10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New

and Today - The New York Times

The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student

Activism in History and Today
By Katherine Schulten

March 7, 2018

Updated: March 15, 2018

How much of a difference can young people make in addressing the problems our society faces?
What makes their voices uniquely powerful?

When have youth-led movements influenced policy in the past, and what can we learn from
them?

In this unit, students consider these questions as they examine gun-violence activism by
teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and discuss the planned school walkouts
this spring. They can then go further by learning about youth movements in history, and, finally,
considering actions they might take around the issues they care about.

Please let us know how you’re addressing this teachable moment in your classroom, and how we
might help. You might also invite your class to post comments in our Student Opinion forum, “Do
You Think It Is Important for Teenagers to Participate in Political Activism?”

_________

I. The Stoneman Douglas Students and Gun-Violence Activism

Warm Up:

Ask students to respond in writing to the following questions, then discuss them in pairs, small
groups or as a whole class:

• Can people under age 21 make a real impact on society? For example, can they be instrumental
in changing laws or policies on issues they care about? How? What examples from the past or
present can you think of to support your opinion? List as many as you can.

• What qualities, skills, circumstances or perspectives are unique to young people — whether
today or in the past — and how might they help make their voices uniquely powerful?

_________

Watch, Listen or Read:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 1/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Listen to ʻThe Dailyʼ: Students Protest Gun Violence

Demands for gun restrictions have followed one mass shooting after another, but
little has changed. This time, the students who survived are leading the charge.

Depending on how much time you’d like to spend, you can choose from three different options to
have your students learn more about the activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

They can watch this video, also embedded at the top of this lesson; listen to the first 10 minutes
and 20 seconds of an edition of The Times’s The Daily podcast, embedded above (stopping at the
commercial break); or read this article from New York Magazine, “War Room: The teenage
strategy sessions that built an anti-gun movement out of the trauma of Parkland in one week.” Or,
use all three.

As they watch, listen or read, have them take notes on this handout, which asks: What do these
students want? What are they doing to achieve it? What impact are these actions having? Why?

Invite them to share ideas in small groups, then, as a class, compile their lists on the board.

Finally, follow up by asking students to discuss:

• What actions seem to be most effective? Why?

• Do you think these students be able to make a lasting impact on this issue? If yes, why? If no,
why not?

• What barriers might they run into? Why?

• What suggestions do you have for these student activists?

• What reactions or questions do these students’ activism raise for you? Why?

If you like, you can then invite your students to add their responses to the forum we have posted
in our Student Opinion section: Can High School Students Make a Real Impact on the Problem of
Gun Violence in the United States?

For example, here is one comment we received from Jordyn I. of Westfield, N.J. Do your students
agree?

I believe that my generation has the power to change the world more than any group before us.
Unlike the generations in decades past, we have more information available to us than ever before.
Social media, arguably the most powerful tool of communication in the history of the world, is at our
fingertips. With the click of a button, our words can be shared with millions. All it takes is one tweet,
one post on Instagram or Facebook. And a second later, your opinion is broadcasted everywhere.
The internet has empowered us to have the ability to change the world, even at the young ages that
we are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 2/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Another option? Invite students to watch this video of students responding to the Parkland
movement via the PBS Student Reporting Labs.

_________

Discuss Student Rights in the Context of Planned School Walkouts

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before boarding buses for
Tallahassee on Feb. 20. Related Article Saul Martinez for The New York Times

At least two school walk-outs around gun violence have been slated for this spring. On March 14,
a month after the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, students and teachers across the country are
planning to leave school for 17 minutes, one minute for each person killed in the attack. Another
walk-out will take place on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre. (A third
protest, March for Our Lives, will happen on a Saturday, March 24.)

Though some districts have threatened to suspend students, in New York City, the mayor has said
he supports those who want to participate, and has even promised that the city will provide
related lesson plans. In “How Young Is Too Young for Protest? A National Gun-Violence Walkout
Tests Schools,” The Times reports that many elementary schools across the country are wrestling
with the question of whether even kindergarteners should be involved.

What is your classroom, school or district’s policy on walkouts? How many of your students plan
to participate?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 3/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Whether you support the walkouts or not, they are, as an article at Education Week put it, an
opportunity to “elevate student voice and action as powerful teachable moments.”

To help, you might gauge what your students know — or think they know — about their rights.
Invite them to work in small groups to brainstorm answers to these questions, perhaps via a
KWL chart:

• Do people under 18 have the same rights as adults? If not, how do they differ — and why?

• Do students under 18 have the same rights in school as they do out of school? If not, what
examples can you give?

After students have shared their thoughts and questions, invite them to read “School Walkouts in
the Wake of ʻParkland’ — Protected by the First Amendment or Not?,” a piece from the Newseum
that offers helpful context and history:

Marches, walkouts and sit-ins are the embodiment of our core freedoms: the right to speak out, to
assemble peaceably and petition our government for change. Such protests recall powerful
moments in the civil rights movement, when energized groups of young people caught the nation’s
attention and successfully pushed for social and political change.

The student voices in the Parkland movement also call to mind the circumstances around the
landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, which also
involved teens, schools and the freedom to protest.

Then, have students follow this overview up with another Newseum resource, ”Classroom Walk-
Outs and School Protests: Everything you need to know whether you’re a student, parent,
teacher, school administrator, or lawyer” or with the ACLU’s page on “Students’ Rights: Speech,
Walkouts, and Other Protests.” Still another resource? The new Youth in Front site, a community-
created online learning resource, with advice from experienced youth activists and allies.

Challenge students to return to the original questions for which they brainstormed answers and
correct or add detail to anything they now understand better. How would they summarize their
answers? What questions are they left with? Where can they find answers?

As a final activity for this part of the unit, students might produce a piece for their school website
or newspaper clarifying student rights and responsibilities in the context of student activism on
gun violence. To do this, they might interview school or district administrators, teachers and
students; consult written school policy; and learn more about their school or community’s history
of related student activism.

Update, March 15:

Your students can see videos and photos of and read about the March 14 walkout in “National
School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S.” We have also posted a
companion Student Opinion question, “Do You Think It Is Important for Teenagers to Participate
in Political Activism?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 4/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

_________

II. Studying Youth-Led Movements in History

See full timeline KQED

KQED’s The Lowdown has produced a timeline called Too Young to Vote, Old Enough to Take
Action: A Brief History of Powerful Youth-Led Movements. To introduce it, Matthew Green
writes:

This is hardly the first time high school students have led the charge in pushing for nationwide
reforms. In fact, the nascent Never Again movement follows in a long tradition of middle and high
school students who, despite being too young to vote, have helped lead landmark social and
political movements. Among the most recent (and often overlooked) examples include the young
people on the front line of the Black Lives Matter movement, Dreamers activists fighting for
immigration reform, and the group of American Indian youth who helped spark the Standing Rock
movement in South Dakota last winter.

As University of Oklahoma professor Kathryn Schumaker noted in a recent Washington Post

commentary, student protesters have long risked disciplinary action or worse to force the nation to
have difficult conversations about the future they stand to inherit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 5/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Columbia University students occupying Hamilton Hall in April 1968.

Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

The Times has also taken on the topic, in a piece headlined “7 Times in History When Students
Turned to Activism.”

Maggie Astor writes that “history is full of movements led by students — albeit usually in college,
not high school. Some were successful and others brutally crushed, but even the latter still
resonate.” She also points out that “most of these campaigns have been liberal-leaning: Though
conservative college students have made their presence known, their actions have rarely
coalesced into broader movements.”

Invite students to study the slide show, and read the Times article. What do these movements
have in common? How do they differ?

Then, invite them to choose one of featured movements and delve into it more deeply. As they do
so, they might use the same chart they kept in the first part of this lesson to take notes: What did
these students want? What actions did they take to get it? What impact did those actions have,
and why?

To report back to the class on their findings, they might answer a version of the same questions
we asked about the current gun-violence activism:

• What actions seemed to be most effective? Why? How were they unique to their time, place and
circumstances?

• Can we still feel the impact of these students’ activism on this issue? How?

• What barriers did they run into? Why?

• What can student activists today learn from them?

Raising Questions: Different Responses to Different Kinds of Activists?

As the Times article summarizes it, the Black Lives Matter movement began with three women in
their late 20s and early 30s: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. But when it exploded
into national view in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown, 18, many of the protesters who
filled the streets of Ferguson, Mo., were students.

But, as this piece in Teen Vogue argues, “Young black people have been fighting to save lives
through gun reform laws for years without the support and energy given to the Stoneman
Douglas students. In fact, black youth, who’ve been passionately advocating for gun control
measures, have been demonized, obfuscated, and overlooked.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 6/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Parkland students themselves have credited Black Lives Matter as a model for their own
movement:

In early March, several of the Parkland students met with students in Chicago to talk about how
to combat gun violence in communities nationwide.

If your students choose this youth-led movement to research further, they might also address
these questions:

• Are there differences in how Black Lives Matter student activists have been received by the
media and the public compared to the Stoneman Douglas students? If so, what do they think
accounts for those differences? What evidence can they find to support their point of view?

• What can, or should, be done — whether by the student activists themselves, by the media or by
fellow citizens — to make sure all voices on an issue are heard?

_________

III. Helping Your Students Take Action of Their Own

Related Article Leo Espinosa

Though we have focused on gun violence in this lesson, there are, of course, many other issues
young people are passionate about. What problems in our world might inspire the students you
teach to start or join a movement for change?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 7/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

In our lesson plan “Ideas for Student Civic Action in a Time of Social Uncertainty,” we outline five
steps students can take together, as explained by Chicago high school teacher Elizabeth Robbins
in a TEDx talk:

1. Identify issues important in their lives and community, and decide on one to address.

2. Research the chosen issue and decide how to change or improve the situation.

3. Plan an action, including determining a goal for change; identifying who or what body in the
community has power to make the change; and deciding how to approach that person or those
people.

4. Carry out the action through letters, talks, meetings with officials, policy proposals, and
activities, depending on the specific goals of the project.

5. Reflect on the effort when it is over in order to understand their successes, challenges, and
ways to continue learning in the future.

Though our lesson plan offers details for each step, below we’ve added a few more resources that
may be helpful.

Identify Issues

Invite your students to write individually, then brainstorm as a group, as many answers as they
can to these questions:

• What issues do you care about? Why?

• What changes do you want to see happen in your school, community, state, the country or even
the world?

Students might write their answers on the board, on sticky notes or in a shared class document so
that everyone can see the range of ideas. Next, invite them to group what they find into several
broad categories. Finally, have students team up around related issues to decide what to do next.

Consider a Range of Actions

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 8/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

A 2017 protest in Edinburgh against President Trump’s executive order on immigration.

Social media played a big role in organizing such demonstrations. Related Article
Mark Runnacles/Getty Images

Not everyone is comfortable speaking on camera, or walking out of school for a cause, yet
everyone can find something to do to effect change.

Which of the actions students identified when reading about the Parkland students or about
youth-led movements in history could help them bring change on the issue they have chosen?
How?

Below, a few options, each linked to a Times or Learning Network article that offers an example,
ideas or more information:

Engage with lawmakers.

Use social media.

Create a petition.

Run for office.

Raise money.

Volunteer.

Engage the press.

Advocate to those in power to change rules or legislation.

Write an editorial.

Plan protests or other acts of civil disobedience.

Educate others.

Start programs that solve problems.

Take legal action.

Register to vote, encourage others to vote, and/or get involved in the push to lower the voting age
to 16.

Finally, Answer Ten Questions for Participatory Politics

Ten Questions for Changemakers, from the Youth

Participatory Politics Research Network

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.h… 9/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

In “After Parkland, Students Choose to Participate,” our colleagues at Facing History recommend
introducing students to powerful ideas for thinking about civic participation and social change,
such as the political theorist Danielle Allen’s Youth Participatory Politics Framework. Ms. Allen
suggests that when people choose to take action, they should consider the ten important
questions above. How would your students answer them?

To learn more, use the Facing History lesson plan Reflection and Action for Civic Participation
that links to many different readings in which students can observe the questions in action.

_________

Related Resources
From The New York Times

Go Ahead, Millennials, Destroy Us

50 Years Later, It Feels Familiar: How America Fractured in 1968

The Snapchat Cohort Gets Into Politics, and Civics Is Cool

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.… 10/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Interactive Timeline | Black Activism on Campus

A ʻMass Shooting Generation’ Cries Out for Change

With Grief and Hope, Florida Students Take Gun Control Fight On the Road

Don’t Let My Classmates’ Deaths Be in Vain

My Teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Saved Lives

Emma González Leads a Student Outcry on Guns: ʻThis Is the Way I Have to Grieve’

_________

From The Learning Network

Our monthly feature Teenagers in The Times offers a roundup of articles that show young people
taking action in a variety of contexts.

Ideas for Student Civic Action in a Time of Social Uncertainty

Making a Difference: Ideas for Giving, Service Learning and Social Action

Resources for Talking and Teaching About the School Shooting in Florida

Civil Conversation Challenge for Teenagers | Issue 2: Guns

Film Club | ʻHaunted by Columbine’

Watershed: Teaching About Gun Control After Newtown

The Death of Michael Brown: Teaching About Ferguson

_________

From Around the Web

Youth in Front: A community-created online learning resource, with advice from experienced
youth activists and allies.

Teaching for Change | And the Youth Shall Lead Us: 16 Stories of Young People on the Frontlines
of U.S.Social Movements

Slate | They Were Trained for This Moment

Harper’s Bazaar | Parkland Student Emma González Opens Up About Her Fight for Gun Control

Anti-Defamation League | 10 Ways Youth Can Engage in Activism

Greater Good Magazine | Nine Ways to Help Students Discuss Guns and Violence

Facing History | Reflection and Action for Civic Participation

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.… 11/12
10/12/2018 The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today - The New York Times

Facing History | Strategies for Making a Difference.

Facing History | 10 Calls to Action to Cultivate Education for Democracy

Teaching Tolerance | From Birmingham to Parkland: Celebrate the Power of Young Voices

Teaching Tolerance | Students, Families and Educators Should Lead the Way on the Gun Crisis

_________

Michael Gonchar contributed ideas for this lesson plan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/learning/lesson-plans/the-power-to-change-the-world-a-teaching-unit-on-student-activism-in-history-and-today.… 12/12