The 1619 Project Education Network started as an informal, dispersed movement of educators seeking to better understand and better teach the history and legacies of slavery in the United States. Today the Network is an innovative national multidisciplinary community of practice consisting of more than 400 educators in 30 states who have worked to engage over 10,500 students from Pre-K to college and graduate levels with The 1619 Project.
The cohorts of educators that make up the Network collaborate together with award-winning journalists, historians, and our Pulitzer Center education team to create, teach, and share curricular resources that allow students to engage authentically and critically with The 1619 Project.
The 95 units Network members have created thus far compose a library of digital resources that other educators can utilize to implement The 1619 Project into their own classrooms in an effective, culturally responsive, and developmentally appropriate way. Network members help to expand the reach of these projects through their participation in dozens of events and webinars each year, sharing their experiences and expertise with thousands of teachers around the world.
Most students are taught to think of the history and legacy of enslavement in the United States as unfortunate relics of a distant past.
We have to ask as a society if we will confront it, or wish it away?
WHY THIS WORK MATTERS
Slavery existed in this country much longer than it has been abolished. America has arguably been a true democracy for fewer than 60 years–and threats to voting continue today. Yet most students are taught to think of the history and legacy of enslavement in the United States as unfortunate relics of a distant past.
A 2018 survey of teachers by Teaching Hard History and the Southern Poverty Law Center found that students were severely lacking in even the most basic understandings about enslavement of Africans in what would become the United States. More than half of polled teachers found their textbooks inadequate and many felt ill-equipped to lead the conversation. And yet the many divisive cultural and political events that have taken place since 2018 make it clear that the past is still with us, its repercussions still deeply felt today. We have to ask as a society if we will confront it, or wish it away?
The 1619 Project Education Network was created to provide a structure for educators to bring the Project, from our partners at New York Times Magazine, and Pulitzer Center supported reporting related to Project themes into their classrooms in a way that nurtures their own teaching goals, and provides widely shareable curricular materials for thousands more to use.
The 1619 Project enables teachers to:
Help students understand what it means to share a national identity and a complex history
Hold space in the classroom for a diversity of cultural backgrounds and lived experiences
Cultivate understanding and empathy for the Black American experience
Invite all students to reflect on their own cultural identities and build empathy for one another
Empower students with conversations about hope, determination, education, and community
On February 18-19, 2023, over 700 educators joined Pulitzer Center staff, The 1619 Project contributors, and members of The 1619 Project Education Network to explore teaching the history of enslavement and fight for racial justice, the relationship between history and journalism, and how educators and the public can respond to attacks on African American history and its place in schools.
