Teaching Latin America at the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference

Last month, the Latin American Resource Center (LARC) participated in the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference, the largest gathering of K-12 social studies classroom teachers, college and university faculty members, curriculum designers and specialists, district and state social studies supervisors, international educators, and social studies discipline leaders.

Two K-12 instructors—Nicole Means from West Feliciana High School and Sharlyn Scott from Desert Vista High School—and two coordinators from LARC’s 2018 Summer in Brazil K-12 Teacher Institute—Denise Woltering from Tulane University and Colleen McCoy from Vanderbilt University—presented “Off the Beaten Path: Exploring Migration and Megacities of Brazil.” Introducing and demonstrating interactive curricula designed by educators who participated in the Summer in Brazil institute, they engaged over 30 Social Studies teachers with the impact of colonialism and migration on the development of the megacities and geography of Brazil. The Teaching Brazil comprehensive unit is now available on the Stone Center website.

In addition, LARC exhibited with the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP), connecting with over 3,000 educators from across the country. Civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez and award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh stopped by the CLASP booth. Mendez is pictured above holding Tonatiuh’s “Separate is Never Equal,” which chronicles her and her family’s fight to end school segregation in California ten years before Brown vs. Board of Education.