Current Issues
Classroom activities to engage students in learning about and discussing issues in the news
TeachableMoment
August 13, 2018
Opening
Ask students to discuss this prompt in pairs: Do you know anyone who has immigrated to this country? Perhaps ancestors, relatives, or friends? Why did they immigrate? Where did they…
TeachableMoment
July 24, 2018
To the Teacher:
The United States is suffering from a crisis of affordable housing. An estimated 11 million American households spend more than half their income just to keep a roof over their heads…
TeachableMoment
July 12, 2018
To the Teacher
On June 27, 2018, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the nation’s highest court. Less than two weeks later, President Trump put forward his nomination…
TeachableMoment
July 2, 2018
To the Teacher:
On June 30, 2018, hundreds of protesters, mostly women, occupied a Senate office building in Washington, D.C., and 600 were arrested. Some 700 other protests took place in…
TeachableMoment
June 11, 2018
Opening: Quick Picture Analysis
Show two pictures to the class. The first photo is of a sit-in at a lunch counter in 1963. View it here:
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM2381…
TeachableMoment
June 4, 2018
To The Teacher:
The online retail giant Amazon is currently in the process of choosing a city in which to build a second headquarters. Because the company promises to bring jobs to whatever…
TeachableMoment
May 19, 2018
Gathering
What is the racial makeup of your neighborhood?
Introduction
Write this fact on the board:
Black families have less than one-tenth the wealth of white families in the U.S…
TeachableMoment
May 10, 2018
What do we already know?
Project the image above, or the tweet below, on the board: https://twitter.com/ClimateCentral/status/992468921403019264
Or, write on the board: Atmospheric carbon…
TeachableMoment
May 1, 2018
To the Teacher:
Americans have been having a ferocious debate over President Trump’s proposal for a “border wall.” But underlying this debate is a more fundamental question: Why do we have borders…
TeachableMoment
April 24, 2018
To the Teacher:
At the end of 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice requested that the Census Bureau add a question to the 2020 census about the citizenship status of respondents. The issue…