SE-March-2026

The Fed's Independence • Personalizing Economics • A Classroom Constitution • Reimagining Monument Avenue

Teaching With and About Technology

The official journal of National Council for the Social Studies Volume 90, Number 2 March/April 2026 www.socialstudies.org

FASSE FASSE FUND for the ADVANCEMENT of SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION FUND for the ADVANCEMENT of FUND for the ADVANCEMENT of SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION

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Support FASSE today at: www.socialstudies.org/donate Designate your gift to the for the Advancement of SupportFASSE FASSE today at:Fund www.socialstudies.org/donate Support today at: www.socialstudies.org/donate Social Studies Education joinfor a community committed to Designate your gifttotothe theand Fund theAdvancement Advancement Designate your gift Fund for the ofof excellence in teaching, research, and student engagement.

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FEATURES 61

The Ghosts of Central Banking: Lessons in Independence from Beyond the Fed Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood A ready-to-use reader’s theater script helps students analyze U.S. central banking and understand how the Federal Reserve balances political pressure, inflation, and employment.

March/April 2026

Volume 90, Number 2

DEPARTMENTS

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Using the America Works Podcast and Occupational Folklife Project to Personalize Economics in the Classroom Andrea Decker Examining labor statistics alongside authentic worker stories can help students apply economic principles such as incentives, scarcity, and specialization to realworld careers.

86

Reimagining Monument Avenue: Connecting Past to Present with the Inquiry Design Model Rachael E. Rudis Using inquiry-based lessons, teachers can guide students to analyze monuments, question the narratives they promote, and design communitycentered proposals for who and what should be memorialized.

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Inclusive Social Studies We Wrote the Rules: From Class Constitution to Student Voice Committee at a D.C. Law Academy Shelina M. Warren Guiding students to write and revise their own classroom rules helps them build confidence and gain real-world democratic practice in shaping their communities.

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Sources and Strategies Enabling Students to Apply Economic Concepts Through a 1954 Appeal for Desegregated Housing Colleen Smith The featured documents about 1950s efforts to create desegregated housing can launch a fascinating lesson exploring segregation’s impact on the housing market and today’s housing challenges.

60

NCSS Notebook

120 ON THE COVER: Art by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Member Spotlight

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Save the Date: 2026 NCSS Summer Virtual Conference From Revolution to Resilience

June 23 and 24 This year’s theme is “From Revolution to Resilience: Exploring America's Past, Present, and Future.”

From the birth of the nation in 1776 to the enduring impact of 9/11, the American story is one of revolution, challenge, and resilience. Join us in celebrating 250 years of resilience and explore how pivotal events— from the founding to the present— can be taught in ways that engage students in critical thinking, civic responsibility, and historical understanding. https://www.socialstudies.org/ professional-learning/2026summer-virtual-conference

FEATURES Special section: Teaching With and About Technology: Literacy, Inquiry, and Design in Social Studies

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Cultivating Technocuriosity: Building Custom GPTs for K-12 Social Studies Amy Allen, Ilene R. Berson, Michael J. Berson, and David Hicks Through inquiry and reflection, teachers can create custom AI models that incorporate their own instructions, scaffold historical thinking, and keep teacher expertise at the center.

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Beyond the Black Box: Teaching Critical AI Literacy in the Social Studies Through a “Human as a GPT” Simulation Thomas C. Hammond, Meghan Manfra, Erin Eberle Quilinquin, and Katie Quartuch Engage students in a hands-on simulation that demystifies how artificial intelligence generates text and builds the critical AI literacy skills they need to evaluate accuracy, bias, and credibility.

108

Crafting Curriculum: Supporting Teachers’ Use of Historical Photographs Cory Callahan Ready-to-use lessons and embedded professional learning in this digital curriculum project help teachers guide students in analyzing historical photographs and evaluating visual media across time.

112

Introducing the CMET: A Tool for Vetting Digital Social Studies Materials Eric B. Freedman, Tina Y. Gourd, and Bianca Schamberger This tool helps social studies teachers vet, select, and adapt digital resources that promote critical thinking, inclusivity, and meaningful classroom learning.

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NCSS OFFICERS Tina M. Ellsworth, Ph.D. (President) University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO

EDITORIAL STAFF Jennifer Bauduy Editor

Joe Schmidt (President-Elect) Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA

Rich Palmer Art Manager

David Kendrick (Vice President) Loganville High School, Loganville, GA Jennifer Morgan (Past President) West Salem Middle School, West Salem, WI BOARD OF DIRECTORS Alex Cuenca Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (2026) Carly Donick Cabrillo Middle School, Ventura, CA (2026) Terrell Fleming Prince Edward County Public Schools Farmville, VA (2027) Kimberly Huffman Wayne County Schools, Smithville, OH (2027) Stephen Masyada Lou Frey Institute and the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship Orlando, FL (2027) Heather Nice Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA (2026)

Laura Godfrey Director of Publications and Resources

SOCIAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS Elementary Education Andrea S. Libresco Inclusive Social Studies Stacie Brensilver Berman, John M. Palella, Diana B. Turk Instructional Technology Michael J. Berson, Meghan McGlinn Manfra Lessons on the Law Tiffany Willey Middleton Research & Practice Jeremy Stoddard Sources and Strategies Lee Ann Potter Teaching the C3 Framework Kathy Swan, John Lee, S.G. Grant NCSS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Kelly McFarland Stratman

Stephanie Nichols Narragansett Elementary School, Gorham, ME (2028)

DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Joy Lindsey

Renita Parks Memphis, TN (2028)

NCSS DIRECTORS Timothy Daly Director of Operations

Marc Turner Spring Hill High School, Columbia, SC (2026) Gabriel Valdez Fort Worth Independent, School District, Fort Worth, TX (2028) Amy Walker Olathe USD 233, Olathe, KS (2027)

Laura Godfrey Director of Publications and Resources Ashanté Horton Director of Events

Anne Walker Edison High School, Alexandria, VA (2025) EX-OFFICIO Casey Cullen Ex-Officio | House of Delegates Steering Committee Chair (2025–2026)

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www.socialstudies.org | 59

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

At NCSS, we define social studies as the study of individuals, communities, systems, and their interactions across time and place that prepares students for local, national, and global civic life. Utilizing an inquiry-based approach, we help students unpack complex issues through the generation of questions, collection and analysis of evidence from credible sources, consideration of multiple perspectives, and the application of social studies knowledge and disciplinary skills. In short, social studies educators prepare their students for a lifelong practice of civil discourse and civic engagement in their communities.

This is not an easy task. Only 18% of high school students can consistently distinguish between advertising, opinion, and other online content, which is essential for evaluating information credibility, according to a 2024 News Literacy Project report.1 And, more recently, the 2025 Harvard Youth Poll showed that economic pressure “dominates the attention” of young people and that “young Americans see AI as more likely to take something away than to create something new.”2 This edition of Social Education tackles these pressing issues head on. In our special section, Teaching With and About Technology: Literacy, Inquiry, and Design in Social Studies, Allen, Berson, Berson, and Hicks explain how educators can harness GenAI to strengthen and extend disciplinary reasoning, transforming it into a tool for inquiry. Their article, “Cultivating Technocuriosity: Building Custom GPTs for K-12 Social Studies,” is a must read for teachers.

Hammond, Manfra, Quilinquin, and Quartuch outline how to teach AI literacy by using AI. In “Beyond the Black Box: Teaching Critical AI Literacy in the Social Studies Through a ‘Human as a GPT’ Simulation,” they explain how to engage students in a hands-on simulation that demystifies how artificial intelligence generates text and builds the critical AI literacy skills students need to evaluate credibility. Cory Callahan’s “Crafting Curriculum: Supporting Teachers’ Use of Historical Photographs” rounds out this special section. Callahan spotlights a digital curriculum project that helps teachers guide students in analyzing historical photographs and evaluating visual media.

Extending this focus on thoughtful technology use, Freedman, Gourd, and Schamberger (“Introducing the CMET: A Tool for Vetting Digital Social Studies Materials”) present the CMET, a guide for critically examining digital resources and ensuring they advance equitable, meaningful student learning.

A trio of this issue’s articles focus on economics. “The Ghosts of Central Banking: Lessons in Independence from Beyond the Fed,” by Niederjohn, Schug, and

60 | Social Education | March/April 2026

NCSS Notebook Wood, includes a reader’s theater script that helps students analyze U.S. central banking and understand how the Federal Reserve balances political pressure, inflation, and employment. Andrea Decker’s “Using the America Works Podcast and Occupational Folklife Project to Personalize Economics in the Classroom” examines labor statistics alongside worker stories to help students apply economic principles to realworld careers. In our Sources and Strategies column, “Enabling Students to Apply Economic Concepts Through a 1954 Appeal for Desegregated Housing,” Colleen Smith presents documents about 1950s efforts to create desegregated housing, which students can examine to explore segregation’s impact on the housing market.

Additional articles help further establish the connection between classroom and community. In her article, “We Wrote the Rules: From Class Constitution to Student Voice Committee at a D.C. Law Academy,” Shelina M. Warren shows how to guide students to write and revise their own classroom rules as a way to gain real-world democratic practice in shaping their communities. In Rachael E. Rudis’s “Reimagining Monument Avenue: Connecting Past to Present with the Inquiry Design Model,” students move beyond simply observing local monuments to critically interrogating whose stories are elevated, whose are missing, and how communities might reimagine public memory.

Social studies centers knowledge of human rights and local, national, and global responsibilities so that learners can work together to create a just world. This issue of Social Education is emblematic of that. Thank you to each of you who advocate for social studies and empower students every day. Our democracy is better because of you.

We welcome your feedback at socialed@ncss.org.

Notes 1. The News Literacy Project, “News Literacy in America: A Survey of Teen Information Attitudes, Habits and Skills (2024).”

2. Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, “Spring 2025 Harvard Youth Poll.”

Kelly McFarland Stratman is the Executive Director of NCSS.

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

The

of Central Banking:

Lessons in Independence from Beyond the Fed

Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood The history of central banking in the United States reflects a long struggle to reconcile financial stability with democratic accountability. The tension is familiar in self-government: Voters want a responsive government, but not one that too readily seeks popularity at the expense of long-run stability. This tension can occur in any policy area, but the classic economic example is a money-fueled party followed by an inflation hangover. How can the popular desire for a go-go economy in the short run be reconciled with the need for financial stability in the long run?

A properly chartered and operated central bank is a key part of the answer.

The American experience with central banking drew heavily from earlier European precedents, most notably the Bank of England. Dating all the way back to 1694, the Bank of England served as a lender to the government and as a stabilizing force within the nation’s financial system by issuing notes backed by public debt. During crises it provided liquidity, or the ability to buy or sell financial assets easily.

Early Banks of the United States The United States’ first experiment with central banking came with the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in 1791. The institution embodied Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s vision of national financial coherence and strong public credit. The Bank issued standardized banknotes, managed government deposits, and helped regulate the supply of money. Even as it brought much-needed order to the young nation’s economy, it also sparked fierce opposition from figures such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Its critics regarded it as unconstitutional.

Jefferson in particular objected to its concentration

of economic power in the hands of elites.

Amid the economic disorder that followed the War of 1812, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States in 1817. This new institution was designed to regulate credit, stabilize currency, and provide a reliable source of liquidity. However, the Bank soon became a target of populist resentment, particularly from President Andrew Jackson, who viewed it as corrupt and elitist. His famous “Bank War” culminated in the veto of the Bank’s recharter and the removal of federal deposits, events that ushered in a long period of monetary instability.

The “Free Banking” Era (1836–1913) was marked by a patchwork of state-chartered banks issuing their own notes with little federal oversight.

While the system encouraged local innovation, it also produced instability and frequent financial panics. The Panic of 1907, triggered by the failure of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, exposed the fragility of this decentralized model. Quick private intervention by the financier J.P. Morgan stabilized markets, yet this solution was anything but permanent. What was missing was an institution that could lend to sound but temporarily distressed banks—that is, a “lender of last resort.”1 The Creation of the Federal Reserve In reaction to the instability of the Free Banking Era, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, creating the Federal Reserve System as a hybrid public-private institution. In addition to serving as a lender of last resort, it was intended to provide a stable currency and oversee the banking system.

The structure balanced local and national interests through 12 regional Reserve Banks and a central Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Its monetary

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policy was to be overseen by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Over time, the Federal Reserve came to operate under a “dual mandate”— to promote (1) price stability and (2) maximum employment.2 With the benefit of hindsight, modern scholars believe the Federal Reserve failed in its first major test. In the early days of the Great Depression the Fed failed to mount an aggressive monetary response. The Fed’s inaction deepened the economic downturn and contributed to the crisis.

Reflecting on this history, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke remarked on the 90th birthday of Nobel Prizewinning economist Milton Friedman, “Regarding the Great Depression ... we did it. We’re very sorry ... We won’t do it again.”3 Lessons from that era inspired reforms in the Banking Act of 1935, which strengthened the Federal Reserve’s authority and centralized its control in Washington.

During World War II, the Federal Reserve’s role included facilitating war finance by keeping interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities low. Its close connection to the Treasury ended with the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord, which formally established its operational independence in setting interest rates. In subsequent decades, the Fed navigated inflationary pressures of the 1970s and the “stagflation” crisis—a troublesome combination of output stagnation and price inflation. This episode culminated in a decisive tightening of monetary policy in the early 1980s under the leadership of Fed Chair Paul Volcker. This intervention successfully curbed inflation but triggered a severe recession.

Under Alan Greenspan, the Fed presided over the “Great Moderation,” a period of steady growth and low inflation. Was it too good to last? Critics argue that low interest rates during this era contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. In response to that crisis, the Fed under Ben Bernanke implemented unconventional policies to stabilize the financial system. These tools expanded the Fed’s influence over capital markets, giving it the ability to keep relevant interest rates near zero.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve again acted aggressively, deploying emergency lending facilities and purchasing massive quantities of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. Such interventions sparked new debates about the scope of central bank power. The aim was

62 | Social Education | March/April 2026

stabilization but there was a sharp inflation, catching the Fed by surprise.

Throughout its history, the Fed has used a variety of tools to influence interest rates. Today, the Fed sets what is called the Federal Funds Rate. This rate establishes the cost of short-term money to commercial banks. The Federal Funds Rate serves as the baseline rate for banks. Thus it affects, but does not fully determine, other interest rates such as those on home loans, car loans, and credit cards.

Federal Reserve Independence The Federal Reserve was designed to be independent from the political incentives of the executive and legislative branches. Members of the Board of Governors serve 14-year, nonrenewable terms, resulting in reduced influence from the most recent election. Economists argue that such independence prevents manipulation of the economy for electoral gain—a phenomenon known as the political business cycle. Such a cycle would result if politicians could push the Fed to stimulate the economy in the short term, before the next election, only dealing with the inflationary consequences later. Research indicates that independent central banks achieve lower inflation without sacrificing long-term growth.4 However, the Federal Reserve’s independence is not absolute. Created by Congress, it remains subject to political and legislative pressures.

Historical episodes illustrate this tension: under Richard Nixon, Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns was pressured to maintain easy money policies before the 1972 election. Paul Volcker’s firm anti-inflation stance in the 1980s restored credibility at the cost of short-term pain and thus was unpopular with incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Later chairs, such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, navigated crises by balancing autonomy with responsiveness to government concerns.5 In a similar way, their successors Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell have managed crises by concentrating on economic results while maintaining independence.

Clearly, political criticism of the Federal Reserve is not new. It is so common that it has a nickname: “Fed-bashing,” blaming the Fed for a slow economy even as critics may privately recognize a need for restraint.

Fed-bashing has reached new heights under President Donald Trump, who issued an order to fire one Fed governor and has threatened to fire current Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Could Powell be guided by the ghosts of his predecessors and distinguished economists, since they had experienced Fed-bashing?

Ghost Story VII: Chairman Jerome Powell Meets Arthur Burns, Paul Volcker and Milton Friedman Authors’ Note: This is the seventh installment of the “ghost stories” series by the same authors that have appeared in earlier editions of Social Education (see list below). Each story provides teachers with a ready-made reader’s theater script for classroom use.

The idea is to engage students while reviewing the economic ideas presented in the body of the article.

Setting the Stage The post-COVID-19 inflation had been tamed by a combination of policies including higher interest rates. But had the Fed overreacted and made interest rates too high, risking a slow economy?

By the time the Fed reversed course and started lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy in 2024, critics worried it was already acting too late.

They called on the Fed to aggressively lower interest rates. Complicating matters, President Trump was sharply criticizing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The president made his wishes known (lower rates now!) but the Fed faced a difficult balancing act.

The Ghost Story Series “Who Will Stimulate the Economic Recovery: A Ghost Story,” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education, March/April 2010

“Too Low? For Too Long? Ghost Story IV,” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education, March/April 2015

“Quantitative Easing and the Fed: Ghost Story II,” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education, March/April 2011

“Super Mario Faces a Slow Growth Economy: Ghost Story V” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education March/April 2017

“Visions of Inflation in World History: Ghost Story III,” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education, March/ April 2013

“Ghost Story VI: John Williams Meets Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman,” M. Scott Niederjohn, Mark C. Schug, and William C. Wood, Social Education, March/April 2019

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The Players Arthur F. Burns served as Chair of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978, appointed by his long-time acquaintance, President Richard Nixon.

Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He was best known for demonstrating in a 1963 book co-authored by Anna Schwartz that the Great Depression was caused by the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.6

Paul A. Volcker served as Fed Chair from 1979 to 1987, most notably engineering the “Volcker shock,” raising interest rates in a successful action to combat inflation.

Jerome Powell served as Fed Chair from 2018 to 2026, presiding over the central bank’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ensuing inflation and disinflation.

The Scene We now move to our imagined eve of the April 2026 meeting of the FOMC, to be held in the Board Room at the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C. It will be Powell’s last meeting, as his term is expiring. He is up late at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. After a nice dinner with his wife Elissa, he retreats to his office to review for the umpteenth time tomorrow’s reports on future policy directions. Suddenly, his eyes get heavy. He leans back in his comfortable desk chair for what he thinks will be just a short nap. Instead, he falls into a deep sleep.

The Script: Dreaming About the Federal Funds Rate Powell’s dream that night may have gone something like this: Powell: I am not sure what is going on, but do I see Paul Volcker sitting in one of my guest chairs? Hello, Paul. We didn’t know each other very well but I am a great admirer of yours.

Volcker: Thank you, Jay. That means a lot to me. I am delighted to see you again after all these years.

64 | Social Education | March/April 2026

Powell: And now I see former Fed Chair Arthur Burns and his old friend Milton Friedman taking their seats in front of me. You two are among the most respected economists of the late twentieth century.

Burns: Good evening, Jay. And Milton, I am pleased to see you. I know we had some disagreements but that was a long time ago.

Friedman: Arthur it is great to see you. Warm greetings to all of you. Jay, you are probably

wondering why the three of us are paying you this visit.

Powell: Well, yes. You know I’m leaving the Fed shortly. I probably could have used this visit sooner.

Burns: That is a good point. Let me tell you what we are up to.

You see, we each lived through periods when presidents were leaning on the Fed to lower interest rates not for the good of the economy, but instead to obtain some shortterm economic improvement just before an election. We understand that the current president has put pressure on you and your colleagues. That pressure is likely to continue.

Powell: Pressure? You bet!

The president issued an order to remove a member of the Board of Governors and even threatened to fire me.

Friedman: You know, in our macroeconomic and monetary classes we routinely taught students that the president couldn’t fire Fed governors over policy differences. The wording is that they can only be fired “for cause,” but your current president is pushing the limits of that wording.

to the inflation of the 1970s.

Burns: Believe me when I say I understand. I was really beaten up during the 1970s and years after for keeping rates low in the face of surging inflation. At the time, I was remembering the Great Depression and the 25% unemployment rate of 1933. I feared we would really hurt the labor market with higher rates.

And, of course, President Nixon was pushing me to keep rates low to help him with the 1972 presidential election.

Friedman: Art, I hate to bring it up, but it was even worse than that. You recommended shortterm wage and price controls to get us past the inflation surge, even before President Nixon

did it. That made you really unpopular among economists!

You remembered how price controls worked in World War II, if only temporarily. But 1970 was different from 1941. Economists know that price controls can’t last, and they did not work for President Nixon.

Burns: Milton, I understand your concern. And events show that you were correct.

Powell: Earlier I told Paul that I admired him. What I admired was the fact that he stayed with his policy of increasing interest rates in the late 1970s and early 1980s, until finally inflation came under control.

Volcker: I can tell you, Jay,

edward m.

KENNEDY institute

Powell: Yes, it’s tough. Now, I understand why some people have criticized us. We missed the jump in inflation after COVID, mistakenly calling it transitory. But I thought then, as I do now, that we needed to move quickly and raise rates to slow down inflation.

It’s still above our 2 percent target. We have to avoid a return

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that was a rough period. Home builders mailed me 2x4 boards. Angry farmers drove tractors into Washington, D.C., blocking the Fed’s offices. The economy nose-dived into a deep recession. But it ended well. Once inflation was reduced, interest rates returned to normal. We entered an era of economic expansion without inflation.

Powell: I’m on the way out. What should I say to my successor about the independence of the Fed? Friedman: There was a promising economist I knew at the University of Chicago named John Cochrane.

He thinks that it would be best for the Fed to just follow a few understandable decision-making rules regarding what to do with the Federal Funds Rate. Fed independence would be enhanced by implementing calm and predictable frameworks.

Volcker: Right. The Fed has to be seen as a bunch of technical guys and gals regulating the banks. It should all be a bit hard to understand, like my statements before Congress. If you look like politicians, you invite attacks on the Fed’s independence. So concentrate on the economic welfare of the nation, not politicians’ interests.

Burns: I think the lesson is to resist getting too close to the president or Congress. The incentive for them is almost always to stimulate the economy with low rates to gain the favor of voters. Fed independence means that decisions need to be driven only by the dual mandate given to the Fed by Congress, to support the goals of maximum employment and stable prices. But it is a real balancing act.

Powell: Gentlemen, thank you for your advice and wisdom. Thank you for dropping in to see me in this unusual way. How about we keep this visit to ourselves? I don’t think the media would understand.

Powell awakes understanding that true independence takes courage to act based on principles, evidence, and transparency, even under pressure. The ghosts fade, but their lessons linger.

Conclusion The history of the Federal Reserve illustrates the tension between democratic accountability and

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policy stability inherent in a central bank with partial autonomy. The experience of Burns, Volcker, and their successors shows how Fed chairs have to balance short-term political demands on monetary policy with long-run stability and economic growth.

The U.S. experience suggests the wisdom of having long terms for Fed governors and a measure of isolation from immediate political influences. Still, the Fed’s independence is not absolute. Its long-term effectiveness relies on careful reactions to political and economic forces by its appointed leadership.

Notes

1. Hugh Rockoff, “The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 6, no. 2 (May 1974): 141-167; Mark C. Schug, William C. Wood, Tawni H. Ferrarini, and M. Scott Niederjohn, Economic Episodes in American History, 2nd ed. (Wohl Publishing, 2019).

2. Federal Reserve Act of 1913, Pub. L. No. 63-43, 38 Stat. 251 (1913).

3. “The Great Depression,” Federal Reserve History, www. federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression.

4. William D. Nordhaus, “The Political Business Cycle,” The Review of Economic Studies 42, no. 2 (1975): 169-190; Frederic S. Mishkin, Monetary Policy Strategy (MIT Press, 2007).

5. Allan H. Meltzer, A History of the Federal Reserve, vol. 2 (University of Chicago Press, 2009); Paul Volcker, Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government (Public Affairs, 2018).

6. Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (Princeton University Press, 1963).

Scott Niederjohn is Dean of the Batterman School of Business and Director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University Wisconsin.

Mark C. Schug is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Visiting Fellow at Concordia University Wisconsin.

William C. Wood is Professor Emeritus at James Madison University.

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Using the America Works Podcast and Occupational Folklife Project to Personalize Economics in the Classroom Andrea Decker Imagine if you could bring firsthand experiences from hundreds of careers directly into the classroom. The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks 830 different occupations annually (see www.bls.gov/oes), but those numbers only tell students part of the story.

By combining this data with personal narratives about what it is like to work in these occupations, teachers can enrich the classroom experience and deepen students’ understanding of economic concepts such as decision making, incentives, scarcity, specialization, entrepreneurship, labor market barriers, income and labor value, the role of government, and more.

Such a resource is now available through the Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) at the Library of Congress, an online free-to-use collection of more than a thousand personal narratives of contemporary American workers. The project began in 2010 as a multi-year initiative by the Library’s American Folklife Center (AFC) to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers across the United States have recorded more than 1,800 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions.

The interviews, which average 50-60 minutes in length, and are available online at www.loc. gov/collections/occupational-folklife-project/

about-this-collection, feature workers discussing their current jobs and formative work experiences, reflecting on their training, on-the-job challenges and rewards, aspirations, and occupational communities. In many cases, interviewees were asked to trace the career choices and educational paths that led them to their jobs and share their thoughts on the future of their professions.

Recently, the American Folklife Center launched America Works, a podcast series that features excerpts from scores of full-length OFP interviews.

Ideal for classroom use, the short 5- to 10-minute episodes provide glimpses into the wit, knowledge, training and dedication of working Americans. See www.loc.gov/podcasts/america-works.

What follows are several America Works episodes accompanied by engagement questions.

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The engagement questions are mapped to topics within economics. You might select an audio episode that relates to a topic you are teaching, play it in class, and use the questions for a class discussion. For more advanced students, you might then ask them to listen to the full oral history or other oral histories in the same collection and compare the perspectives shared about the job or industry. The full interviews are available here: www.loc.gov/collections/ occupational-folklife-project.

For each episode, students are invited to consider the following question: What can you learn from oral histories that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Luann Miller, Grocery Store Cashier. Seattle, Washington [4:40] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2023-03-23/luannmiller-grocery-store-cashier-seattle-washington This America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview with grocery store cashier Luann Miller, who over the past three decades has worked just about every job there is in the grocery business—from shelf re-stocker to cashier to bagger.

When interviewed by folklorist Deborah Fant for the Washington State Workers project, Miller was working at Thriftway, a locally owned unionized grocery store in West Seattle, Washington.

Discussion Questions: 1. Decision Making: What are the costs and benefits of spending extra time with one customer?

2. Incentives: What incentives motivate Luann? Consider both financial and nonfinancial incentives.

3. Scarcity: Why can’t Luann spend as much time with every customer as she might like?

4. Specialization: What skills does Luann specialize in as a cashier?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up

68 | Social Education | March/April 2026

industry data or statistics?

Jeremy Presar, Rural Mail Carrier, US Postal Service. Bukhannon, Kentucky [6:41] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2024-03-28/ jeremy-presar-rural-mail-carrier-us-postal-systembukhannon-kentucky Jeremy Presar is a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service based out of the French Creek, West Virginia Post Office. In his sixth year as a mail carrier, he tells folklorist Emily Hilliard about his 70-mile route, delivering to 600 mailboxes, the challenges posed by animals, weather and being bi-racial in a largely white area as well as the pride he takes in working for America’s “vital lifeline.”

Discussion Questions: 1. Scarcity: What scarce resources does Jeremy deal with on his 70-mile mail route, and how do those limits shape how he does his job each day?

2. Decision Making: What costs and benefits does Jeremy weigh when deciding whether to stop and check on customers versus staying strictly on schedule?

3. Institutions: Why is the U.S. Postal Service considered an important economic institution, especially for rural communities like French Creek?

t ves abou nal narrati o rs iew. e rv p te re f an in ries a o to is rm h l fo ra e O in th uals and ts, usually of individ s past even e ri to s tand how s on the le unders p o e p They focu lp he rovide ities and ls. They p a u id iv commun d t in bject or nts impac bout a su a n o ti a world eve om rm the classro tative info li in a s u e q ri p to e an de oral his ctives on ce. Using le perspe ip lt experien u v ti m c to bje ity students tes the su a tr s n o exposes m de ink vent and dents to th tu s g in issue or e d a ated sources, le tion is cre a ry a rm m ri fo p in f o how on are ply about informati f o more dee s d in k different sons. and how ferent rea if d r fo le valuab

4. Role of Government / Market Failure: Why might rural mail delivery not exist without government involvement, and what market failure does the Postal Service help address?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Rosemarie Francis-Primo, Home Healthcare Aide. Brooklyn, New York [5:48] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2023-04-06/ rosemarie-francis-primo-home-healthcare-aidebrooklyn-ny This America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview with Rosemarie Francis-Primo, a home healthcare aide in Brooklyn, New York. She is a proud member of Domestic Workers United, an advocacy organization that represents Caribbean, Latina, and African nannies, housekeepers,

homeworkers, and caregivers in metropolitan New York.

Discussion Questions: 1. Scarcity: How does the lack of available family caregivers create demand for paid home healthcare workers like Rosemarie?

2. Institutions: How does Domestic Workers United help home healthcare workers improve their working conditions and economic security?

3. Income & Labor Value: Why is home healthcare work often undervalued, even though it is essential to families and the healthcare system?

4. Role of Government: Why government policies might be necessary to protect workers and clients in home healthcare jobs?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Leah, Chef and Owners of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. New Orleans, Louisiana [6:46] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2024-02-29/leahchase-chef-and-owner-of-dooky-chases-restaurantnew-orleans-louisiana Leah Chase, chef and owner of the legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans talks with documentarian Candacy Taylor. More than just a James Beard award-winning eating establishment, Dooky Chase’s has served patrons that range from presidents to civil rights leaders and celebrities to Louisianans in search of great food. She explains with pride why she slapped President Obama’s hand when he tried to put hot sauce on her gumbo.

Discussion Questions:

Chef and restaurant owner Leah Chase with interviewer Candacy A. Taylor in 2018.

1. Entrepreneurship: In what ways did Leah Chase help turn Dooky Chase’s into a successful business while also serving a

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larger social purpose?

2. Scarcity & Resourcefulness: How did Leah Chase’s childhood during the Great Depression influence how she valued food, work, and resources?

3. Institutions & Segregation: How did segregation shape where Black people could eat, and why did that make Dooky Chase’s economically successful?

4. Incentives & Customer Trust: Why was creating a safe and welcoming environment an important incentive for customers to support Dooky Chase’s?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Kira Fobbs, Elementary School Teacher.

Madison, Wisconsin [10:22] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2022-02-17/ kira-fobbs-elementary-school-teacher-madisonwisconsin Kira Fobbs, an elementary school teacher who has devoted her life to teaching third and fourth graders and special education students in the schools of Madison, Wisconsin, is interviewed by folklorist Mark Wagler. She speaks poignantly about how her personal experiences have helped shape her teaching career.

Discussion Questions: 1. Decision Making & Incentives: Why did Kira choose teaching over a career in law, and what did she give up to pursue that path? What incentives motivate Kira to continue teaching?

2. Specialization: Why are Kira’s skills in working with diverse and special education students valuable in today’s labor market?

3. Institutions: How do public schools function as core institutions that shape

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society and culture and prepare students for participation in the economy?

4. Role of Government: Why might government decisions about testing, standards, and funding have unintended effects on teachers and students? Why does Kira believe policymakers who create standards and tests should spend time teaching?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Barbara Miller Byrd, Circus Owner. Hugo, Oklahoma [9:37] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2020-09-03/ barbara-miller-byrd-circus-owner-hugo-oklahoma Barbara Miller Byrd, the third-generation owner of the Carson and Barnes Circus based in the small town of Hugo, Oklahoma, talks about growing up in the traveling circus founded by her grandparents more than 75 years ago. She shares great memories and stories and offers insights into the colorful and complex occupational skills that are needed to sustain a traveling circus in contemporary America.

Discussion Questions: 1. Specialization: How are performers, mechanics, cooks, truck drivers, and concession workers all essential to the circus’s success?

2. Scarcity & Choice: What trade-offs did the circus make when it condensed from a multi-ring circus to a one-ring circus?

3. Markets & Competition: How does competition from computers, video games, and other digital entertainment affect the circus’s ability to attract audiences?

What advice would you give Barbara about attracting bigger audiences?

4. Prices: How do major expenses like fuel, transportation, and labor shape how the circus operates day to day?

5. What did you learn from this interview that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

Richard Bludworth, Shipyard Owner. Houston, Texas [9:40] www.loc.gov/item/podcasts/2020-09-17/ richard-bludworth-shipyard-owner-houston-texas Houston shipyard owner Richard Bludworth of Bludworth Marine talks about growing up in his family’s shipyard, learning his complex trade, and the community of maritime workers who make Houston one of the world’s largest and most vibrant ports. He relates some great on-the-job experiences, his love of the sea, why he likes working with “pirates,” and his pride in his home city of Houston.

Discussion Questions: 1. Entrepreneurship & Innovation: What risks did Richard Bludworth’s father and uncle take when starting their business, and what rewards did they gain?

2. Human Capital & Labor: How did Richard acquire job skills, and how does this compare to formal education pathways?

3. Competition & Markets: Why does Richard say competition is necessary “to keep them honest”?

4. Institutions & Role of Government: How does Houston’s port and lack of zoning laws influence economic opportunity?

5. What did you learn from this interview

that you might not learn from looking up industry data or statistics?

To deepen your students’ understanding of oral histories and how individuals adapt and thrive in different careers, you might assign an oral history project. Encourage students to conduct and record short oral histories of people who work in a career that interests them, family members, or even (if students are already participating in the workforce) each other. Invite them to use the free online resource Folklife and Fieldwork: An Introduction to Cultural Documentation (https:// guides.loc.gov/ld.php?content_id=60088526), written by American Folklife Center staff, to learn some techniques for conducting good oral history interviews. Then, ask them to reflect on the process. What did they learn about the work their interviewees do? Or about oral history as a process for creating knowledge? Did conducting their own oral history interviews change their perspective on the interviews they listened to?

If you try these suggestions, or a variation of them, with your students, tell us about your experience! During the third week of April, the Teaching with the Library of Congress Blog at blogs.loc.gov/teachers will feature a post tied to this article and we invite you to comment and share your teaching strategies. Season 8 of the America Works podcast launched on March 2, 2026!

Andrea Decker is a reference librarian in the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress. For more information on the AFC and the education programs of the Library of Congress, please visit www.loc.gov/research-centers/american-folklifecenter and www.loc.gov/teachers.

www.socialstudies.org/bookstore www.socialstudies.org | 71

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS & APPLICATIONS 2026 NCSS AWARDS SEASON IS OPEN Honoring Excellence in Social Studies Education Are you — or someone you know — making an extraordinary impact in social studies? Now is the time to be recognized.

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) proudly announces the 2026 Awards & Grants season is officially open. Each year, NCSS celebrates outstanding educators, researchers, authors, and leaders whose work strengthens the field and advances civic learning nationwide.

WHY APPLY OR NOMINATE?

AWARDS INCLUDE:

• Recognize excellence in teaching and leadership

Teacher & Classroom Leadership Awards

• Elevate impactful research and scholarship

Recognizing exemplary educators and

• Highlight innovation in classroom practice

instructional innovators.

• Earn national recognition among peers

Research Awards and Grants Celebrating significant contributions to social studies scholarship.

Book Awards & Professional Grants Honoring authors who expand and enrich the discipline.

And additional awards recognizing service, leadership, and lasting impact.

SUBMIT BY JUNE 30, 2026 Applications and nominations must be submitted through the official NCSS Awards Portal.

Early submissions encouraged!

BE PART OF A LEGACY Nominate a colleague.

Apply yourself.

Be recognized.

NCSS Awards 2026 — Celebrating Those Who Shape the Future.

socialstudies.org/awards 72 | Social Education | March/April 2026

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Inclusive Social Studies

We are excited to present the newest article in Inclusive Social Studies, a column dedicated to understanding what inclusivity is and how it shapes scholarship and practice in social studies. Inclusivity in social studies emerges through many interconnected practices, each aimed at expanding who is seen, who is heard, and who feels represented in research and in the curriculum. This column illuminates how these varied perspectives can be meaningfully woven into classrooms and curricula to enrich every student’s and teacher’s social studies experience.

In this article, Dr. Shelina Warren invites readers into the Law and Public Policy Academy at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., where students construct the rules that guide their classrooms. Drawing from her doctoral research on democratic classrooms and her daily work as a social studies teacher in a historically Black school, Warren demonstrates how a co-constructed class constitution facilitates routines that nurture a dialogic classroom environment. She traces how these practices, rooted in ongoing norm setting, structured debates, and reflection, grow alongside students’ participation in both school- and community-based programs. Warren’s work illustrates how inclusive social studies can equip young people with the skills and confidence to participate in decisions that affect them and their communities and to take those lessons with them into life as changemakers. Her narrative offers teachers both inspiration and adaptable strategies for bringing democratic practice to life in their own classrooms.

—Stacie Brensilver Berman, John M. Paella, and Diana B. Turk

We Wrote the Rules:

From Class Constitution to Student Voice Committee at a D.C. Law Academy Shelina M. Warren In the second week of school, September 2025, my tenth graders were locked in debate over a single sentence. On the board I had written one of our proposed class norms: “Support the success of the team.”

A student leaned back in his chair and said, “I don’t like that.

Sometimes I just need to focus on myself. Sometimes people take advantage of others in the team.” Another student shot back, “But if everybody is only focused on themselves,

then we’re not really a team.”

In most classrooms that conversation might end with the teacher saying, “Well, this is the rule.” But in the Eleanor Holmes Norton Law & Public Policy Academy at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C.—a historically Black high school with a legacy of producing civil rights leaders—this kind of disagreement is the point.

My students come to our academy because they want to

become lawyers, advocates, and changemakers. Many of them have also experienced schools as places where rules are handed down to them, enforced on them, but rarely shaped by them. So we start the year with a different assumption: Our first case is to write the rules together. The result is a class constitution that becomes the foundation for a Student Voice Committee and, ultimately, a different way of being together in school.

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Why We Start with a Class Constitution Because I teach law and public policy, the metaphor of a constitution comes naturally.

I tell students that we are founding this classroom like a new country. If we’re serious about justice, we have to decide together what justice will look like here. We start with three core questions: 1. What do you need to feel educated here?

turns its ideas into “articles” and “rights and responsibilities.”

Then the debate begins.

One student changed my initial norm “listen actively” to “listen to understand the full purpose.” Another student adds “be responsible with water and snacks” to the shared norm “clean up after yourself,” because, as she says, “People will spill juice and just walk away.”

My favorite moment came with this line: “Focus on

2. What do you need to feel validated here?

3. What do you need to feel empowered here?

Students brainstorm individually and then in small groups. They write on sticky notes and chart paper. Their answers are blunt and honest: • “Don’t talk to me crazy.”

• “Let me explain myself before you assume.”

• “Give us real work, not baby work.”

• “Don’t embarrass us in front of the class.”

• “Listen to our side when something happens.”

We talk about how the U.S. Constitution has a preamble, articles, and amendments, and they mirror that structure for our classroom. Each group

74 | Social Education | March/April 2026

solutions, not problems.”

A student raised her hand and said, “But we have to understand the causes of the problem. That’s what you keep telling us about systems.” So we revised it to: “Focus on solutions, but understand the causes of the problem.” That one amendment captured exactly what I want my students to do in social studies: Name the harm, investigate its roots, and still move toward action.

The hardest debate

came during the previously mentioned conflict about supporting the success of the team. “If we say support the success of the team, where do I put myself?” the student had asked. We spent several minutes unpacking what “support” and “team” actually meant. Did it mean doing someone else’s work? Did it mean letting people copy? Or did it mean something closer to “I won’t block your success, and I’ll be honest if I can’t help right now”?

We ended up with language like: “Support the success of the team, including yourself” and “Ask for help when you need it; offer help when you can give it.”

By the time we were done, the board was full of crossed-out phrases, circled words, arrows, and proposed amendments. I facilitated, but I did not have the final word. Students voted on

each article, revised again, and then signed the constitution like delegates at a convention. For many of them, it was the first time school rules had ever felt like something they had a hand in writing.

When the Constitution Gets Messy Of course, writing the document was the easy part. Living it was harder. A few weeks into the year, empty chip bags and water bottles started showing up under my classroom tables.

Our beautifully worded directive “be responsible with water and snacks” clearly wasn’t holding.

In many classrooms, this would become a lecture. (“Y’all don’t respect the room. I’m taking snacks away.”) Instead, I stood in front of the left-behind trash and said: “It looks like our constitution isn’t doing what we

need it to do. Is the problem the words, the enforcement, or our habits?” We held a 10-minute “constitutional review.” With regard to the trash, students acknowledged that sometimes they were just rushing around, and sometimes they assumed the custodian would handle it.

One student pointed out that we didn’t have a specific routine for looking over the floor area at the end of class. So they proposed an amendment. We added a “two-minute reset” to the end of each class where everyone checked their area.

We also designated rotating “constitution checkers,” whose job is to note patterns and bring them up at the next meeting.

A similar issue occurred with our “listen to understand the full purpose” norm. In the heat of disagreement, students sometimes talked over one

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another. When we paused and asked, “Which article did we break here?” they could name it. That allowed us to repair harm as a community and not through teacher consequences.

These moments are messy, but they are also the point. My students learn that: • Rules are not magic; they are agreements that we have to continually practice.

• When a rule isn’t working, we can revise it, instead of silently resenting it.

• Accountability can be collective, not just

top-down.

In a school system where many Black students experience rules as something done to them, revisiting our constitution becomes a small but powerful rehearsal for democratic change.

From Classroom Norms to a Student Voice Committee Once students see that they can write and revise the rules in our classroom, it doesn’t take long before someone asks the bigger question: “Why can’t we do this for the school?” That question is what gave birth to our Student Voice Committee (SVC) within the Law & Public Policy Academy.

The SVC grew out of our existing work with organizations like Mikva Challenge (https:// mikvachallenge.org), where students engage in the Issues to Action and Project Soapbox programs. I invited a small group of students from different grade levels—some obvious leaders and some who were quiet but observant—to form a committee that would meet regularly to address schoolwide issues. We started by borrowing the same structure from our class constitution work:

Student Voice Committee members collect survey responses on the fairness of a school policy.

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• We wrote norms for our meetings using almost identical language: listen to understand, focus on

solutions but name root causes, support the success of the team, etc.

• We framed our purpose: We are here to identify problems that affect students, research the problems, and propose realistic changes to school leadership.

Their first major issue was a school policy that students felt was applied inconsistently and unfairly. Instead of just venting, they (1) defined the problem in their own words; (2) collected evidence—stories from peers, brief surveys, examples of how the policy played out differently for different students; (3) brainstormed alternative solutions that might address adult concerns and student dignity; and (4) prepared an agenda and talking points for a meeting with our principal.

During that meeting, our principal asked thoughtful questions, pushed students to think about logistics, and agreed to seriously consider some of the recommendations.

The students were nervous, but afterwards one of them said, “It felt like we were the lawyers and she was the judge.”

What struck me most was how often during the process they had referenced our class constitution language, such as “We’re not just complaining; we’re focusing on solutions,” “We want to understand the causes of the problem before we ask you to change it,”

and “We want to support the success of the school, not just ourselves.” The habits they had practiced on our classroom scale—writing norms, amending them, holding themselves accountable—translated directly into school-level civic engagement.

A 90-Day Roadmap for Teachers You do not need to run a full law academy or have special partnerships to start this work. Here is a simple 90-day roadmap that any teacher can adapt.

Days 1–15: Write the Class Constitution • Ask students what they need to feel respected, challenged, and safe in your classroom.

• Have students brainstorm individually, then in groups.

• Turn students’ ideas into articles and rights/responsibilities.

• Facilitate a mini constitutional convention: ◆ Project (display) or write draft norms. ◆ Invite amendments and debate. ◆ Vote on each article.

• Have students sign the final document and post this prominently.

Tip: Make room for tension. If

students propose something that conflicts with your nonnegotiables (for example, cellphones during tests), name that honestly and explain why.

They are used to adults hiding power; they are not used to adults explaining it.

Days 16–45: Practice Democratic Routines • Build in a weekly fiveminute constitution check: ◆ Which article helped us most this week? ◆ Which one did we struggle to uphold?

Why? • When conflict arises, instead of “Who’s in trouble?” ask, “Which article did this bump against?”

• Incorporate quick votes for real classroom decisions: ◆ Choice of case studies, debate topics, or project formats.

• Schedule one “amendment day,” where students can propose changes based on lived experience.

Tip: Keep the document alive.

Refer to it often enough that students see it as a tool, not as wallpaper.

Days 46–90: Seed a Student Voice Group • Invite interested students to form a small Student Voice

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Group (even if it’s just a handful).

• Have them identify one or two issues beyond their classroom that affect students—lunch, hallway policies, bathroom access, homework load, etc.

• Teach a simple advocacy structure: 1. Define the issue and who it affects.

2. Gather evidence (stories, surveys, brief data).

3. Propose at least one realistic solution.

4. Request a conversation with a decision-maker (an assistant principal, counselor, or principal).

• Support them in creating an agenda and norms for the meeting with a decision-maker, modeled after your class constitution.

Even if the changes they request are small, the message is big: You have a right to be heard, and there are structured ways to exercise that right.

Centering Black Youth in a Historically Black School At Dunbar, we often remind students that they walk the same halls as alumni who fought Jim Crow laws, argued Brown v. Board of Education, expanded access to education,

and today hold powerful public offices. Our theme is “rooted in legacy, rising in excellence,” but that legacy can feel distant if students only encounter it on posters and not in their daily experience of school.

Co-creating a class constitution and building a Student Voice Committee is one way we bring that legacy into the present.

We are not just teaching our students about people who once rewrote unjust rules—we are giving them practice in rewriting the small rules that shape their own days. For Black students in a city like Washington, D.C., this matters.

Our students are constantly navigating systems—school discipline, policing, housing, transportation—that were not designed with them at the center. If school is only another place where rules are imposed without explanation or input, we unintentionally teach students that power always lives somewhere else.

When my students debate whether “support the success of the team” includes their own mental health, or when they craft an amendment to “focus on solutions, but understand the causes of the problem,” they are doing more than classroom management. They are learning to: • Name when a rule does not serve them.

• Imagine alternatives.

• Make a case for change.

• Sit across from an

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authority figure and speak with clarity and respect.

At the end of the term, as we reflected on our constitution, I asked what felt different about this class compared to others. One student summed it up, saying “In here, we wrote the rules. So if something feels wrong, we don’t just get mad—we fix it.” That is the kind of civic competence I want for my students—not just the ability to recite the Bill of Rights, but the confidence and practice to shape the communities they are part of. If our students can learn to write and revise the rules in a single classroom, they are one step closer to rewriting the rules of their schools, their city, and, eventually, their democracy.

Shelina M. Warren, Ed.D., is an Army veteran and social studies educator with 23 years of experience, currently in her tenth year at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. She teaches Constitutional Law, Law & Justice Advocacy, Youth Justice, and Human Rights and Social Action, and serves as the Director of the Eleanor Holmes Norton Law and Public Policy Academy. Dr. Warren holds a doctorate in Urban Leadership from Johns Hopkins University and is a National Board Certified teacher in social studies. She is a recipient of the American Civic Education Teacher Award, was a DC Teacher of the Year finalist, and has been recognized with numerous national and local awards for excellence in civic education and social change.

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Sources and Strategies

Enabling Students to Apply Economic Concepts Through a 1954 Appeal for Desegregated Housing Colleen Smith In March 1954, just a few months before the Supreme Court announced its opinion on Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, housing developer Morris Milgram wrote to civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell. In his letter, featured in this article and available online at www.loc.gov/item/mss425490225, Milgram shared a report on the scarcity of new housing for sale to African Americans in Philadelphia and a proposed solution: open occupancy housing.

Reviewing the letter and the first two pages of the report provides students with an opportunity to examine segregation through an economic lens. How did segregation impact the housing market? What do economic concepts like scarcity, incentives, supply, and demand look and feel like and what impact can they have on the lives of real people? By analyzing Milgram’s report using economic reasoning, students can apply disciplinary thinking to better understand a challenging topic and construct thoughtful questions about accessible and affordable housing today.

Concord Park Homes, Inc. Morris Milgram did not start his career in the real estate market—his employment origins were in various workers’ rights movements organized through the Workers Defense League, a non-profit organization started in 1936. He was active with the league and held leadership positions, including secretary of continued on page 82

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Access the full document at this QR code.

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SOURCES AND STRATEGIES from page 79 the league. These experiences helped him develop an affinity for civil rights campaigns of the era, recognizing common cause between workers’ rights and the plight of African Americans.1 The post-New Deal, postWorld War II housing boom compelled Milgram to try his luck in the housing market. He went to work for his father-in-law who owned a construction firm near Philadelphia. Milgram soon recognized the lack of new housing available for African Americans, and the demand they brought to the market.

Although he was unsuccessful in convincing his father-in-law to build open (integrated) housing, he learned more about the housing market, including the incentives and disincentives for open housing. After his fatherin-law passed away, Milgram took the opportunity to pursue open housing in Philadelphia.

His first project was Concord Park, which he envisioned as an integrated version of the recent all-white Levittown, N.Y., housing developments.2 Initially, banks and other investors were unwilling to back Milgram’s plan for a newly built, integrated suburban community.

It was not until Milgram recruited George Otto, an affluent Quaker who believed in the need for and value of open housing, that the Concord Park Homes project began to gain momentum.3 It is at this juncture that Milgram wrote to Mary Church Terrell, citing the challenges he had encountered, enclosing a report, and ending his letter with, “your

reaction would be appreciated.”4 The report shared by Milgram highlighted the imbalance between supply of and demand for new homes open to African Americans following World War II. In addition, the document offered a definition of open housing and provided examples of where it existed, as well as a description of the early 1950s housing market, including inefficiencies.

Student Analysis Provide students with Milgram’s opening note to Mrs. Terrell. As students engage with the text, ask the following questions: • What do you notice?

• Where does your eye go first?

• What details stand out?

• What questions do you have?

Next, invite students to speculate about the historical context of the letter. Ask, “What was happening at the time?”

“What do you think was the purpose of this letter?” and “What makes you say that?”

Next, direct students to the

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report itself, directing their attention to the following economic principles: scarcity, supply, demand, and incentives.

Depending on their familiarity with recognizing and applying economic principles, students may need support transferring abstract economic ideas (e.g., supply) to tangible examples in the report: • Scarcity (open occupancy housing) • Supply (what developers are offering) • Demand (what African American home buyers want) • Incentives (factors that can influence choice on supply or demand side, not always positive) Encourage students to annotate the source, using a different color for each economic concept. See example below.

Yellow = scarcity Green = supply Purple = demand Blue = incentive Pages one and two of the

a good or service in a particular market. At times, incentives might be used to correct the market by influencing the consumer’s or producer’s behavior.

Ask students to reflect on the relationship between supply and demand as described in the Concord Parks report.

Lead a class discussion with the following questions: How would students assess the health of the market? To what extent are consumers and producers getting what they need? What factors, including incentives,

are influencing consumer and producer choices and behavior? Finally, ask students to brainstorm options to correct imbalances between supply and demand. Ask them to consider possible tradeoffs of market interference.

Changing Policies, Incentives, and Choice Students may wonder what happened to the Concord Park project. When the first model home opened in 1954, the demand from African Americans was so high that the board Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

report offer a sizable chunk of content for students to practice recognizing and applying economic concepts, while not overwhelming in terms of length and readability. Suggest that students annotate one or both pages.

Close this activity with a discussion of how supply and demand should work in a market economy.

Explain that where supply and demand meet, both consumers (demand) and producers (supply) benefit. This relationship helps set prices for

Concord Park housing development advertising, 1957, Morris Milgram papers (collection 2176), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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overseeing the project opted to use quotas to guarantee mixed housing, rather than establish an all-Black development. Forty-five percent of new homes would be set aside for African American buyers and fifty-five percent for white buyers.5 Initially the tactic was a success, and Concord Park met its goal of providing new and open housing. By 1958, all the homes had been sold, and the 45:55 ratio held for several years.6 However, in 1968, the Fair Housing Act declared quotas illegal and thereby changed the housing market. Other factors also changed market conditions. For example, by the early 1970s the appeal of ranch-style homes dropped, especially among affluent

white homebuyers. White families who could afford newer and different styles of homes moved and sold their Concord Park homes to Black families. In 2000, the last white homeowner moved out of the development.7 Further Research, Different Lens The story of Concord Park offers an opportunity to think about the current housing market and how buyers and sellers interact.

The legacy of closed housing as well as attempts to open it through integration, can impact the choices, opportunities, and incentives available to consumers and producers today. Students might want to research their local community to learn more about

its housing history, as well as contemporary issues in housing markets. Zoning ordinances are one factor that many communities have conflicting views about and is a source of debate among stakeholders.

In addition to this research possibility, students might investigate different aspects of housing using resources from the Library of Congress. Students could expand on the economic framing discussed in this article to look at the issue from other disciplinary angles. For example: Housing Policy • Congress.gov provides access to the Bound Edition of the Congressional Record from 1873 (43rd Congress) through 1994 (103rd Congress).

Library of Congress Resources Related to Housing and Segregation The collections of the Library of Congress include many resources related to topics and individuals discussed in this article.

Here are a few items you and your students may wish to explore: Mary Church Terrell Papers (www.loc.gov/ collections/mary-church-terrell-papers/ about-this-collection) The Concord Park letter comes from this collection. Spanning the years 1851 to 1962, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1886-1954, the collection contains diaries, correspondence, printed matter, clippings, and speeches and writings, primarily focusing on Terrell’s career as an advocate of women’s rights and equal treatment of African Americans.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records (www.loc.gov/item/mss6557001435) The NAACP, in addition to its work on school desegregation, led many campaigns to end housing segregation. Several files in the collection

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offer details about a legal suit that the NAACP brought against Levittown housing developments.

Students might even discover that the Concord Park project also appears in this collection.

New Deal and Housing (www.loc.gov/ collections/fsa-owi-black-and-white-negatives/ about-this-collection) The New Deal included and inspired a range of programs and services to increase the supply of housing for vulnerable Americans. Images in this collection give a sense of the scope and scale of housing projects under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Teachers might use this resource to launch student research about the changing role of government policy in influencing housing market outcomes.

Students might examine the Record to locate debate on federal housing policy and how it may have changed over time. Of particular significance and possible interest to students is the 1949 Housing Act and debate about whether to include an amendment to the bill that would have banned segregation in public housing. ◆ Resource: Congressional Record | Congress.gov | Library of Congress (www.congress. gov/congressionalrecord/81st-congress/ browse-by-date) ◆ Tip: Students could further narrow their search to debate in the House and Senate on these specific dates in 1949: April 21, May 9, and June 28.

Role of the Press • The Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers collection provides access to select digitized newspaper pages produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (www.loc.gov/ndnp), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Students can use the database to look for articles about open housing generally, and Concord Park in particular. Encourage students to think about how the press covered the topic and what details, words, or phrases stand out.

◆ Resource: Chronicling America | The Library of Congress (www. loc.gov/collections/ chronicling-america) ◆ Tip: Try doing an advanced search using key terms and a limited date range. Key words: Concord + Park + Homes, date range 1954 – 1958.

Civil Rights in the North.”

3. Sugrue.

4. It’s unlikely that Mrs. Terrell (90) replied; she passed away later that summer, only several months after this letter was written and the Brown v. Board of Education decision was announced.

5. Sugrue.

6. Sugrue.

7. Sugrue.

The Great Migration

• Students can build a greater understanding of an economic story by learning more about what was happening at the time. The Great Migration and the resulting changes to the country’s demographics is a factor in the broader story of housing. ◆ Resource: The Great Migration | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/ classroom-materials/ great-migration) ◆ Tip: Encourage students to consider what sources in the set connect to the specific topic of housing. How do these sources add to their understanding of the Concord Park project?

If you try these suggestions, or a variation of them, with your students, tell us about your experience! During the last week of April, the Teaching with the Library of Congress Blog at blogs.loc. gov/teachers will feature a post tied to this article and we invite you to comment and share your teaching strategies.

Colleen Smith is an Educational Programs Specialist in the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office at the Library of Congress. For more information on the education programs of the Library of Congress, please visit www.loc.gov/ teachers.

Notes 1. Thomas J. Sugrue, “Concord Park, Open Housing, and the Lost Promise of Civil Rights in the North,” Pennsylvania Legacies (2010): 18-23, https://hsp.org/sites/ default/files/legacy_files/migrated/ legacies1110article3.pdf.

2. Sugrue, “Concord Park, Open Housing, and the Lost Promise of

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Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Reimagining Monument Avenue: Connecting Past to Present with the Inquiry Design Model Rachael E. Rudis

Following the 2020 murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, many U.S. cities and states accelerated efforts to remove Confederate monuments—a process that continues today, with mixed results.1 These removals reflect a growing recognition that such monuments were designed to advance the “Lost Cause,” the myth that the Confederacy fought for “states’ rights” rather than for the preservation of slavery.2 Confederate monuments played a central role in promoting this narrative by casting the Confederate cause as noble and heroic.3 Over 2,000 public Confederate memorials still remain in the United States, of which some 700-770 are monuments and statues.4 These memorials have a much younger history than many Americans realize as most Confederate memorials were created during two periods of American history: following Reconstruction at the dawn of Jim Crow and during the Civil Rights Movement.5 The creation of Confederate memorials was part of broader white backlash against the unprecedented increase in freedoms that these eras ushered in for Black Americans. The Southern Poverty Law Center makes clear that these monuments are “living symbols of white supremacy.”6 As monuments around the country are dismantled or replaced, it is important that teachers are informed and provide students with tools to recognize the constructed narratives surrounding such monuments; indeed, teachers must provide

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students opportunities to question these sites “as a matter of democratic necessity.”7 However, in accordance with a March 2025 executive order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is working to restore a Confederate monument at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.8 As the Trump administration moves to restore monuments, students may have questions, ideas, and opinions surrounding the issue. Analyzing monuments can illustrate for students that there are still ongoing debates about how we teach and learn history in the present. Through the case of Reconstruction, students can act as historians to add their own ideas about which histories should be remembered and how.

In this article, I use the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) and LaGarrett J. King’s Black historical consciousness framework to highlight a lesson sequence from my seventh-grade classroom in which students reimagined a space that formerly held six Confederate monuments in our state, Virginia. I discuss how teachers can use similar lessons in their classrooms.

IDM and Black Historical Consciousness The IDM offers teachers a template for planning inquiry-based social studies lessons that center historical thinking skills, source analysis, and social action. Inquiry-based lessons challenge students to ask questions, evaluate sources, and construct arguments. They are especially well-suited to teaching these historical thinking skills because

of their emphasis on real-world issues and civic engagement.9 Chandler and Hawley argued that inquiry lessons can be used to create antiracist pedagogy.10 I tied my IDM lesson sequence to the Black historical consciousness framework in order to center Black resistance and agency rather than oppression.11 The original framework contains six themes (later expanded to eight): power and oppression; Black agency, resistance, and perseverance; Africa and the African diaspora; Black joy; Black identities; and Black historical contention (the recognition that not all Black histories are positive). The IDM sequence I outline here especially focuses on the themes of power and oppression; Black agency, resistance, and perseverance; and Black identities, as students identify and honor Black histories in their communities.

Monument Avenue, Reimagined During the 2020 removal of monuments, I was a social studies teacher at a suburban public middle school in Virginia, where I taught U.S. history.

Across the country, Reconstruction is often taught through the white gaze, focusing primarily on how white political leaders interacted with constitutional amendments and political debates rather than how Black communities experienced the era.12 Focusing on the systemic issues that stalled Black freedom as well as on the experiences of Black Americans during this period challenges the preconceived notions students may have about Confederate monuments. Many of my predominantly white students had never questioned the presence of such monuments around their state.

The largest of these monuments in Virginia were located on Monument Avenue in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. They included five monuments of Confederate leaders: Robert E. Lee (erected 1890), J. E. B. Stuart (erected 1907), Jefferson Davis (erected 1907), Stonewall Jackson (erected 1919), and Matthew Fontaine Maury (erected 1929). The Robert E. Lee monument was on state-owned land, which made it harder for the city to remove. The sixth statue, erected in 1996, is of Arthur Ashe, the renowned Black tennis player, who was native to Richmond. This last statue was erected during debates about Richmond’s history of perpetuating Lost Cause ideology that celebrated

the Confederacy.13 Surrounding the statues is an affluent, white neighborhood.

In 2020, local Black Lives Matter protests at the site led the city to remove the Confederate statues, though the Arthur Ashe monument remains.14 Activists had covered the monuments in graffiti and red paint, focusing especially on the Lee monument.

During protests, the community projected images and quotes onto the monuments, including figures such as Frederick Douglass, John Lewis, and victims of racial violence like George Floyd. Despite city promises, there is still no plan to reimagine Monument Avenue more than five years later.15 Knowing this community history, I tasked students with a Reimagining Monument Avenue project at the close of our Reconstruction unit. The project was named after a local organization, no longer active, which sought to repurpose the space. Students spent a week and a half creating proposals about what the city should do with Monument Avenue.

I asked students to use their proposals to tell untold stories honoring the experiences of Black Americans during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Students considered proposing monuments, historical markers, and other memorials as they saw fit. Although I originally imagined the project as a written proposal, students quickly advocated for an expanded version: They wanted to reimagine Monument Avenue using Minecraft Education, a popular sandbox game in which players build worlds and that can increase students’ creativity.16 At first wary of using a video game to tell the history of race and racism, I agreed after students shared their reasoning (to more fully imagine the recreated space) and promised to remain sensitive to the realities of the history they were telling.

Their projects blew me away for their creativity and sensitivity. One group recreated Monument Avenue to scale, replacing Confederate monuments with new stories. Another group researched the meaning of various plants, creating a virtual garden with stories of Black resilience. A third group built a Hall of Mirrors, in which crystals that hung from the ceiling honored lives lost to lynching. While some groups embraced creating new statues, others decided that, because all humans are flawed, they would not include the likenesses of individual people, choosing instead to honor ideas and movements.

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Axel Lusa Halvorsen

Using Inquiry to Reimagine Figure 1. The Hall of Crystals, dedicated to lives lost from lynching Confederate Monuments Following the project I completed with my students, I reflected on and edited the lesson using the Inquiry Design Model. Here, I detail the edited lesson sequence for reimagining Confederate monuments. The central inquiry question of the sequence is, Who and what should we memorialize? To open the lesson, students engage in a thinkpair-share around the following prompt: “Think of a monument in your local community or beyond.

What is the purpose of that of Holocaust memorials, an article about the protest monument? Does it achieve this purpose? How?” art at the Robert E. Lee monument on Monument Then, students move through the three Performance Avenue, and the picture book A Hero Like Me to Tasks to prepare for the Summative Performance analyze both the purpose for creating monuments as Task, in which they create proposals about how the well as motivations for removing them.17 They create community should address local monuments.

Performance Task 1 is centered around the a concept map that charts their ideas and beliefs questions, Why are there different accounts or about the purpose of monuments, adding evidence perspectives of historical events? and How can from the sources to support their opinions. different perspectives about historical events impact Performance Task 3 asks students to engage how we view these events today? Students complete in a Socratic discussion with their peers centered around the question, What should be done with a primary source analysis on the myth of the Lost Confederate monuments? Along with the sources in Cause in which they analyze how the sources the previous two tasks, students can analyze recent represent a specific perspective about the Civil War or local news articles to prepare for the discussion. or Reconstruction. The source analysis illustrates the language and tactics that proponents of the Lost This task is designed for students to interrogate their Cause used to spread their ideas. Understanding own opinions about the topic and prepare for the the Lost Cause and how it was perpetuated can help Summative Performance Task. Sharing their ideas students to understand the links between the myth with peers can help them to brainstorm ideas for and Confederate monuments. Students create a their project together. In my classroom, I encourage graphic organizer identifying the author and date students to write their own discussion questions of publication for each source. In addition, students rather than using teacher-created questions in analyze each author’s perspective based on their order to support students’ critical thinking skills and language choices. If you do not have Confederate engagement. monuments in your state, consider addressing a After completing the three performance tasks, monument of another figure such as Christopher students will have learned the context of various Columbus, an enslaver, or a different controversial monuments and explored their beliefs about the figure. For a timely example, students could address purpose and future of such monuments. They are the statue at Arlington Cemetery that Defense ready to move to the Summative Performance Secretary Hegseth is attempting to restore.

Task to answer the compelling question, Who and In Performance Task 2, students explore the what should we memorialize? They then create a question What is the purpose of monuments? proposal about how their local community should through a gallery walk. Students view photographs continued on page 91

Who and what should we memorialize?

Standards and Content

C3 Standards D2.His.6.9-12. Analyze the ways in which the perspectives of those writing history shaped the history that they produced.

D2.His.7.9-12. Explain how the perspectives of people in the present shape interpretations of the past.

VA Standards of Learning Middle School USII: skills a, c, d, e, f, h, i; 2b, c, e, f; 5h, i, 8a.

High School VUS: 1a, c, d, e, f, h, i, j; 3c, e; 8a, b, d; 9a, c, d, e, g; 10g, h; 12a, d.

Staging the Compelling Question

Think-Pair-Share: Ask students to think of a monument in their local community or beyond. What is the purpose of that monument? Does it achieve this purpose? How?

Supporting Question 1 Why are there different accounts or perspectives of historical events?

Supporting Question 2 What is the purpose of monuments?

Supporting Question 3 What should be done with Confederate monuments?

How can different perspectives about historical events impact how we view these events today?

Formative Performance Task

Formative Performance Task

Formative Performance Task

Students complete a primary source analysis about Lost Cause ideology. They create a graphic organizer which identifies the author and date of publication for each source and analyzes the language each author uses that displays the author’s perspective. Students will discuss how the authors’ various perspectives impacted the documents.

Via a gallery walk, students analyze photographs, an article, and a picture book.

They create a concept map charting their ideas and beliefs about the purpose of monuments. Encourage them to add evidence from the sources supporting their opinions.

Using class work and news articles as evidence, students engage in a Socratic discussion focused on their ideas and beliefs about what should be done with Confederate monuments. Encourage students to write their own discussion questions with which to engage their peers.

Featured Sources

Featured Sources

Source A: Confederate Monument Literary Society Source B: Excerpt from A Measuring Rod to Test Textbooks, and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges, and Libraries Source C: Excerpt from New School History of the United States

Source A: Visual Essay: Holocaust Memorials and Monuments from Facing History and Ourselves

Featured Sources Sources: Recent or local news articles about Confederate monuments.

Source B: “In Richmond, VA., Protesters Transform a Confederate Statue,” NPR. Source C: A Hero Like Me by Angela Joy and Jen Reid

Source D: Poem from Stone Mountain, or the Lay of the Grey Minstrel Summative Performance Task

Students will create a proposal about how the community should handle a monument in their local area with a space that represents and honors diverse voices in their community.

Taking Informed Action

Students can submit their proposals to local community leaders or display them in a local library to raise awareness and create local change.

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Lost Cause Primary Sources Excerpts for Supporting Question 1 Source A: Confederate Memorial Literary Society (1896) Confederate Memorial Literary Society to United Confederate Veterans: SOLDIERS of the Confederacy, who loved our cause, and who for more than four bitter years suffered in its defense—we, who are but the keepers of the records of your glorious deeds—give greeting.

You have assembled once more in the capital of the Confederacy to lay the cornerstone of a monument to Jefferson Davis, our President, for a lasting witness of how we honor his memory and his unswerving loyalty to truth and liberty. Hopeful in disasters, courageous in danger, submissive to the will of Providence in defeat, he has left a shining example for all coming generations how best to serve their country and their God Amid the thronging memories of that heroic Past, which you and your presence in our capital recall we, women of Richmond, once more gladly welcome our defenders to our hearts and homes. We can never forget nor repay all you endured for us and our children; but we shall teach them to cherish your memory—to unite with us in the heartfelt prayer— “God bless for evermore \ the Confederate Soldier.”

Note: Available at https://archive.org/details/ confederatememor00conf.

Source B: Textbooks Mildred Rutherford’s book, A Measuring Rod to Test Text Books, and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges and Libraries, published in 1919, lists the following things that textbooks about the Civil War should include: A. “Secession was not rebellion” B. “The North was responsible for the War Between the States” C. “The War Between the States was not fought to hold the slaves” D. “Slaves were not ill-treated in the South.

The North was largely responsible for their presence in the South” Note: Available at https://ia800201.us.archive.org/20/ items/measuringrodtot00ruth/measuringrodtot00ruth. pdf.

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Source C: Textbook Description of Slavery from New School History of the United States (1900) The outcry against slavery had made the Southern people study the subject, and they had reached the conclusion that the evils connected with it were less than those of any other system of labor. Hundreds of thousands of African savages had been Christianized under its influence. The kindest relations existed between the slaves and their owners. A cruel and neglected master or mistress was rarely found. The sense of responsibility pressed heavily on the slave-owners, and they generally did the best they could for the physical and religious welfare of their slaves.

The bondage in which the negroes were held was not thought a wrong to them, because they were better off than any other menial class in the world.

Note: Available at https://archive.org/details/ newschoolhistory00lees.

Source D: Poem from Stone Mountain, or the Lay of the Grey Minstrel “Jefferson Davis! Still we honor thee!

Our lamb victorious, who for us endured A cross of martyrdom [sacrifice], a crown of thorns, A soul’s Gethsemane [garden where Jesus went through pain], a nation’s hate, A dungeon’s gloom! Another god in chains!

Here was Davis the Christ figure.”

Note: Available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ pt?id=mdp.39015038689678&seq=9.

Supporting Question 2 Sources 1. “Visual Essay: Holocaust Memorials and Monuments,” Facing History and Ourselves, Aug. 2, 2016, www.facinghistory.org/ resource-library/visual-essay-holocaustmemorials-monuments.

2. Sarah McCammon, “In Richmond, VA., Protesters Transform a Confederate Statue,” NPR, June 12, 2020.

3. Angela Joy and Jen Reid, illust. Leire Salaberria, A Hero Like Me (Quarto Publishing, 2023)

REIMAGINING MONUMENT AVENUE from page 88 address a monument in a way that represents and honors diverse voices. Proposals should lean on the information and opinions that students learned during the first three tasks, as well as their wider knowledge of Reconstruction. Depending on student interests, proposals can include written essays, artwork illustrating the changes students would make to these sites, digital recreations of the sites, or presentations.

Teachers can scaffold student research and connect to the local community by introducing students to local organizations, movements, and individuals who are fighting for change. It may be helpful to locate oral histories about local monuments or invite community organizations or guest speakers to visit the classroom. Hearing how monuments have affected individuals in their community can be a powerful impetus for student work.

Students can take informed action by sharing their work with an authentic audience. Asking students to share their work with others, particularly those who can use it to make change, increases the authenticity of the project. If there is a local organization committed to removing Confederate monuments, consider inviting them to view student work. If not, ask a local official to visit or display student work at a local library. Our students’ ideas can create real change in our communities if they share them with the world.

Conclusion Paired together, the IDM and Black historical consciousness framework provide a powerful framework through which to elicit student engagement and civic action. In this lesson, they support the extension of content knowledge about Reconstruction by challenging students to make connections between past and present, form their own opinions about current events, and create change in their communities. Asking students to take civic action about what they learn connects them to their local community and to their civic identities.

With more than 700 still standing throughout the country, Confederate monuments provide students with a unique opportunity to practice this work and make real change while doing so.

The power of the IDM lies in its ability to show students that they have the power to make change.

As the Trump administration works to restore recently-removed Confederate monuments, teachers have an opportunity to engage students in civic issues affecting their communities right now, encouraging them to make a change and feel empowered.18 Notes 1. Regan Morris,“These Confederate Statues Caused US Protests. Knocked Down, They’re the Centre of a New Art Show,” BBC, Oct. 20, 2025.

2. Karen Cox, “Correcting History: Confederate Monuments, Rituals, and the Lost Cause,” interview with Hasam Kwame Jeffries, Teaching Hard History, podcast audio, Oct. 19, 2021, www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/correcting-historyconfederate-monuments-rituals-and-the-lost-cause.

3. Gene Klein, “Confederate Monuments and Their Impact on the Collective Memory of the South and the North,” Southeastern Geographer 61 no. 3 (Fall 2021): 241-257.

4. “Whose Heritage,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 24, 2025, www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/whoseheritage; Kiara Alfonseca, “Confederate Monuments Spark Debate About How Cities Remember Their History,” ABC News, Jan. 15, 2024.

5. “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Feb. 1, 2019, https://www. splcenter.org/resources/reports/whose-heritage-publicsymbols-confederacy-3/.

6. Kimberly Allen,“Combating ‘Lost Cause’ Iconography During Confederate Heritage Month and Beyond,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 19, 2024.

7. Karen L. B. Burgard, “Framework for Decentering Whiteness in Social Studies Field Trips: Challenging the Whiteness Curriculum by Evaluating Museums and Public Sites, in Marking the “Invisible”: Articulating Whiteness in Social Studies Education, ed. Andrea M. Hawkman (Information Age, 2020), 361-383, 371.

8. Ashraf Khalil, “Confederate Statues in DC Area to be Restored and Replaced in Line with Trump’s Executive Order,” Associated Press, Aug. 5, 2025 9. C3 Teachers, https://c3teachers.org.

10. Prentice T. Chandler and Todd S. Hawley, Race Lessons: Using Inquiry to Teach About Race in Social Studies (Information Age, 2017).

11. LaGarrett J. King, “Black History is Not American History: Toward a Framework of Black Historical Consciousness,” Social Education 84 no. 6 (Nov/Dec 2020), 335-341, 337;

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the original six principles have expanded to eight, https:// ed.buffalo.edu/black-history-ed/framework.html.

12. Ana Rosado, Gideon Cohn-Postar, and Mimi Eisen, “Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth about Reconstruction,” Zinn Education Project, www.teachreconstructionreport.org.

13. Jonathan I. Lieb, “Separate Time, Shared Spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue, and the Politics of Richmond, Virginia’s Landscape,” Cultural Geographies 9, no. 3 (July 2002): 286-312.

14. “Monument Avenue Historic District,” Virginia Department of Historic Resources (April 22, 2024), www.dhr.virginia. gov/historic-registers/127-0174.

15. Tyler Layne, “Richmond Has No Plan to Reimagine Monument Avenue, Years After Statues Removal: ‘I’m Disappointed,’” CBS 6 (Richmond, Va.), April 17, 2024.

16. Mirian Checa-Romero and Isabel Pascual Gómez, “Minecraft and Machinima in Action: Development of

Creativity in the Classroom,” Technology, Pedagogy, and Education 27, no. 5 (Nov. 2018): 626-637.

17. “Visual Essay: Holocaust Memorials and Monuments,” Facing History and Ourselves, Aug. 2, 2016, www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/visual-essay-holocaust-memorials-monuments; Sarah McCammon, “In Richmond, VA., Protesters Transform a Confederate Statue,” NPR, June 12, 2020; Angela Joy and Jen Reid, illust. Leire Salaberria, A Hero Like Me (Quarto Publishing, 2023).

18. Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, “Trump Wants to Restore Statues and Monuments. Will That Happen?” NPR, April 1, 2025.

Rachael E. Rudis is a former middle school social studies teacher and current doctoral student in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.

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Learn more at socialstudies.org/rhokappa 92 | Social Education | March/April 2026

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Teaching With and About Technology

Cultivating Technocuriosity: Building Custom GPTs for K-12 Social Studies Amy Allen, Ilene R. Berson, Michael J. Berson, and David Hicks Across classrooms, teachers and students are encountering generative AI (GenAI) not as a distant possibility but as a present reality. Whether through district policies, student experimentation, or teacher curiosity, the technology is already here.1 The question is no longer if GenAI belongs in social studies education, but how it can be engaged in ways that strengthen rather than simplify disciplinary reasoning.

In this article, we share an approach that has emerged from our ongoing work with in-service and preservice history teachers: technocuriosity.2 This stance invites teachers to explore GenAI through inquiry and reflection rather than fear or fascination.

We pair this framework with practical examples that illustrate how educators can create custom GPTs to guide disciplinary thinking in social studies classrooms. Our goal is not to advocate for GenAI as a replacement for teacher expertise, but to show how, when guided by disciplinary frameworks, it can help make student reasoning visible.

Technocuriosity: Working in the Messy Middle Technocuriosity is not about mastering technology; it is about cultivating an orientation toward inquiry.

It reflects a willingness to experiment, critique, and revise while keeping disciplinary learning at the center.3 Adopting this stance means viewing GenAI not as a tool to accept or reject, but as a live, unfolding problem space4 to be explored through the habits of mind social studies already values:

curiosity, reflection, and ethical awareness.

Four interconnected ideas anchor technocuriosity (see Figure 1).5 Figuration and configuration describe how educators shape GenAI and the conditions under which it operates. When we figure the model as a mentor or a tutor rather than an oracle, we determine how it behaves and how students relate to it. Configuration, in turn, refers to the structures that make such interactions possible, from school infrastructure and district policies to the teachercontrolled inputs that define a custom GPT. These configurations set the parameters for teaching and learning. For example, when teachers upload their own slides, standards, or frameworks to a custom GPT, they create a bounded knowledge base from which they, along with their students, can work with social studies topics, procedures, and ways of thinking.

Liveness and speculative futures describe how teachers and students work within those configurations. Teaching with GenAI happens in what we call “the messy middle”—e.g., in real time and without a fixed script. Meaning emerges through prompting, response, critique, and reprompting; this cycle of exchange becomes the pedagogy itself. At the same time, the speculative futures and shadow lives of GenAI remind us to attend to what the model leaves out. Every response reflects choices about whose voices are represented and whose are missing. Technocuriosity asks educators to surface these omissions and to use them as openings

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for critical inquiry about knowledge, bias, and representation.

These ideas are supported by three pedagogical commitments. Through inventive methods, teachers participate directly in experimentation by testing prompts, observing what happens, and adjusting accordingly. Through speculative ethnography, they document how GenAI reshapes what counts as learning in social studies. And through live methods, they accept that each interaction is part of a recursive process of trying, revising, and reflecting.

For social studies educators, technocuriosity does not replace disciplinary literacy; it extends it. The discipline already depends on developing skills that help students grapple with uncertainty, interpretation, and evidence-based argument.

Historical thinking, for instance, depends not only on factual knowledge but on disciplinary concepts such as evidence, causation, and ethics, which come to life through practices like sourcing and corroboration.

Technocuriosity helps situate GenAI within this landscape. It does not ask us to add GenAI as an accessory to social studies instruction but to use it as a site for practicing the habits of reasoning that the discipline already demands.

Our development of this stance has also led us to use ChatGPT specifically (as opposed to the multitude of other tightly controlled or wrapped GenAI platforms such as SchoolAI, MagicSchool, or

Figure 1. Technocuriosity.

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Diffit). We find that ChatGPT offers us a great deal of freedom to make decisions and to shape what using GenAI might look like from a disciplinary perspective as opposed to other school-specific platforms that were developed without social studies in mind.

What Is a Custom GPT? Before turning to specific examples, it may be helpful to clarify what we mean by a custom GPT. On the surface, a custom GPT is simply a version of ChatGPT that teachers can adapt by adding their own instructions, tone, and materials. In practice, it becomes something far more pedagogical.6 On good days, it allows educators to define how the model behaves, what it emphasizes, and what it should avoid. (On bad days, it could provide great conversations about its limits and the importance of human discernment.) Teachers can upload their own frameworks, slides, or handouts so the model’s responses align with the reasoning and values of their discipline. From a technocurious perspective, this act of building is not about coding or optimization but about configuration by crafting a bounded space for inquiry. Each custom GPT reflects the teacher’s intentional choices about what kinds of questions are asked, what forms of thinking are modeled, and what boundaries keep learning safe, critical, and focused.

Examples of Custom GPTs The Scaffolding Historical Thinking Mentor (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-W4l0Ii0fh-scaffoldinghistorical-thinking-mentor) Our first custom GPT grew out of a familiar question: Could ChatGPT scaffold what teachers do when modeling source analysis? i.e., slowing students down, helping them ask better questions, and prompting them to engage in making inferences without giving away the answers? That question became the seed for the Scaffolding Historical Thinking Mentor, an early attempt to see whether a model could act as a conversational partner for source analysis rather than a generator of finished interpretations.

We built it by uploading materials from our work with the SCIM-C framework for source analysis (e.g., slides, workshop guides, and explanatory notes) so that the GPT would draw from authentic disciplinary scaffolds.7 Its instructions told the model to begin by greeting users, asking what they hoped to

learn, and then guiding them step-by-step through summarizing, contextualizing, inferring, monitoring, and corroborating. It was told to wait for responses, to pose one question at a time, and never to complete the analysis itself.

Our first version didn’t listen. Instead of guiding inquiry, it performed the entire process in a single paragraph. In response, through iterative cycles, we trained the Mentor to not immediately jump into source analysis but rather ask the users what they need from the mentor and their grade level. This does not mean that it will not try to give answers, but we have tried to put this guardrail in place. We have also provided users with specific prompts (conversation starters) to use to prevent students from simply asking the Mentor to do the work for them. The prompts are designed to nudge the Mentor to ask students very specific things. For example, “Please share your sources or work with me. What do you need from this session?” or “Would you like feedback on your analysis? Let’s see how you are using the scaffolds.” When users submit

Figure 2. Image of Scaffolding Historical Thinking Mentor GPT.

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written analyses, the Mentor then offers targeted feedback focused on the quality of reasoning, use of evidence, and alignment with the stages of SCIM-C (Summarizing, Contextualizing, Inferring, Monitoring, and Corroborating), rather than revising or rewriting the analysis itself.

In practice, the Mentor does some things well and some things poorly. It does have the potential to help teachers and students linger with evidence.

It can clarify what each phase of SCIM-C means, demonstrate the rhythm of inquiry, and provide feedback that highlights strengths and next steps. When used after live modeling, it could be positioned as a personal coach, extending teacher presence beyond class time. We have also used the Mentor to surface learning over time. By uploading multiple source analyses completed across a unit or semester, students can use the tool to reflect on patterns of growth in their questioning, inferential reasoning, and use of corroborating evidence. In this way, the Mentor supports not only momentto-moment scaffolding but also metacognitive reflection on historical thinking as a developing practice.

Ultimately, the Scaffolding Historical Thinking

Mentor doesn’t replace explicit instruction; it reinforces it and its creation embodies the technocurious stance of designing, testing, and refining a tool to make thinking visible.

Early Childhood Primary Source Guide (https:// bit.ly/early-childhood-primary-source-guide) Creating custom GPTs for social studies offers teachers a way to engage GenAI thoughtfully while remaining grounded in disciplinary and pedagogical priorities. In this section, we focus on a teacher-facing planning tool designed to support inquiry-based, developmentally appropriate instruction using primary sources from cultural heritage institutions.

Rather than functioning as a student-facing application, this GPT is intended to assist educators in selecting, adapting, and framing primary sources in ways that preserve professional judgment, ethical responsibility, and disciplinary integrity. Designing a GPT deepens educators’ understanding of what AI can and cannot do, making visible the points at which human judgment, ethical reasoning, and professional expertise remain essential. The process also promotes responsible AI use, as teachers must define boundaries, anticipate bias, and attend to

Figure 3. Interface of the Early Childhood Primary Source Guide custom GPT, designed as a teacher-facing planning tool that supports inquiry-based, developmentally appropriate instruction using primary sources from cultural heritage institutions.

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issues of accuracy, safety, and representation— particularly when designing AI-supported instruction for young children.8 At the same time, a well-designed GPT can extend teacher capacity by generating adaptable planning ideas and can be customized to specific grade levels, standards, themes, and classroom contexts.

The Early Childhood Primary Source Guide GPT (Figure 3) was developed through multiple cycles of drafting, stress-testing, analysis, debugging, and refinement. Each iteration focused on improving the model’s ability to (1) draw from high-quality primary sources within trusted cultural heritage institutions, (2) maintain developmental appropriateness for children ages 3–8, and (3) promote inquiry-based, multimodal, and embodied learning that reflects how young

children think, communicate, and make meaning.9 A key part of this work involved deliberately trying to “break” the model through edge-case prompts and misleading requests. These stress tests surfaced predictable misalignments—such as writing-heavy tasks, abstract interpretation, or inappropriate content—which then informed subsequent revisions.

The initial version offered general guidance for teachers using primary sources. Through iteration, the GPT’s scope was sharpened to a defined grade range (3-year-olds through Grade 3), with explicit exclusions for violent or sensitive topics (e.g., war, weapons, smoking) and a clear prohibition on simulations or reenactments.

Additional constraints required that all instructional suggestions be concrete, playful, and grounded

Figure 4. Historical photographs curated by the Early Childhood Primary Source Guide GPT from the Library of Congress,* illustrating developmentally appropriate primary sources that support inquiry into community, participation, and civic life in the early grades.

*

The photographs shown in Figure 4 were curated by the Early Childhood Primary Source Guide GPT from the Library of Congress Community: People and Places Primary Source Set, www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/community-people-and-places.

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in developmentally appropriate practice. These guardrails created clear perimeters that now anchor every response.

Further iterations strengthened the GPT’s support for inquiry-based learning. The model was required to begin with open-ended prompts such as “What do you notice?” and to center children’s observations before introducing context.

Language aligned with Teaching with Primary Sources practices (e.g., see, think, wonder; details; evidence) was embedded to reinforce disciplinary habits of mind. To align with how young children learn, the GPT was also refined to ensure that all suggested activities are multisensory and child-centered, emphasizing drawing, sorting, comparing, storytelling, and guided discussion.

Finally, the GPT was configured to reliably identify developmentally appropriate primary sources from trusted cultural heritage institutions, including the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Florida Memory—repositories whose collections support provenance and authenticity (see Figure 4). The model prioritizes sources that are connected to familiar aspects of children’s lives, require little prior historical knowledge, and contain rich, observable details that naturally spark curiosity and wonder, supporting children’s imaginative and interpretive engagement with the past.10

Taken together, this iterative process illustrates how technocuriosity operates in practice. The value of the GPT lies not in automation, but in the careful configuration of a bounded planning space where teachers can test ideas, refine instruction, and design inquiry-based social studies experiences that are both developmentally appropriate and disciplinarily grounded, drawing on their pedagogical, content, and technological knowledge.11 Building Your Own Custom GPTs What follows is not a set of directions to follow step by step, but an invitation to play. Building a custom GPT is less a technical exercise than a pedagogical one that explores how a tool might support the reasoning that defines social studies education. The work begins small and grows through deliberate experimentation. The goal is not to create the perfect chatbot, but to construct bounded, intentional spaces where teachers and students can practice the interpretive habits that make history an evidencebased, meaning-making discipline.

1. Start Small, Start Focused. Begin with a Custom GPT that serves a narrow purpose. Our first attempt tried to do everything: discuss causation, generate timelines, and explain significance.

The result was predictably uneven. Designing a model that does one thing well produces more consistent mentoring.

Table 1. Other Sample Custom GPTs for K–12 Social Studies.

Custom GPT Idea

What It Could Do

Instructional Design Mentor

Preloaded with state standards documents and information about the C3 Framework, helps teachers generate inquiry-based lesson outlines, align activities with standards, and refine learning goals through iterative questioning.

Core Concepts Mentor

Supports students in practicing second-order concepts (e.g., chronology, causation, continuity and change, and significance) through short, conversational prompts.

Discussion Strategy Mentor

Models and coaches teachers through discussion protocols (e.g., Socratic seminar, structured academic controversy), offering prompts and facilitation moves.

Primary Sources Collection to Interrogate

Acts as a curated archive where teachers upload a set of primary sources and students can inquire, compare, and analyze with guided questioning.

Assessment Progression Coach for Teachers

Helps teachers design performance tasks and rubrics that build from emerging to proficient to advanced demonstrations of historical thinking.

Assessment Progression Coach for Students

Helps students understand and improve their historical thinking by translating rubric language or teacher feedback into student-friendly terms, offering an analysis of growth over time, or suggesting concrete next steps for moving from emerging to proficient work.

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2. Name, Describe, and Define. When opening the Custom GPT builder, you will be asked to provide a name, a description, and a set of instructions.

These three elements define its persona and purpose. Clear, functional names and concise descriptions help both teacher and student users understand what the model is for. The instructions form its pedagogical core, shaping how it speaks, what it emphasizes, and what it avoids.

3. Curate the Knowledge Space. One of the most powerful features of custom GPTs is the ability to upload materials. Add PowerPoints, PDFs, notes, standards, or frameworks that define the space you are working in. The model does not memorize these materials but draws from them to shape its reasoning. While a custom GPT cannot be hardwired, a more coherent collection will lead to more predictable GPT reasoning. You also have the opportunity to specify whether or not you want the custom GPT to access the web for additional information.

4. Build Conversation Starters. Short example prompts can appear as clickable buttons when the model opens. These “prompt scaffolds” shape the student’s first encounter. Limiting the GPT to one or two starters gives the teacher control over how interactions begin and helps keep conversations purposeful.

5. Add Guardrails. Custom GPTs respond to tone and structure. Explicit instructions such as “ask one question at a time,” “do not write full essays,” or “always ask for evidence” help the model behave like a coach rather than an expert.

6. Prototype and Iterate. Once the model is live, test it repeatedly. Try different prompts, notice where it slips, and revise the instructions or materials. Each iteration reveals new possibilities and strengthens your control of the pedagogical space.

7. Keep a Record. Document what you upload and how you phrase instructions. Custom GPTs evolve with updates to the larger system, and keeping a record makes it easier to replicate success and to treat the classroom as a site of ongoing professional inquiry.

8. Embrace the Mess. Unpredictability is part of the method. A Custom GPT is not foolproof because it is a probabilistic product of its training data, your input, and the conversation itself. Treat it as a living artifact that can help students and teachers alike practice curiosity, critique, and reflection.

Conclusion Technocuriosity offers teachers a way to inhabit this moment of rapid technological change without surrendering the disciplinary commitments

Upload Only What You Have the Right to Use What to Upload (Green Light) – Your own work (notes, handouts, slides, rubrics).

– Institutionally licensed materials when explicitly permitted.

– Public-domain or openly licensed resources (e.g., Library of Congress, National Archives, Creative Commons).

– Summaries or excerpts you wrote of key frameworks rather than full scans of copyrighted books.

What Not to Upload (Red Light) – Full chapters or copyrighted articles you do not own the rights to share.

– Proprietary curriculum or commercial test items unless permitted.

– Student work with personally identifiable information (PII).

– Any data that could compromise privacy or safety.

Quick Checklist I created it or it’s PD/CC-licensed or I have written permission.

No PII or sensitive student data.

License/source included in filename or header.

Summarized/excerpted notes instead of full texts.

Platform data-use settings reviewed; content pruned regularly.

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that define our field. By approaching GenAI as something to be configured, questioned, and refined, educators can transform it into a tool for inquiry rather than automation.

In the end, technocuriosity is less about technology and more about pedagogy. It is a commitment to curiosity paired with critique, to liveness rather than finality, and to teaching social studies as an unfolding act of reasoning that teachers and students now perform not just with texts and sources, but in conversation with the tools that are reshaping how knowledge is made.

Notes 1. Natasha Singer, “How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future,” New York Times, May 19, 2025; Natasha Singer, “OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers,” New York Times, July 8, 2025.

2. Amy Allen and David Hicks, “Editorial: There’s an Elephant in the History Classroom: Rethinking GenAI Through Technocuriosity,” Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 25, no. 3 (2025).

3. Ibid.

4. Celia Lury, Problem Spaces: How and Why Methodology Matters (Polity Press, 2021).

5. These interconnected ideas and pedagogical commitments draw on sociological scholarship, particularly the work of Celia Lury on inventive methods, amphibious sociology, and figures. See Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford, eds., Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social (London: Routledge, 2012); Celia Lury, “Going Live: Towards an Amphibious Sociology,” The Sociological Review 60, no. 1 (2012): 184–197, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467954X.2012.02123.x; and Celia Lury, William Viney, and Scott Wark, eds., Figure: Concept and Method (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-192476-7.

6. We used the paid version of ChatGPT (currently $20/ month), which allows the user to create custom GPTs. Other platforms may allow you to create custom GPTs without paying for a premium subscription.

7. David Hicks, Peter Doolittle, and Tom Ewing, “The SCIM-C Strategy: Expert Historians, Historical Inquiry, and Multimedia,” Social Education 68, no. 3 (2004): 221–225; David Hicks and Peter Doolittle, “Fostering Analysis in Historical Inquiry Through Multimedia Embedded

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Scaffolding,” Theory and Research in Social Education 36, no. 3 (2008): 206–232, https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.20 08.10473373.

8. Ilene R. Berson, Michael J. Berson, and Wenwen Luo, “Innovating Responsibly: Ethical Considerations for AI in Early Childhood Education,” AI, Brain and Child 1, no. 2 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1007/s44436-025-00003-5.

9. Ilene R. Berson, Michael J. Berson, Wenwen Luo, and Huihua He, “Intelligence Augmentation in Early Childhood Education: A Multimodal Creative Inquiry Approach,” in Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol.

1831 (Springer, 2023), 756–763, https://doi.org/10.1007/9783-031-36336-8_116.

10. Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson, “Cultivating Wonder: A Design-Based Approach to Elevating Social Studies in the Early Years,” New Educator 20, nos.

3–4 (2024): 221–241, https://doi.org/10.1080/15476 88X.2024.2411337.

11. Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson, “Reimagining TPACK in the Landscape of Early Childhood Education,” in Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for Educators, 3rd ed., ed. Michael Phillips, Evrim Baran, Punya Mishra, and Matthew Koehler (Routledge, 2026), 39–60.

Amy Allen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of History and Social Science Education in the Elementary Education program at Virginia Tech. Her research examines how teachers and students navigate historical inquiry in the age of generative AI, with particular attention to how digital tools can support—rather than replace—the human work of meaning-making in social studies classrooms. She can be contacted at allenamy@vt.edu.

Ilene R. Berson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of South Florida. Her research explores early childhood social studies with a focus on the engagement of young children with digital technologies. She can be contacted at iberson@usf.edu.

Michael J. Berson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Social Science and Elementary Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of South Florida and a Senior Fellow in The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. His research focuses on technology in social studies education. He can be contacted at berson@usf.edu.

David Hicks, Ph.D., is a Professor of History and Social Science Education at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on the integration of digital technologies to deepen historical inquiry, disciplinary thinking, and critical literacy in social studies education. He can be contacted at hicks@vt.edu.

Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Teaching With and About Technology

Beyond the Black Box:

Teaching Critical AI Literacy in the Social Studies Through a “Human as a GPT” Simulation Thomas C. Hammond, Meghan Manfra, Erin Eberle Quilinquin, and Katie Quartuch In many social studies classrooms, artificial intelligence (AI) evokes both curiosity and concern.

While AI functionality comes in many forms, most AI tools being introduced into educational settings are large language models (LLMs) that generate fluent, human-like text in response to user prompts. These LLMs can be accessed directly through platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, or they can be integrated within existing tools that schools already use, such as Google Classroom or Canvas. AI developers have also produced versions specifically for the education market, such as MagicSchool, SchoolAI, and Khanmigo. While credible data is hard to come by, a recent survey of parents, teachers, and secondary students revealed that the vast majority currently use some form of AI: 75% of parents, 85% of teachers, and 86% of secondary students.1 ChatGPT is the fifth-most visited website in the world, receiving more traffic than major social media sites (such as X and TikTok), retail and streaming sites (Amazon, Netflix), and even search engines (Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo).2 While these tools are becoming increasingly more robust and widely used, according to the Pew Research Center, most teachers are “uncertain about the use of AI tools in K-12 education,” with about 25% perceiving “more harm than benefit” comes from their use.3 At the same time teenagers, when surveyed, reported feeling it was “acceptable” to use ChatGPT for research (69%), solving math

problems (39%), and writing essays (20%).4 The survey data alludes to more general confusion about the responsible and ethical use of these tools in the social studies classroom, including concerns related to academic dishonesty and the overreliance on these tools, as well as digital divide and access issues.5 In our field there are risks related to misinformation and misrepresentation of social science and historical data. Students must be equipped to navigate the complex information landscape and discern credibility. At the same time, it appears that AI tools could facilitate the instructional design of inquiry-based, experiential learning activities and provide for more personalized learning pathways for students. In order to harness the possibility, we must provide our students with a foundational understanding of the technology. We need to teach students not just how AI works and how to use it, we must also engage them in considering the impacts and implications. In short, from a social studies perspective, AI literacy must be a critical literacy.

For most users, but particularly students, outputs from LLMs appear authoritative, while the processes by which these systems are built remain obscure.

We encounter AI-generated text everyday through search engines, social media, and generative tools, yet rarely can we explain how these systems produce knowledge claims or fully interrogate the credibility or limits of those claims. One of the

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central challenges of teaching critical AI literacy is helping students understand that LLMs operate as a “black box,” but one built by humans and continually shaped by not only the creators but also those who interact with it. Without instructional opportunities to critically reflect on their use of these tools, students may overestimate the accuracy and epistemic authority of AI-generated text.

Some even resist language that personifies these chatbots as “thinking,” “intelligent,” and capable of “hallucinating” for these reasons.6 We recommend using a simple three-part framework of Assess-Plan-Learn to engage students in critical inquiry about their use of AI tools. In the first step, students are encouraged to assess their pre-existing assumptions about AI. Next, we plan a simulation experience that makes AI processes more visible without requiring advanced technical knowledge. Finally through structured, guided reflection, students learn to distinguish between surface-level coherence and disciplinary accuracy. In this final stage, the teacher connects the simulation back to core social studies skills and practices, such as sourcing and evidence verification.

Assess-Plan-Learn as a Stance The Assess-Plan-Learn framework draws heavily on participatory action research (PAR), which situates knowledge production differently than traditional, top-down, outside-in approaches. In this framework, the learner has agency to pose and pursue questions relevant to their learning goals/needs.

When applied to helping students develop critical AI literacy, the intention is to encourage teachers and students to systematically and intentionally develop theory (knowledge/understanding) in and through action. This process is systematic in that it follows a clear structure to guide each cycle of inquiry and to ensure the inquiry is iterative (each cycle building on the next). So for example in the first stage, students and teachers begin by assessing their own knowledge of AI, surfacing potential gaps in their understanding and assumptions about AI (for example that AI is “neutral”). The next step is to plan for instruction that directly addresses gaps in knowledge about how AI systems work or to plan for the responsible use of AI tools. Instructional activities are selected to clarify how LLMs generate text and to create opportunities for students to test

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their assumptions. In the final phase, students learn by doing. The emphasis here is on developing judgement through written or oral reflection, rather than focus on “correct answers.”

Running the “Human as a GPT” Simulation The heart of this instructional activity is a simulation that helps students understand the core logic—and randomness—of an LLM, as well as disrupting assumptions of any humanlike behavior. Importantly, this activity does not require students to use AI; it can run entirely on paper using textbooks and handouts. (You can also use a digital textbook, but our simulation requires the book to have an index.

In our experience, many digital textbooks are not indexed!) Accordingly, this simulation can be run even under the most stringent policies restricting students from using AI in class.

Preparation: Engaging prior knowledge, attitudes, and patterns of use We begin with a simple survey, asking students to report on their frequency using chatbots for schoolrelated social studies tasks; their perceptions of how accurate chatbots are in terms of the trustworthiness of responses; and what students know (or think they know) about how chatbots work; along with any questions students might have. For example, you might ask students to explain—without looking up the answer—what the “GPT” in ChatGPT stands for.

If this survey is given in advance, you may wish to discuss the survey with the class before beginning the activity, perhaps while displaying anonymized responses or a data summary of student opinions.

1. Background and instructions for simulation The “Human as a GPT” simulation retraces, in adapted form, a 1948 experiment in natural language processing. In that experiment, mathematician Claude Shannon (the person after whom the AI company Anthropic named its language model, “Claude”) used a random process to generate text, relying upon the logic encoded within existing language to make this random text comprehensible. Shannon chose a starting word, “the,” and then opened a random book to a random page. He then scanned through that page until he reached the target word (“the”) and then took the immediate next

word that followed (“head”). Note the parts of speech: an article (“the”), followed by a noun (“head”). This pairing was highly likely, given the internal logic of English, in which articles precede nouns, but not verbs. Having obtained his next target word (“head”), Shannon repeated the process: open a new random book to a new random page, scan that page for the new target word, and then write down the following word, which becomes the next target word. He completed this cycle 34 times, thus randomly generating the following string of words: The head and in frontal attack on an English writer that the character of this point is therefore another method for the letters that the time of whoever told the problem for an unexpected. This string of words is clearly not a sentence. It does begin with a subject (“the head”) but derails immediately afterwards—“and” suggests a compound subject, but “in frontal attack on an English writer” doesn’t match; it is an adverbial phrase, not a noun. While the entire 34 words do not form a sentence, sets of words do string together into phrases:

“another method for the letter” and “whoever told the problem.” These parts do not add up to a whole, but they are surprisingly close, given that they were randomly generated, guided only by the logic within natural language. From this experiment, Shannon concluded that “a sufficiently complex stochastic process will give a satisfactory representation of a discrete source.”7 In other words, a random process can create perfectly sensible text, as long as the process sufficiently maps the logic and meaning within natural language.

In our simulation, students re-trace Shannon’s process, but with modifications. Instead of using a large assortment of random books, we use a single book: student’s social studies textbooks.

Instead of picking any random word, we pick from the indexed terms in the book. Instead of opening to a random page, we select among the pages referenced for the indexed term.

Finally, instead of taking the subsequent word as the next target term, we select a word or a phrase or even a clause, as long as it contains

Figure 1. “Human as a GPT” Graphic Organizer, completed using Magruder’s American Government Phase 1: Automated generation of text Loop 1

Loop 2

Loop 3

Loop 4

Loop 5

Indexed term

tariff

import

quota

Europe

Soviet Union

Page #

p. 457

p. 696

p. 635

p. 506

p. 498

Extracted phrase or clause

tariffs can be An import applied only to quota is a limit imports

The National Origins Act of 1929 assigned each country in Europe a quota

The collective With the breakup of the defense of Soviet Union Western Europe, particularly against the threat of Soviet

Underline the next target term

(keep going?)

Phase 2: Post-processing to improve readability Revision 1 Don’t add any words. Only remove duplicates and rearrange portions of your string.

Tariffs can be applied only to imports, the collective defense of Western Europe. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the National Origins Act of 1929 assigned each country in Europe a quota. An import quota is a limit, particularly against the threat of Soviet aggression.

Revision 2 If needed, add (or change) articles, prepositions, or conjunctions (if, but, and, the, before, onto, etc).

Tariffs, the collective defense of Western Europe, can be applied only to imports. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1929, the National Origins Act assigned each country in Europe an import quota. A quota is a limit, particularly against the threat of Soviet aggression.

Does your revised output make grammatical sense?

Yes No Partially

Does your revised output make factual sense? Explain why or why not Yes No Partially

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2. Doing the first cycle together Having explained the process, we do the first cycle together as a group: Pick a term that you know will be in the index of the textbook (“democracy” or “industrial,” for example); model going to the index, seeing which pages contain the term, and choosing which page to go to; go to that page and find the term. Having located this first indexed term in the text, model the selection of the next word or phrase, finding a new indexed term—for example, preceding “democracy” might be “constitutional”; following “industrial” might be “revolution.” (Note: You might have to modify the term slightly to match the index: “agricultural” can become “agriculture”; “monarchical” can become “monarchy,” and so forth.) Model writing down the next target term, along with any bridging words that came between, and return to the index. You have completed the first cycle and are ready to do it again.

4. Post-processing and the distinction of modern GPTs The next step is called post-processing, and it is part of what distinguishes a modern chatbot from Shannon’s first experiment. In his 1948 experiment, Shannon followed a linear process: He generated text by adding one word after another, and he made no edits. From this simple process, the output might make sense, but that would be random chance. Modern chatbots use far more sophisticated techniques to choose the next word, revising their output as they go to correct grammar and probability. For instance, “Industrial Revolution” is far more likely than “industrialized revolution” in most contexts.

Students will next apply this modern practice, re-arranging and editing their raw output to help it make maximum sense. We compare this to using Grammarly or another writing support tool, but stress that the goal is to make as few changes as possible. They can add articles, prepositions, or conjunctions, but they should not add nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs.

The resulting output, now that post-processing is complete, is the final “response” that our simulated “Human as a GPT” has generated.

3. Subsequent cycles: Students on their own, or in pairs If needed, you can do an additional cycle as a whole class, modeling the process all over again: Take the new indexed term, pick a page on which that term appears, find the term on that page, and then gather the next indexed term. Once students have a sufficient understanding of the process, have them complete cycles independently or in pairs. While the output becomes more interesting with each cycle, we do not recommend doing 34 cycles! Five cycles should be enough.

Once students have completed five or more cycles, they write their output into a single statement. (Again, this is modeled in Figure 1.) This statement constitutes the “raw” output from a chatbot. Similar to what Claude Shannon generated, it will not make complete sense, either grammatically or logically. However, it contains elements of sense—individual phrases or clauses— because it was generated from natural language.

Evaluation, Review, and Reflection The students’ final output should make grammatical sense, but does it make logical sense? Does it actually hold up as a depiction of reality? Chatbots, after all, are prone to hallucination. To explore this, we display and discuss their output. For example, in one Civics and Government classroom, a pair of students generated the following sentence: “Barack Obama discusses his administration about the government representing the American Bar Association and has sponsored a critical approach that especially combines the election of 1896.” In this case, there was an easily apparent chronological error: The Obama administration took place more than a century after the election of 1896. However, there are more subtle issues within this output. For example, the government would never “represent” the American Bar Association, or any other person or entity, in the way that a lawyer represents a client.

The only client the government is to represent is the public, as when a criminal prosecutor states

another indexed term. This new indexed term starts the next cycle: Go to the index, see which pages have this next term, pick a page, and so on. This process is modeled in Figure 1, using a common high school civics textbook.8

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that he or she represents the people of a particular jurisdiction. While the distinctions between advocates vs. clients and public vs. private actors might be too fine-grained for an introductory civics class, more significant errors can elude students’ grasp.

In that same classroom, another pair of students generated a statement that “every state’s legislature possesses the police power.” The students thought this statement was factually accurate, but it contains a major misallocation of power: In the American government, state legislatures pass laws and conduct oversight, but police actions happen under the executive. In a more concerning example, students accepted this output as truth: “Democracy is a pure oligarchy.” Given that the students are, by definition, still learning these concepts and terms, they often lack the contextual knowledge to spot any but the most obvious errors.

From this evaluation step, we next move into an explanation: How do LLMs work, and how do they manage to be correct, or at least appear to be correct? We then re-visit the process that we just worked through, using the textbook, using the index, post-processing the output, etc. From these elements, we create an analogy (see Figure 2) to

how modern chatbots work: They have a generative pre-trained transformer (built using massive amounts of training data), which has an algorithm that consults billions of nodes (each representing a word or part of a word), and each node has billions of weighted coefficients showing how closely it relates to the other nodes. Multiple layers of pre-processing (to mathematically represent an input), simultaneous processing, and post-processing take place to generate an output that is grammatically correct and, usually, true or true enough. The modern chatbot makes true what Claude Shannon wrote in 1948 about a complex, random process giving a response that can pass as a comprehensible, discrete source.

The final step in our lesson is to have students reflect on both their own personal understanding and use (or non-use) of chatbots, as well as the social, economic, political, and environmental implications. On a personal level, how did the “Human as a GPT” simulation affirm or challenge their previous understandings of how chatbots work? In the future, when and why might they be more cautious when using a chatbot? On a societal level, what harms might emerge if people implicitly trust the output of chatbots, even when they’re wrong? How might the creators of LLMs subtly

Figure 2. Visualization of the Analogy between “Human as a GPT” and Actual LLMs

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(or not-so-subtly) influence society or politics by adjusting their algorithms?

From Simulation to Critical Judgement in the Social Studies The advent of AI has not changed the purposes of social studies, it has intensified the importance of the subject matter. Through critical AI literacy, students can apply much of the same skills to disciplinary literacy. Historical thinking requires many of the same skills as AI evaluation. At the same time, helping students develop critical AI literacy skills will also support their civic reasoning in an AI-mediate information landscape. As these tools become ubiquitous, it will become increasingly clear that AI literacy is essential for democratic education.

“Human as a GPT” is just one possible teaching strategy among many to educate students about AI while also engaging them with deep consideration of social studies content, their own patterns of interaction with AI, and society as a whole. We encourage other social studies teachers to adapt this simulation for their own purposes, or to create and share their own approaches to developing students’ critical AI literacy.

Newport, “What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?” The New Yorker (April 13, 2023) 7. Shannon, p. 7.

8. Magruder’s American Government (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); We use a graphic organizer; you could easily use a webform instead. We also recommend collecting students’ final output on a shared spreadsheet to display and discuss with the class.

Thomas C. Hammond is an Associate Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology program in the College of Education, Lehigh University. He can be reached at tch207@lehigh.edu.

Meghan Manfra is a Professor in the College of Education at NC State University and the Faculty Lead for AI Literacy in the Data Science and AI Academy (DSA). She can be reached at meghan_ manfra@ncsu.edu.

Erin Eberle Quilinquin is an Instructional Designer and Doctoral Research Assistant at Lehigh University. She is the founder of EQbed.

She can be reached at eberlequilinquin@gmail.com.

Katie Quartuch is an Assistant Principal at Stroudsburg Junior High School and a partner on the project. She can be reached at kquartuch@sburg.org.

Notes 1. Elizabeth Laird, Maddy Dwyer, and Hannah Quay-de la Vallee, Hand in Hand: Schools’ Embrace of AI Connected to Increased Risks to Students (Center for Democracy and Technology, Oct. 2025), 6.

2. Web traffic rankings from “Most Visited Websites in the World, Updated November 2025,” SemRush, accessed February 5, 2026, www.semrush.com/trending-websites/ global/all; and “Top Websites Ranking,” SimilarWeb, accessed February 5, 2026, www.similarweb.com/topwebsites.

3. Luona Lin, “A Quarter of U.S. Teachers Say AI Tools Do More Harm Than Good in K-12 Education,” Pew Research Center (May 15, 2024).

4. Ibid. Here teens who were familiar with ChatGPT were asked to rate their relative agreement for the acceptable use of ChatGPT. These numbers are likely higher today given the rapid adoption/development of LLMs like ChatGPT. 5. Michail Giannakos et al.,“The Promise and Challenges of Generative AI in Education,” Behaviour & Information Technology 44, no. 11 (2025): 2518–44. doi:10.1080/01449 29X.2024.2394886.

6. C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” Bell System Technical Journal, 27, no.3 (July 1948): 379–423. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x; See also Cal

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Moving?

Keep your Social Education magazine subscription coming. Use the QR code to sign into your online NCSS profile and update your address. It’s easy.

The College and University Faculty Assembly Connect, Collaborate, and Lead in Social Studies Higher Education CUFA is the NCSS Associated Group for college and university faculty dedicated to advancing social studies education at the higher education level. By joining, you gain opportunities to: • • • •

Share research, teaching strategies, and best practices with fellow social studies faculty Engage in national discussions shaping social studies higher education Participate in initiatives that advance the field and support social studies educators Network with colleagues across institutions

Membership is simple: 1. Be an active NCSS member.

2. Join CUFA to access exclusive resources, events, and a professional community of university faculty.

Strengthen your voice, connect with peers, and stay engaged in the national social studies community.

Learn more and join today: socialstudies.org/cufa

Photo credits: top row, Kalei Winfield (pexels), Rich Palmer, Katerina Holmes (pexels), bottom row, rdne (pexels), Kalei Winfield (pexels), yankrukov (pexels).

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Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Teaching With and About Technology

Crafting Curriculum: Supporting Teachers’ Use of Historical Photographs Cory Callahan Social studies teachers are often enthusiastic about problem-centered lessons that feature historical photographs. They know students can spend hours a day scrolling on social media without ever wondering, “Who created this picture and why?” or “What are the messages being expressed here, and do I agree with them?” Answering such interpretive questions about a photograph from the past can help students develop the skills to think deeply about pictures, infographics, memes, and shortform videos they encounter in the present. Even so, teachers who plan, implement, and assess this type of instruction can feel overwhelmed; they could use support.

The digital curriculum project Crafting Curriculum can be a helpful resource for teachers who lead students to interpret photographs and evaluate their messages (see Figure 1). Taken together, these are valuable twenty-first-century skills as many elements of contemporary culture tend to be mediated through the production and consumption of photographs on image-sharing online platforms.

The digital hub https://craftingcurriculum.org showcases interconnected, teacher-friendly lessons that engage students in historical inquiry. Each innovative lesson demonstrates a sound teaching approach for using historical photographs to help students make sense of social studies topics.

The lessons are didactic with deference: They are instructive and ready to use, yet teachers are strongly encouraged to adapt the lessons for their respective classroom contexts.

Several yellow “sticky notes” are embedded into each Crafting Curriculum lesson narrative (see Figure 2). These brief annotations provide (didactic) pedagogical insight and introduce informal professional development opportunities while showing respect (deference) to teachers and their autonomy.

Figure 2. A lesson narrative with a sticky note annotation.

Figure 2. A lesson narrative with a sticky note annotation

Figure 1. The Crafting Curriculum splash page.

Figure 1. The Crafting Curriculum splash page

Some sticky notes contain five-minute videos modeling how teachers can find, flesh out, and feature historical photographs in a social studies classroom. The videos—collegial and engaging, yet

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professional—promote powerful student learning and provide opportunities for teachers to hone their craft (see Figure 3). Along with the inquiry, Crafting Curriculum provides scores of additional “Monday-morning ready” resources for teachers, all of which are free.

Exploring a Model Inquiry The model inquiry centers around a compelling question: “What’s the proper balance between national sovereignty and international law?” And over the course of eight lessons, students analyze historical photographs, think critically and historically about them, and weigh evidence from multiple perspectives. Students also compare solutions offered by many nations throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries before developing their own solutions and supporting them with evidence gathered from the inquiry. Because students answer compelling and supporting questions, apply disciplinary skills, evaluate sources, and communicate conclusions, the lessons closely follow the C3 Framework and its Inquiry Arc. Launching the Lesson One lesson within the model inquiry begins with an informal, seemingly impromptu class-wide conversation about whether sporting events must be played fairly. Teachers can negotiate students’

responses by categorizing them into broader themes such as what constitutes “sportsmanship” (fair behavior) versus “gamesmanship” (suspect, but not unfair behavior) versus “cheating” (unfair behavior). Teachers can discuss the importance of a sporting event being played fairly out of a healthy respect for competition and self-fulfillment, or in the case of many sports, to establish legitimacy for legalized gambling. As responses wane, teachers might mention that students are going to extend the conversation to address, not athletic competition, but war. Teachers can then present the notion of whether wars must be fought fairly, and ask the supporting question, “Should nations at war follow generally established ‘conduct of war’ rules?”

As a transition from the hook to the main portion of the lesson, teachers can remind students that there are, and will likely always be, people who intentionally use images to influence their decisionmaking, and that the skills practiced in the lesson— interpreting a historical photograph and using it as evidence to support an answer to an open-ended question—can help students act more purposefully in their daily lives.

Analyzing a Historical Photograph Next, teachers can distribute copies of a data retrieval chart (see Figure 4; also available at https://craftingcurriculum.org/lessons/peresviet)

Figure 3. A sticky note featuring an educative video.

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for students to record their thoughts. Teachers can clarify that analyzing photographs is very different from simply glancing at them and explain how the data retrieval chart guides students toward analytical thinking. This handout could be collected at the end of class as a type of formative assessment of students’ learning.

Figure 4. Advanced organizer for thinking deeply deeply about Figure 4. Advanced organizer for thinking historical photographs. about historical photographs

photograph (e.g., “Sea mines were a relatively new and controversial weapon used to devastating effect by both sides in this war. More than twenty ships—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc.—were lost due to the thousands of mines that either floated untethered atop the sea or were tethered to the sea floor, hidden below sea level”). The primer also includes critical thinking questions (e.g., “Do you think the use of sea mines broke international law? Russia and Japan thought ‘no.’

Many other nations thought ‘yes,’ arguing sea mines were an unfair, ‘indiscriminate attack’ that posed too great a risk to civilians and commercial vessels”).

Figure 5. Detail of the historical photograph (www.loc.gov/ pictures/resource/cph.3f06353).

Figure 5. Detail of the historical photograph

Teachers can then make available the historical photograph, A Dead War Monster—Russian Battleship ‘Peresviet’ Wrecked by Japanese Shells, Port Arthur Harbor (see Figure 5). Students can be assigned to analyze the photograph together as a whole class, individually, or collaborating in small groups created to take into consideration their strengths and potential limitations, learning preferences, personalities, etc.

As students work, teachers can rely upon an innovative curriculum material, a photographic primer (see Figure 6; also available at https://craftingcurriculum.org/wp-content/ uploads/2022/10/Crafting_Curriculum_Peresvet_ Lesson_2022-TeacherHandout.pdf). The primer provides well-researched historical information and context to help students interpret the

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After students have completed the advanced organizer, teachers can gather the attention of the whole class and have students share their respective conclusions about nations’ rights and duties as they relate to the opening of hostilities, the use of sea mines, neutral nations, etc.

Connecting to the Present Each lesson within the model inquiry contains a follow-on activity that connects its topic directly to modern society. Teachers can ask students to analyze a recent photograph and make associations across time that they might not otherwise consider (i.e., recognizing recurring or persistent issues

Figure 6. An educational primer for the historical photograph

Figure 6. An educational primer for the historical photograph.

throughout history). This lesson includes a second photograph, one from only a few years ago; it depicts a “laser-weapon” that supposedly damages satellites. The curriculum materials provide teachers with guidance for helping students evaluate similarities and differences between the past and present (e.g., the use of sea mines in 1904 and sending orbital debris to collide with satellites in 2025; are these “indiscriminate attacks?”).

Answering the Supporting Question Next, students should address the supporting question. They can use information from this lesson, and collected on the advanced organizer, to create and submit a short-form video, an infographic or meme with annotations, or a few paragraphs revealing their answer. To produce a truly comprehensive answer to such a complex issue, students would need more than this lesson; still, they should be able to craft a thoughtful preliminary answer. As the lesson ends, teachers can reiterate how the skills and habits of mind just practiced have tremendous value, especially considering the amount of visual information inundating many people’s daily lives.

The heavy demands on a teacher’s time create a challenging context for helping students develop the skills necessary to accurately interpret a historical photograph and evaluate its messages. The support provided by Crafting Curriculum can be one element in an effort to meet this challenge. When carefully integrated into a cohesive teaching strategy, the twentyfirst-century skills advocated for and modeled here offer a great opportunity to help teachers and students think deeply about the production and consumption of photographs in relation to contemporary culture, now and in the future.

Cory Callahan is an Associate Professor of Secondary Social Studies Education in the College of Education at The University of Alabama. His email address is cwcallahan@ua.edu.

Note: The work created by Crafting Curriculum and presented here was sponsored in part by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Midwest and Southern Regions, at Illinois State University and Middle Tennessee State University, respectively. Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS Midwest and Southern Regions does not indicate endorsement by the Library of Congress.

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Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Introducing the CMET:

A Tool for Vetting Digital Social Studies Materials Eric B. Freedman, Tina Y. Gourd, and Bianca Schamberger In this article, we introduce a tool for vetting social studies curriculum materials in the digital age. We begin by describing the historical moment that prompted the tool’s development. We then summarize our design process and intended uses for the tool. A fillable version of the tool and accompanying scoring guide are available online.1 A Curricular Revolution At the turn of the twenty-first century, when I (Eric) first entered the classroom, a row of hardbound textbooks lined my shelf. Beside them stood paperback materials that I had collected at NCSS conventions. Despite the ubiquity of student laptops at our school, the social studies team used these printed texts. It may be hard to fathom now, but virtually no instructional materials existed online. When I returned from academia in 2014 to teach high school again, this curricular landscape had undergone a seismic shift. After a century of textbooks defining what and how content would be taught, the advent of the Internet had thrust the fault lines wide open.2 Data from the National Center for Education Statistics bears this out. Between 2010 and 2022, the portion of U.S. teachers reporting weekly use of a history textbook plummeted from 86% to 42%, while the portion saying their students accessed social studies materials extensively online surged from 46% to 68%. For the first time in history, the Internet now provides a greater portion of social studies content than printed textbooks.3 We are only beginning to grasp the ramifications. With many organizations offering curriculum materials at little or no cost, educators have more options than ever before. The new digital materials often center voices long ignored by mainstream textbooks and employ inquiry strategies avoided by all but the most innovative print materials.4

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Yet this digital revolution also has a darker side.

Like online news sources, social media sites, and other unregulated fora, digital curriculum materials face the daunting question: Who will vet them?

A search for materials on, say, the Black Power Movement turns up countless hits to sift through.

The user rating system on sites like Teachers Pay Teachers does not seem up to the task.

Independent reviews have faulted even the site’s most popular materials, identifying whitewashed and exclusionary tropes. Inquiry Design Model lessons housed at C3Teachers.org have garnered similar concerns over coherence and cultural sensitivity. Other sites that maintain more consistent quality often still center dominant voices, and their visions of rigorous inquiry vary widely. 5 A Vetting Tool for Digital Materials Here we offer a device for navigating this expanding universe of digital materials. Developed over eight months, the Curriculum Materials Evaluation Tool (CMET) guides educators through a comprehensive analysis of a given material set. The CMET opens by asking for the reviewer’s initial impressions. It then invites evaluation along four dimensions: inquiry approach; critical orientation; teacher agency and pedagogical supports; and digital affordances.

Finally, it asks how the material set could be adapted for different classroom contexts. These criteria align with the C3 Framework and NCSS position statements on racial literacy, LGBT+ history, and Indigenous peoples.6

The CMET’s design grew from collaboration among university faculty, curriculum specialists, and classroom teachers. For the initial draft, we examined related tools in social studies and other fields, such as Gallagher and colleagues’ “‘Pinning’ with Pause.”7 We also asked seven social studies teachers to share their uses and visions for digital materials. The tool then underwent three subsequent iterations, as we gathered feedback from our diverse team members.

The current (fourth) iteration includes a scoring guide to assist with evaluation and is intended for digital materials in history; future versions could expand to other social studies fields.

As part of the design process, we asked four teachers to “think aloud” as they used the CMET,

in order to provide feedback. Given demanding teaching schedules, the teachers begrudged its length, with Charlie saying, “These are … exhaustive and therefore exhausting questions to be asking about something that I really want to be doing in 20 minutes.” Yet the teachers also saw benefits of the comprehensive analysis. Elaine said, “It reminds me of just how much you really ought to be thinking about, right? … I’m not in a place even after 22 years where I have this mental checklist.”

The Tool in Action Elaine’s think-aloud illustrates the CMET’s potential.

In response to the opening prompts (I.1 & II.2), continued on page 116

Figure 1. Curriculum Materials Evaluation Tool – History (v4.2)

Material set analyzed:

Date:

This tool begins and ends with your overall impressions of the material set. In between, it prompts you to assess along four dimensions—inquiry approach, critical orientation, teacher agency, and digital affordances—which can be completed in any order.

Part 1: Initial Impressions 1. What do you find interesting about this material set? What stands out to you as unique, praiseworthy, or problematic?

(Answer here or through margin notes on the material set) Part II: Inquiry Approach These questions refer to the substantive content of the material set and to the kinds of student activity it promotes.

2. What is this material set mainly about (e.g., topics or eras)? What forms of inquiry does it emphasize (e.g., ingest information, interpret documents, cast moral judgments.)? (Justify your answer) 3. Given your answer to #2, what underlying assumptions (about history, power, education, etc.) appear to drive this material set? What is presented as given, and what is opened up to interrogate?

4. Rate the material set on the following criteria: No evidence 0

Some evidence 1

Substantial evidence 2

4a. Open-endedness: Centers compelling questions that have no obvious right answer (e.g., “should” or “why” questions).

4b. Student Agency: Positions students as decision-makers and authors of ideas, throughout all phases of inquiry.

4c. Corroboration: Promotes comparison across multiple and disparate viewpoints on the events or issues examined.

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4d. Sourcing: Promotes consideration of the author’s knowledge, bias, identity, intended audience, or purpose when interpreting sources or perspectives.

4e. Contextualization: Promotes viewing events within their specific context (e.g., temporal, geographic, cultural).

4f. Substantive Conversation: Promotes extended, substantive conversation among students over subject matter.

4g. Sustained Inquiry: Promotes sustained (multiday) exploration of essential concepts, patterns, or trends (e.g., progress, colonialism).

Comments on your ratings:

Part III: Critical Orientation These questions refer to the substantive content of the material set and to the kinds of student activity it promotes.

5. In this material set, who is at the center of the story (and who is at the periphery or missing)? Whose worldviews are being substantiated? (Justify your answer) 6. For whom does this material set appear to be designed? (Consider, e.g., race, gender, ability, etc.) What assumptions are made about who the students and teacher are?

(Justify your answer) 7. Rate the material set on the following criteria: No evidence 0 7a. Relevance: Inquiry is sparked by students’ genuine interests, uncertainties, or experiences, or by issues relevant to our world.

7b. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP): Centers and sustains the lifeways, stories, and traditions of communities often depicted at the margin or ignored.

7c. Depictions: Presents people and events in an accurate, nonessentialized manner, avoiding stereotypes, exoticism, etc.

7d. Agency: Depicts diverse groups as having agency (e.g., deciding, inventing, producing, resisting, etc.).

7e. Critical Analysis: Promotes use of critical lenses (e.g., feminism) to analyze systems of oppression (not just individual acts).

7f. Social Action: Encourages students to act on their conclusions beyond the classroom (e.g., advocacy, organizing).

Comments on your ratings:

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Some evidence 1

Substantial evidence 2

Part IV: Teacher Agency and Pedagogical Supports These questions refer to the pedagogical supports that the material set provides for teachers.

8. How are teachers positioned in this material set (e.g., as automatons, as decision-makers, as learners)? What instructional and planning decisions are prescribed and what is left open? What pedagogical supports are provided (and what is not provided)? (Justify your answer) 9. Rate the material set on the following criteria: No evidence 0

Some evidence 1

Substantial evidence 2

Some evidence 1

Substantial evidence 2

9a. Transparency of Design: Explains and justifies key design features and how to enact them (e.g., through call-out boxes).

9b. Preconceptions: Describes potential student preconceptions (or misconceptions) and how they might be addressed.

9c. Adaptability to Local Context: Supports teachers’ decisionmaking to fit varied contexts and professional needs (as opposed to prescribing what is to be done).

9d. Accessibility (Universal Design): Allows students multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression.

9e. Differentiated Instruction: Specifies supports and extensions for English language learners, struggling readers, gifted students, or other students with specific learning needs.

9f. Support for CSP: Supports teachers in developing culturally sustaining pedagogy (e.g., suggestions for facilitating discussions on sensitive topics, considering student demographics & identities).

9g. Assessments: Includes formative and summative assessments, along with advice for scoring or providing feedback (e.g., rubrics).

Comments on your ratings:

Part V: Digital Affordances These questions refer to the digital features of the material set and hosting website.

10.

In what ways does the material set capitalize on the digital format?

11.

Rate the material set on the following criteria: No evidence 0

11a. Layout and Navigability: Website or material set is clearly laid out and easy for educators to navigate.

11b. Search Functionality: Provides keyword or other search functions that allow users to easily locate desired content.

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11c. Student Friendliness: Portions intended for student use fit that purpose well (e.g., visually appealing, not overwhelming, minimal distractions).

11d. Digital Information Sources: Includes multimedia, wikis, webpages, or other information sources not generally available in print.

11e. Digital Collaboration: Provides a digital means for students to collaborate and/or build communal knowledge (e.g., threaded discussion, class wiki, Google docs).

11f. Digital Scaffolding: Supports student thinking via digital scaffolds (e.g., templates, sentence starters, modeling, tutoring).

Comments on your ratings:

Part VI: Final Thoughts 12. Have you used this material set? What for? What parts of it did you use? How did it work? (If you haven’t used it, would you? Why or why not? What would you use it for?)

13. How might you fit this material set to your goals and context (e.g., what might you change)?

14. Anything else about the material set not yet addressed?

INTRODUCING THE CMET

from page 113

she praised the interest level and accessibility of materials on Tinker v. Des Moines, from Landmark Cases of the Supreme Court.8 As she worked her way through the CMET, though, she grew more critical of the Tinker materials. Prompted in item II.3 to consider “underlying assumptions,” she noted that the materials tended to aggrandize the Supreme Court, “like it’s almost reverent, you know?”

Elaine’s answers to Part III: Critical Orientation revealed growing reservations. When asked, “Who is at the center of the story” (item III.5), she said, “I mean, it’s white high school students, I think they’re suburban … Midwestern. So clearly everybody else is missing. … You think about free speech—my God, all the other students who had reason to protest.”

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Here, Elaine wondered why, given the numerous civil rights and antiwar protests of that era, the curriculum featured a single case involving suburban white students. When the CMET asked, “For whom does this material set appear to be designed?” (item III.6), she felt it would look different “if it were made by or for teachers or students of color, other marginalized groups.” The CMET appeared to promote this deepened analysis among other teachers as well.9 We find these results encouraging. In designing the tool, we included questions along multiple dimensions to discourage adopting something based on a gestalt impression. As the teachers noticed, the Tinker materials shined in their inquiry approach but lacked a critical orientation. Other materials we have analyzed center marginalized voices but lack pedagogical supports for newer

teachers or fail to capitalize on the digital format.10 The CMET can help educators attend to these varied criteria when building curriculum.

A Collaborative Vision For too long, academics, politicians, and parent advocacy groups have assessed curriculum with little input from teachers.11 Through questions such as, “Have you used this material set?” “How did it work?” (item VI.12), and “How might you fit [it] to your goals and context?” (item VI.13), the CMET invites classroom teachers into the conversation over curriculum. Our team of scholars and practitioners has used the tool on materials from six highly trafficked sites, as well as underutilized materials on LGBTQ+ history.12 Such work could form the basis for an online hub (akin to review sites like Wirecutter, www.nytimes.com/wirecutter), where educators vet and discuss materials.

Still, we recognize that most teachers will not reach for the CMET to assess every lesson they find online. The tool is better suited to bigger decisions like a grade team determining the central materials of a yearlong curriculum. State or district adoption committees could use the tool to similar ends. In professional development, the CMET could help teachers develop a “mental checklist,” as Elaine put it, for evaluating materials in daily practice.13 Along these lines, I have

asked preservice teachers to use the CMET when analyzing and presenting curriculum materials to their peers. When teachers’ time demands quicker assessment, a pared-down version of the tool could also suffice. Figure 2 illustrates one option that focuses on just the CMET’s open-ended items.

As history textbooks fade in importance, we need better tools for vetting the myriad of options a mouse-click away. And as state governments seek to curtail students’ learning about the racialized past and present, we need honest attempts to determine how digital materials treat that history. Do they mythologize it? Do they reify categories of oppressor and oppressed, as some fear? Or do they foster critical reflection—and if so, how? We hope this new tool can assist in navigating the digital landscape that has transformed our classrooms.

Notes 1. Access a fillable version of the CMET and scoring guide at www.socialstudies.org/social-education/90/2/introducingcmet.

2. See Ronald W. Evans, The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children? (Teachers College Press, 2004). http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev445.htm.

3. National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], National Assessment of Educational Progress: 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022 U.S. History Assessments (2022), https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/.

Figure 2. CMET short version Inquiry Approach 1. What forms of inquiry does the lesson emphasize (e.g., ingest information, interpret documents, cast moral judgments, etc.)?

2. What underlying assumptions (about history, power, education, etc.) appear to drive this material set? What is presented as given, and what is opened up to interrogate?

Critical Orientation 3. Who is at the center of the story (and who is at the periphery or missing)? Whose worldviews are being substantiated?

4. For whom does this material set appear to be designed? (Consider, e.g., race, gender, ability, etc.) What assumptions are made about who the students and teacher are?

Teacher Agency and Pedagogical Supports 5. What instructional and planning decisions are prescribed and what is left open? What pedagogical supports are provided (and what is not provided)?

Digital Affordances 6. In what ways does the material set capitalize on the digital format?

Final Thoughts 7. How might you fit this material set to your goals and context (e.g., what might you change)?

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4. See, e.g., Brian Girard et al., “‘There’s No Way We Can Teach All of This’: Factors That Influence Secondary History Teachers’ Content Choices,” Theory & Research in Social Education 49, no. 2 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1080/0093 3104.2020.1855280; Merry M. Merryfield, “The Web and Teachers’ Decision-making in Global Education,” Theory & Research in Social Education 35, no. 2 (2007), https://doi. org/10.1080/00933104.2007.10473335; Abby Reisman, “The ‘Document-Based Lesson’: Bringing Disciplinary Inquiry into High School History Classrooms with Adolescent Struggling Readers,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 44, no. 2 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2011.591436; Cinthia Salinas and M. Elizabeth Bellows, “Preservice Social Studies Teachers’ Historical Thinking and Digitized Primary Sources: What They Use and Why,” Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education 11, no. 2 (2011), https://citejournal.org/ wp-content/uploads/2016/04/v11i2socialstudies1.pdf.

5. On Teachers Pay Teachers lessons, see Lauren M. Harris, Leanna Archambault, and Catharyn C. Shelton, “Issues of Quality on Teachers Pay Teachers: An Exploration of Best-selling U.S. History Resources,” Journal of Research on Technology in Education 55, no. 4 (2023), https://doi. org/10.1080/15391523.2021.2014373; Katy Swalwell et al., “Distracting, Erasing, and Othering: A Critical Analysis of the Teachers Pay Teachers’ Teach for Justice Collection,” Harvard Educational Review 93, no. 1 (2023), https://doi. org/10.17763/1943-5045-93.1.104. On Inquiry Design Model (C3) lessons, see Daniel G. Krutka and Mark Hlavacik, “Refining Criteria for Civic Inquiry: An Analysis of Inquiry Design Model Lessons,” Theory & Research in Social Education 53, no. 4 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1080 /00933104.2025.2507595. On other digital materials, see, e.g., Jenni Conrad, “The Big History Project and Colonizing Knowledges in World History Curriculum,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 51, no. 1 (2019), https://doi.org/10.10 80/00220272.2018.1493143; Kate Lechtenberg, “Beyond Good Intentions: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Teaching Tolerance’s ‘Teaching the New Jim Crow: A Teacher’s Guide,’” Journal of Curriculum Studies 53, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00220272.2020.1820080.

6. National Council for the Social Studies [NCSS], The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (NCSS, 2013), www. socialstudies.org/c3; “NCSS Position Statements,” www. socialstudies.org/position-statements.

7. Jennifer L. Gallagher, Katy M. Swalwell, and M. Elizabeth Bellows, “‘Pinning’ with Pause: Supporting Teachers’ Critical Consumption on Sites of Curriculum Sharing,” Social Education 83, no. 4 (2019), www.socialstudies.org/ social-education/83/4. For other tools we consulted, see “EQuIP rubric for lessons & units: Science (version 3.0),” 2016, www.nextgenscience.org/resources/equip-rubricscience; Elizabeth A. Davis et al., “Educative Curriculum

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Materials: Uptake, Impact, and Implications for Research and Design,” Educational Researcher 46, no. 6 (2017), https://doi. org/10.3102/0013189X17727502; Fred M. Newmann, Helen M. Marks, and Adam Gamoran, “Authentic Pedagogy and Student Performance,” American Journal of Education 104, no. 4 (1996), https://doi.org/10.1086/444136.

8. “Landmark Cases of the Supreme Court,” www.landmarkcases.org.

9. Eric B. Freedman et al., “‘Reminds Me How Much You Ought to be Thinking About”: Advancing History Teachers’ Vetting and Adaption of Digital Curriculum Materials,” Journal of Social Studies Research 48, no. 3 (2024), https://doi. org/10.1177/23522798241230300.

10. Eric B. Freedman et al., “Assessing Digital History Curriculum Materials with Social Studies Educators” (Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Nashville, TN, November 29 – December 3, 2023).

11. See Evans, The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children; Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts Over American History Textbooks from The Civil War to the Present (University of Michigan Press, 2003).

12. Colleen M. Kollasch, Eric B. Freedman, and Tina Y. Gourd, “Evaluating Queer History Curriculum: Inquiry, Criticality, Teacher Agency, and Digital Possibilities” (Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, DC, December 3 – 7, 2025).

13. See Noreen N. Rodríguez, Michael Brown, and Amanda Vickery, “Pinning for Profit? Examining Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Critical Analysis of Online Social Studies Resources about Black History,” Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education 20, no. 3 (2020), https:// citejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/v20i3socialstudies1.pdf.

Eric B. Freedman is a former high school history and government teacher and is currently an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Iowa. His research explores the design of socially transformative curriculum in history. He also analyzes student engagement in historical discussions.

Tina Y. Gourd is a teaching associate at the University of Washington in Seattle, teaching across three teacher education pathways. Her scholarly interests focus on teacher agency, supporting the development of teachers of color, and social studies curriculum that avoids damaged-centered narratives.

Bianca Schamberger is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography and Regional Science at the University of Graz, Austria. There, her research explores transformative learning in geography and economics education and how to support both preand inservice teachers in facilitating it.

Publish With NCSS NCSS welcomes manuscripts from members interested in publishing in one of our periodicals—Social Education, Middle Level Learning, or Social Studies and the Young Learner.

We are looking for substantive articles and lesson plans in any of the social studies disciplines. We are very interested in publishing more articles on psychology and geography.

We welcome articles on the following topics: • Social and Emotional Learning • Teaching Civil Discourse • Formative Assessments • Fostering a Global Mindset • Teaching about Climate Change • Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners

• Teaching about Equity and Diversity • Promoting Cultural Inclusion • My Favorite Lesson Plan NCSS is strongly committed to advocacy for the social studies. We welcome articles on any form of advocacy in which you have engaged.

For more details (including the preferred length of manuscripts and procedures for submitting them), see www.socialstudies. org/publications/how-submit

What’s Happening in Your State Council?

Did you know that most states have an NCSS Affiliate Council?

These councils give social studies educators a local space to:

� Connect with colleagues in your area � Engage in professional development and community events � Recognize and celebrate outstanding teaching and scholarship � Participate in awards and programs at the state level

Find your state’s affiliate council and get connected today!

Visit www.socialstudies.org/affiliates and click on your state to connect.

Join your local council — and bring the power of NCSS to your community.

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Social Education 90 (2) ©2026 National Council for the Social Studies

Clarence V. Walker, Jr., is an assistant professor specializing in visual art and ethnic studies, black educational history, and teacher preparation in social studies education at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Previously, he spent nine years teaching secondary school.

Q. Why did you become a teacher?

A. All I have ever wanted to be was a teacher. This is largely because of my mom, who taught me to believe in myself, and the dedicated educators at my predominantly Black elementary school, who poured everything they had into their students. I wanted to make a similar impact on the world. So, as a secondary teacher and now teacher educator, I teach to change the world for the better.

Q. What teaching success or career achievement are you most proud of?

A. I am most proud of the impact I’ve made on the lives of my students. During my years as a high school teacher, I served as the school’s sponsor for the Black Student Union. During that time, the organization experienced growth, nurtured students and platformed them as leaders, served the community, and celebrated Black history and culture year-round. Now, as a university professor, I take pride and joy in preparing my students for

For inquiries about Social Education advertising, call Maribell Abeja-DeVitto at 312-673-5483 or e-mail MAbejaDeVitto@smithbucklin.com Information about advertising rates and specs can also be found at www.socialstudies.org/advertising

120 | Social Education | March/April 2026

the everyday realities of social studies teaching.

Q. When and why did you join NCSS? A. I joined NCSS in 2012 at the urging of my former professor, Dr. Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker at Florida State University. She saw something in me that I didn’t necessarily see in myself at that time, and she encouraged me to submit my first presentation at a professional conference at the International Assembly.

Q. How has being a part of a professional association enriched your career?

A. Professional associations like NCSS provide spaces to learn, grow, and collaborate, as well as gain support from and solidarity with like-minded individuals. In turn, lessons learned from professional associations have benefited my students and research and strengthened connections with colleagues.

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