I teach U.S. history. We can trust our kids to hear hard things.
By Katherine Sanford Jan 26, 2022
Our class traveled to Alabama and Georgia to learn about the struggle for civil rights. They made powerful connections to the present day.
I am a public school social studies teacher in Northern California. My job is sometimes terrifying in scope: teach the state standards, which cover everything from early man to the present day, to 87 students who range in age from 11 to 14.
I’ve struggled with how to present the entire history of humankind in a way that is both interesting and digestible. Over the years I have become better at it, focusing in sixth grade on how societies are formed and in seventh grade on the rise and fall of empires. In eighth grade, I am confronted with U.S. history, which in the age of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, I feel enormous pressure to teach with both accuracy and sensitivity.
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