle issues of race, bias and identity. To help teachers make the most of these films, we also provide several teaching ideas, related readings and student activities."

"If you're already well on your journey of teaching race, you may find our full listing of resources helpful."

"The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation's foundational date. Here you will find reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into your classroom. Wondering where to start? Dive into our Reading Guide."

"For 21 days, do one action to further your understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity. Plan includes suggestions for readings, podcasts, videos, observations, and ways to form and deepen community connections."

"In any discipline or field, a key goal as well as challenge is supporting the learning of all students. Through programs, consultations, and resources, CRLT supports teachers in creating learning environments where students of all identities and backgrounds can flourish. This page features a range of online resources that define inclusive teaching and provide specific strategies for practicing it."

This lesson provides an opportunity for students to learn more about implicit bias, explore two recent APA studies about perceptions of African-American boys and men and develop a piece of personal writing where they reflect on implicit bias.

In the piece we’ve chosen, “First Encounters with Racism,” the Race/Related team partnered with Youth Radio to ask teenagers across the country, “What is your earliest experience dealing with race?” That question resulted in the four stories you will read here. They can be used to begin a conversation or supplement one already underway in your classroom.

Many educators and activists use privilege walks as an experiential activity to highlight how people benefit or are marginalized by systems in our society. There are many iterations of such walks with several focusing on a single issue, such as race, gender, or sexuality. This particular walk is designed with questions spanning many different areas of marginalization, because the goal of this walk is to understand intersectionality. People of one shared demographic might move together for one question but end up separating due to other questions as some move forward and others move back. This iteration of the privilege walk is especially recommended for a high school classroom in which the students have had time to bond with each other, but have never taken the time in a slightly more formal setting, i.e., led by a facilitator, to explore this theme. It is a good tool for classes learning about privilege or social justice and could also be used to discuss intersectionality in classes that have the danger of singling out a single aspect of social injustice. It is important that the students or group members are already acquainted and are not doing this activity as strangers, since an immense amount of trust in the people and the environment are needed to help people feel comfortable with acknowledging that certain statements apply to them.

“TIKKUN OLAM,” OFTEN TRANSLATED AS “REPAIRING THE WORLD”, is the idea that the spiritual essence created the world by forming vessels to hold Divine Light. But as this Light entered the vessels, they catastrophically shattered, tumbling down to the material plane. Thus, our world, including ourselves, consists of countless shards of the original vessels which contain Divine Light. Humanity’s great task involves freeing, reuniting and raising these separated sparks back into Divinity and restoring the broken world. Nothing keeps these sparks and each other more separated than racism. Regardless of the particular creation story, healing racism is a critical part of the process to heal a broken and fractured world.

"Explore Over 150 Open Access Articles for a Diverse Curriculum. Exact Editions has partnered with a number of publishers to assemble an extensive list of articles from archived digital issues in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, spanning a wide range of topics from literature and music to politics and activism. All of these articles have been made freely available to view via the Exact Editions site and we would like to encourage all staff and students to make full use of the resources."

"This course, assembled by historians N. D. B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain, includes suggested readings and other resources from more than one hundred scholars in a variety of disciplines. The course explores Donald Trump’s rise as a product of the American lineage of racism, sexism, nativism, and imperialism. It offers an introduction to the deep currents of American political culture that produced what many simply call “Trumpism”: personal and political gain marred by intolerance, derived from wealth, and rooted in the history of segregation, sexism, and exploitation."

Senior slavery scholars of color community-sourced this short guide to share with and be used by editors, presses, museums, journalists, and curricular projects as well as with teachers, writers, curators, and public historians. Considering the legal, demographic and other particularities of institutions of slavery in various parts of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and also considering how slavery changed over time, this guide is a set of suggestions that raises questions and sensitivities rather than serving as a checklist that enforces any set of orthodoxies.