Current Events In Your Classroom
Teaching Ideas, Activities, and Strategies for Middle and High School Students
Teaching current events can be challenging: the news cycle moves quickly, the issues can spark strong feelings, and classroom time is tight. Yet engaging with current events is an essential part of educating young people to be informed and humane participants in a democracy.
Use our resources to foster thoughtful classroom conversations and build your students’ capacities for critical thinking, emotional engagement, ethical reflection, and civic agency.
Get Started
This Teaching Idea is a guide for teachers to begin conversations with their students about George Floyd’s death and the events that surround it.
View our checklist of things to consider before you start teaching current events, including recommended news sources, teaching strategies, and media literacy tools.
During this time, as we are navigating new challenges in how we connect with each other and our students, we've created an online community to share concerns, ideas, and resources.
COVID-19 and Current Events
We've created teaching ideas to help you and your students understand the complexity of the ongoing pandemic and its connection to history and current events. Several of these teaching ideas have student-facing Google Slides to use in remote learning.
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Democracy & Civic Engagement
Coronavirus: Protect Yourself and Stand Against Racism
This Teaching Idea provides facts about the new coronavirus and allows students to explore instances of discrimination related to COVID-19.
Teaching Idea
Democracy & Civic Engagement
COVID-19: How Can We Make Choices That Promote The Common Good?
This Teaching Idea features Google Slides with activities that prompt students to reflect on the difficult ethical questions we’re all facing during the coronavirus crisis.
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Race in US History
Democracy & Civic Engagement
Why Is the Coronavirus Disproportionately Impacting Black Americans?
Help students explore the underlying causes of racial inequity in coronavirus outcomes with the activities in this Teaching Idea.
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Democracy & Civic Engagement
Create a Toolbox for Care
This Teaching Idea invites students to think about the “tools” they have access to during the coronavirus outbreak that can help them take care of themselves, others, and their wider community.
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Democracy & Civic Engagement
How Do You Close the School Year During Distance Learning?
These six activities help students reflect on the past school year, celebrate their school community, and look ahead to what comes next. Especially with coronavirus upheaval, it’s important for students to feel a sense of closure before summer break begins.
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Democracy & Civic Engagement
Student Journaling During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Journals can provide students with a space to process their thoughts, feelings, and uncertainties during this difficult time. Use the tips and writing prompts in this resource to help your students establish a practice of journaling.
About Our Current Events Content
What is a Teaching Idea?
Our Teaching Ideas help you address specific events and issues in the news. With a variety of accessible resources and engaging teaching strategies, they can be used for all or part of a class period.
What is an Explainer?
New for the 2019 school year, our printable “Explainers” introduce key terms and ideas that are essential to understanding today’s news. View our latest explainers.
Going Deeper
Sign up below for our biweekly current events emails to receive links to additional videos, readings, historical sources and lessons to enrich your teaching of current events and connect to your curriculum.
View More Current Events Teaching Resources
Featured Collection
Teaching Current Events: Global Immigration
There are more than 250 million migrants around the world, including more than 65 million refugees. Explore the policies, debates and human stories of immigration around the world.
Featured Collection
Teaching Current Events: Democracy and Civic Engagement
Democracies across the globe are increasingly fragile. Examine the health of democracy, voting and elections, and the pivotal role civic participation of young people plays.
Featured Collection
Teaching Current Events: Hate, Violence and Injustice
Hate is in the headlines around the world. These resources offer sensitive entry points to confront troubling violence and injustice, including terrorism, genocide, and attacks on human rights.
Featured Collection
Tools and Strategies for Teaching Current Events
Find flexible tools to adapt for your classroom. Discussion strategies, media literacy lessons and recommended news sources can help you address a range of current events topics.
Get More Tips for Teaching Current Events
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Search Our Global Collection
Everything you need to get started teaching your students about racism, antisemitism and prejudice.