Occupy Education Curriculum Ideas

Teaching Activities in preparation for March 1st National Day of Action in Support of Public Education and Social Services.

This is a call to work together, but it is up to each school to determine its activities.

Members of the Outreach Workgroup of Occupy Education Northern California hope teachers and students will spend time during the weeks preceding March 1 teaching and learning about the problems facing teachers and students, and planning classroom and school-wide activities for March 1. We also hope you will follow the progress of the march to Sacramento and the convergence of activists in Sacramento on March 5.

Poster project: Occupy Education NorCal is organizing a poster project for Bay Area K-12 students. Students will create posters for the March 1st National Day of Action in Support of Public Education and Social Services. We call on K-12 teachers to support and promote this effort.

Guidelines:
12″x18″ or larger POSTER or 8.5″x 11″ FLIER design
TITLE to include March 1st National Day of Action
Possible Slogans:
Tax the Rich, Fully Fund Education, No More Budget Cuts, Students Deserve Better, Fully Fund Public Schools Education is a Right

Colors, design, layout and graphics should be created by the student artists

Deadline: February 21st (or sometime before March 1st ) so that the posters can be used to publicize the event at your school sites or in your districts. The Outreach Committee of Occupy Education NorCal is working on a plan for displaying the posters at regional actions on that day.

Lesson plan ideas:
Students brainstorm community services that they think are important make posters promoting saving these services. Examples could include: parks, fire stations, hospitals, and of course quality schools
Math: Students create graphs showing budget cuts over the last 10 years. A good website to get this data is: www.againstcut.org
Social Studies: Students read about and/or videos about social movements in the past, particularly struggle featuring student participation. Some great resources for this are “Eyes on the Prize” segments about the fight to de-segregate schools in the 1950′s, the book Kids on Strike about youth strikes for child labor laws, and CFT website on Oakland General Strike in 1946. Si se puede:
Janitor strike in L.A., Click, clack, moo, Cows that type

Some web resources:

Occupy Education website: www.occupyeducationca.org

An interactive game where students have to try to balance the federal budget: minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2008/05/budget_hero

For older students a great, comprehensive overview of what has happened in CA with funding/revenues, very liberal politics:
www.vampireslayers.org/lesson-plan-for-teaching-about-the-vampire-flyer

Great materials about the Oakland General Strike from the CFT website:
www.cft.org/index.php/california-labor-history/752-1946-general-strike.html

Lesson plan on “Save the Library!”: www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/02/lp261-03.shtml

K-8 teachers Check out the following two resources presenting ideas behind occupy to young children
oscarandoliviaoccupy.blogspot.com

Octopi: A Children’s Zine for Understanding the Occupy Movement