Ohio Schools Start Thinking out of the Box to Stem School Shootings: Expanded Teacher Training Versus the 22 Safes With Loaded Guns

On average, black students in public schools receive fewer resources giving them a late start. A mostly black university in New Orleans has increased overall achievement by developing students’ shared responsibility for one another’s success.

The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies provides a "blueprint" for peaceful and democratic revolution, busting myths about the process of nonviolent revolt and helping dissidents in countries around the world to accomplish political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.

In Fairhill, a neighborhood in North Philadelphia, voter turnout was a mere 12% in one recent election. Fairhill Neighbors, a coalition of neighborhood groups, is seeking to combat lower turnout rates with a personal engagement program. “Voting Champions” are community members who will work to register voters, drive them to polls, and generate excitement about voting, with the hopes of transforming civic participation in their area.

The teenage girls of Thennamadevi are leaders in their community. They’re actively fighting against gender discrimination by organizing. They successfully lobbied politicians and brought streetlights, and sanitary napkins to their village. Across the country, similar girls clubs are being implemented, reflecting an international girls power movement.

In Maine, one of only two states where people in prison retain their right to vote, the Maine State Prison branch of the NAACP engages incarcerated voters through flyers, posters, guest speakers, and group discussions about political issues. Over the past two decades, the organization has helped more than 1,000 people register to vote in Maine prisons.

JamieSue Goodman, an employee at Google, was part of the team that developed an Applied Digital Skills curriculum that teaches students how to use technology to accomplish real-world tasks. Available for educators worldwide, 360,000 students have used the materials since its launch and 50,000 teachers have registered on the site. Students and teachers alike attest to how fun, engaging, and useful the education is.

As schools across the United States weigh the pros and cons of sticking to remote learning, welcoming students back into the classroom, or a hybrid, there are lessons to learn from schools around the world. In China and France, teachers have gotten creative by having students wear wings that help them remember proper social distance, and other teachers have decorated the playground with smiley faces to indicate where students should stand. Other schools in Denmark and Finland reintroduced students to class by age, since data has supported that children under 10 are less likely to transmit the virus.

In the 1930s, about one million Mexican and Mexican-Americans, who were born in the U.S., were forcibly removed from the U.S. under the presidency of Herbert Hoover. Its called the “Mexican Repatriation.” A class in Bell Gardens elementary learned about it almost by accident. They wanted a formal federal apology and applied to the California “ought to be a law” contest. They testified in front of the California assembly. The governor of California signed a law that encourages courses in history books to include the Mexican repatriation.

Thanks in part to increased activism in light of COVID-19-related racism and targeted, multilingual outreach by voter advocacy organizations, turnout among Asian American voters increased by roughly 47 percent between 2016 and 2020.

Australia has compulsory voting, which means those who don’t vote in federal elections will face a small fine. After the policy was instituted in 1924, turnout for federal elections shot up from about 60% of registered voters to more than 90% and has never dropped below 89% in the century since. Proponents also say the system results in better representation that more accurately reflects the country’s demographics, and because more of the population votes, politicians must appeal to a broader electorate rather than focusing on ideological extremes.