In this lesson students will read to uncover hidden truths about the many contributions of enslaved Africans to the development of the United States. They will express their understanding by writing a text-based claim supported by evidence to show how African Americans paved the way for other marginalized communities to fight oppression, so the principles of American democracy apply to all people in America.

The pandemic has highlighted major inequalities that existed before, in the "normal.” In the news, there is talk of a return to "normal", but for many in marginalized communities"normal" was not justice. This project outlines three areas of local and global opportunity in our community: education, racial equity, and climate change.Through investigation, students will examine multiple perspectives, ask critical questions, analyze information, and act on what they learn. Their project is not only about the end product, but also the process.

How does media coverage of migration shape how Americans’ views of migration by youth? Why are so many young people trying to migrate to the United States? What are their journeys like? What happens when they get to the U.S.-Mexico Border? What role does U.S. policy play in this situation? These are the major questions that students will explore in this 4-day mini-unit, which results in media literacy and creative assessments.

This unit focuses on underreported stories of migration and the local history of everyday people of the City of Newark. From the global stories of women migrants on the move to the wards of the City of Newark, we will examine the experiences of the people who live and inhabit these places and spaces, and who also make history.

Far too often we solely focus on major reported stories related to migration from the point of view of the elite, those in power, or the victors who wrote down their version of history for posterity. This unit seeks to reclaim history for those who resisted, suffered, lost yet triumphed. Anchored by Pulitzer Center migration resources, this unit explores the intersection of the history of the City of Newark (aka Brick City) and global migration using a variety of historical documents, texts, and visuals in which everyday people and the disenfranchised occupy an important space of representation.

The purpose of this unit is for students to investigate migration and immigration policies across the globe using current events articles from the Pulitzer Center. Students in this unit will read, comprehend, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate these articles. From these articles students will discover issues and trends of migration and immigration from an international perspective, and will compare and contrast the policies they learn about. It is important for students in the 21st century to view reality from outside of their individual context.

As part of this nine to ten-lesson unit, students utilize news stories supported by the Pulitzer Center from Time for Kids and Mission Local to familiarize themselves with the concept of an underreported migration story. They will then research stories, summarize and share the gist of what they read to their small groups and to the entire class. As part of their conversations, students will note key details and themes from the stories they explored about migration and consider why these stories could be considered “underreported.”

The story of migration is a shared human experience. Utilizing sources such as “Women on the Move” from National Geographic and The Everyday Projects, students will address the following questions:

Using scales of analysis, what are the common themes that are seen in migration stories?
What are the reasons that cause one to migrate?
In what ways does physical geography intersect with migration?
Based on your analysis of various sources in the media, how is migration perceived by general audiences?
Developing social and emotional learning, how do individual and under-reported stories inspire your own activism in regards to migration?
As they engage with these questions, students will be asked to utilize a variety of skills. They will compare and contrast various migration stories on different scales of analysis, analyze sources critically for author’s purpose and target audience, develop critical thinking skills to analyze complex questions that arise from migration crises, and develop persuasive writing skills that inspire letters advocating for an action to address challenges faced by people who are migrating.

In this unit, students will analyze how climate change affects migration around the world and the policies that could be effective in addressing the issue. To start, students will investigate what motivates people to move in general. Then students will read “The Great Climate Migration” by Abrahm Lustgarten and Meridith Kohut, where they will be introduced to how climate change may affect migration in the future. Students will then investigate how climate change is impacting migration by reading and presenting about specific scenarios around the globe. Finally, students will begin to research how policy can address climate migration to avoid disastrous outcomes in the future.

The Chicago Public Schools typically operate with a $7.7 billion annual budget that now has over $2.3 billion in federal stimulus funding to address inequities, COVID-related impacts and gaping needs. That is a 30% increase beyond a typical CPS budget that normally has very little room to address historic inequities. However, there is no participatory budget process in place to allow students or CPS families to have their voices heard in the process. This unit plan is designed to change that and provide opportunities for students to directly influence the budget process at this critical moment when historic inequities have widened.

As of April 16, 2021, about 37.1% of Chicago residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. But the question is: WHO is getting vaccinated? In this unit, students will identify inequities in vaccine distribution in Chicago and then explore why these inequities exist. Students will then work to take action to address these inequities.

This 5-day unit will teach students about patterns/trends in mortality as they look at what is causing health issues around the world and local health disparities within their own city. Students will explore factors that influence mortality and how local and global communities are improving their health. Students will ultimately analyze the health indicators within their own community and pick a “Healthy People 2030” objective to help achieve through civic action.

In this writing-based unit, students will reflect on how global issues influence their lives through the lens of migration. Students will make personal connections to migration by exploring its impact on themselves and their families through research and interviews, resulting in a feature article on the theme of “My Personal Story of Migration.” This will encourage a “citizen of the world” mindset while developing positive identity awareness.

What is the role of Journalism in ensuring justice in society? In what ways has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights been violated in the world and our community? How do individuals and groups uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the world and our community?

This 15-day unit focuses on the fragility of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and our responsibility to uphold the document. It looks at the role of the media in defining our universe of obligation and highlights the importance of underreported news stories.

In their analysis of journalism, justice and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, students will use Pulitzer Center texts and materials to identify human rights violations in underreported global and local news. Students will analyze how individuals and groups uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the world and our community. In the culminating project for this unit, students will take civic action to address an underreported violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights within their community using the LAUNCH design thinking model.

In this lesson, students will listen, analyze, and respond to episodes of the 1619 podcast. The lesson includes time-stamped sections, guided questions, and extension activities for each episode. Students will be able to engage meaningfullywith The 1619 Project and consider how they can utilize podcasts and other media to tell their own stories.

This 12-day unit focuses on the various experiences of immigrants traveling to the United States. Students will identify a variety of reasons people choose to move to the United States by analyzing a range of texts that detail the individual experiences of immigrants from various parts of the world. Texts and conversation will encompass themes common to the immigrant experience: hope, hardship, and adaptation.

In order to give students a real world application and view of the immigrant experience, they will learn the skills of interview questioning in order to conduct their own interview. Students will use the texts explored in the unit to inform the questions they craft for their interview.

In this lesson, students learn about the experience and journey of enslaved Africans along the Middle Passage. This lesson aligns with both modules, in which students write narratives with a focus on understanding perspectives. Students will read two texts, one from The 1619 Project and another from N.J. Amistad. Using the texts, visuals and video, students will write a narrative piece from the perspective of an enslaved African.

In this mini-unit, high school students examine the question, “What is the migrant experience?” with the intention of demonstrating how international policies feed migration patterns that have a global effect.

“The Migrant Experience” mini-unit contains three (3) lessons. Each lesson is designed for approximately 90-minute class periods to be taught over a period of two or three weeks using 7 Step Lesson Plans - Do Now, Direct Instruction, Guided Practice, Independent Practice, Closure, Exit Ticket, and Homework - as well as media literacy resources and technological educational tools. The unit has been devised to be implemented in the traditional classroom setting or with the virtual classroom in mind.

The 4-day unit is designed to center on the voices of a marginalized community, Muslim Americans, as a foundation for students to explore and celebrate the plurality of values and identities in their own classrooms. Students will be engaging with journalism, practicing active listening, compassion, and empathy, and meet differences with curiosity rather than prejudice.

Students begin this unit by reading The Proudest Blue, a picture book by Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad that captures the challenges Faizah and Asiyah face when Asiyah wore her hijab to school. Students discuss discrimination and focus on the the hijab as a symbol of cultural identity.

Then students screen a short documentary film “Holding Fire.” The documentary follows Somia Elrowmeim, a naturalized American Yemeni immigrant and activist, who fights for the rights of South Brooklyn Muslims. The film provides a behind-the-scenes look at how grassroots organizing works especially during the modern Islamophobia period.

Driven by the courage and joy that Faizah, Asiyah, and Somia demonstrate in celebrating their cultures and standing up in their communities, students will explore these themes in their classroom. This mini-unit is being taught as a part of a longer classroom exploration of conflict and resolution.

In an eight week unit of study, students will explore concepts of migration through the lens of cultural identity and perspective. What are elements of culture that shape us, shape how we see others, and shape how we are seen in return? Students will investigate shifts in cultural norms and stereotypes specific to forced migration and captivity as depicted in The Tempest by William Shakespeare and supplemented through a variety of texts, discussions, and reflections.

Award-winning writer Jacqueline Woodson describes her books as “real, hard, yet hopeful.” This unit strives to be all three. Certainly, we need to give students opportunities to analyze and understand the world and its injustices; however, we also have an imperative to help foster hope while giving students the agency and skills to use their voices to speak up and change the world—even if that world is the one right outside their front door.

This unit hopes to amplify voices of individuals that you don’t often hear from—those from underreported stories, and from students’ own communities. Through these individual stories, universal truths are also illuminated.

Migration normally happens out of necessity: work, natural resources, or safety for one’s life. The desire to migrate may be a solution for many but there are barriers that can prohibit the need for safety and prosperity. A large number of students’ families are renting or experiencing homelessness in many parts of the United States. They are entering secondary education ready to get jobs to help their families to gain or just maintain a stable home. Students are also preparing for their small individual migrations from their current schooling location and/or homes to a place of post-secondary education or occupation.

Who makes decisions about the environment? How do decisions about environmental issues affect a community’s health? Who is an activist? How do individuals inform and/or advocate for their communities?

Students will first investigate the global problem of plastics pollution. Through an exploration of maps and data, including from the Pulitzer Center Resource Plastic that Travels 8,000 Miles: The Global Crisis in Recycling, students will gain knowledge of issues pertaining to plastics, both on land and in our oceans. They will utilize the Pulitzer Center resource Joane: We Can End the Toxic Use and Burning of Plastics as one example of a clear community action taken by young people to help bring about awareness and change in their community. Through reading the article and watching the related video, students will identify character traits of Joane, the featured activist, as well as discuss the process of engaging in a civic action.

Next, students will examine environmental issues in communities across Chicago, engaging with locally-relevant themes such as the effects of lead in water and soil, microplastics, and air pollution. They will define the terms environmental justice and environmental racism and discuss how those ideas relate to issues locally and globally. During this part of the unit, students will continue to identify traits that exemplify activism in the leaders highlighted in the articles, as well as determine what traits they may share with activists.

Finally, students will create an infographic or other call-to-action highlighting an environmental issue of their choosing.

How do counter narratives in our communities demonstrate that the historic ideals of liberty and equality born in the Enlightenment have become increasingly accessible to more communities today through the efforts of individuals or organizations?

This unit will examine the traditional themes of the European Enlightenment such as liberty and justice. Students will then explore how the same thinkers who left a legacy of proposed freedoms also created systemic discrimination for many communities. After engaging with primary sources and examining the history of imperialism, students will review news stories funded by the Pulitzer Center that connect this legacy to current global events. Ultimately students will create their own projects highlighting a narrative in their own community that counters traditional Enlightenment legacies. The idea is to identify and report on the disruptors to the past stereotypes.

In this lesson students will read to understand how Black and Brown men are currently incarcerated in America at a much higher level than any other demographic. Students will evaluate the relationship between slavery and the current criminal-justice system. They will close read two anchor texts from the New York Times 's 1619 Project, i.e., an excerpt from the article “Slavery Gave America…” and an excerpt from the article "The Idea of America." Using these texts, other visuals, and a video as their background knowledge resource bank, students will write to make and support a claim about mass incarceration and the ways in which this practice, much like slavery, significantly conflicts with America’s foundational ideas such as “all men are created equal.”

In this unit of study, students will work with lawmakers or changemakers who are working towards a more equitable future through policy change and become their allies in the struggle. Students will work with leaders to enact change by creating photojournalism projects which illustrate how passing legislation will help them reach their dreams. They will be thanking them in advance for supporting a bill that will improve their lives and their communities. During this unit, students will develop an understanding of underreported stories and learn how to tell their story through the lens of photojournalism. They will sharpen their communication skills by learning effective interview techniques and speaking to changemakers. Students will foster a deeper understanding of the legislative process. They will examine assets and challenges in their communities and create a powerful, empathic educational community.

History has given us remarkable examples of cross-cultural solidarity within the context of social justice movements. These working relationships are the legacy on which today’s age of activism stands. By examining this historical/contemporary phenomenon through a diverse range of texts and media, students will hone analytical, writing, and social-emotional skills with an eye toward their collective role as a conscientious, global citizenry.

As part of this seven-lesson unit, which is designed to be facilitated over 10-15 days, students examine several underreported global news stories of human interest that focus upon the displacement of youth worldwide. They also evaluate how this displacement fosters both individual and collective empowerment for positive social change. Students process their analysis through the creation of original videos and scripts that capture personal connections they have made to themes in the articles they explored.

How are migrants portrayed in the news and media? Who gets to tell the story of migration, and what aspects of the story tend to go underreported? How do these stories, and the perspectives from which they’re told, impact our own perceptions of migration?
In this unit, students learn to identify underreported stories of migration, and what is missing from mainstream media representations of migrants’ experiences. They analyze nonfiction texts and images, practice identifying perspectives in media, and synthesize their learning to form a new understanding of migration. In their final project, students communicate how their perspective on migration has grown or changed through a creative project, original news story, or existing news story edited to provide a more holistic picture of migration.

In this six-lesson unit, students will explore stories from people who have migrated to Europe or North America from different countries in Africa in order to analyze the following essential questions:

This mini-unit follows an interdisciplinary unit where students read the novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. As part of the unit, students discussed the inherited trauma that the descendants of two half-sisters in the book, born during the 16th century in what is now present-day Ghana—one enslaved and the other married to a white enslaver—have been dealing with for several generations. Another major component of this novel is migration, as many of the characters move from one place to another in order to escape prejudice, violence, and unrest. While the characters from the novel who had been enslaved were forced to migrate, other characters chose to relocate for more opportunities, freedom, security, and safety.