On September 17, 2011 (Constitution Day), Occupy Wall Street began as a protest movement when approximately 2,000 supporters assembled in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. The group's concerns focused on the corporate role in the current financial crisis and economic inequality. Rhetoric both in support of and against the protest began to flood the…

Currently about 20 percent of U.S. school children have at least one immigrant parent. Across the country, urban, suburban, and rural schools alike are facing increasingly diverse student bodies. This demographic change shapes nationwide discourse on "citizenship" and, in turn, citizenship education. In this article, the authors explore new…

Fourth grade students "know about" Pocahontas, but is this knowledge based on historical fact, or on information from the media, specifically the Disney movies "Pocahontas" and "Pocahontas II"? To address this question within the context of the New York State Social Studies curriculum and the New York State English Language Arts standards, the…

Understanding multiple perspectives--how different people see one another and events now and in the past--is often cited as a goal of social studies educators. This article describes one way to encourage children to consider a variety of perspectives on a person's life story, using a literary model as a guide to thinking about the past. The book…

Public school teachers are careful not to promote or celebrate any religious holiday, but the appearance of Easter on the calendar can be the springboard for exploring the culture and history of the people of a region of the world that was, for many years, hidden by the politics of the Cold War. Ukraine is the home of arguably the world's most…