Accessibility, Joy, the Power of Teaching Hard Histories: Insights From the Final ‘1619’ Impact Series Webinars

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With the final two webinars of The 1619 Impact Series, we concluded our celebration of the fifth anniversary of The 1619 Project and the Pulitzer Center’s ongoing partnership with The New York Times. These sessions, designed to cultivate a transformative learning community for educators dedicated to racial justice education, provided a wealth of inspiration, practical strategies, and tools for teaching hard histories in ways that are accessible, engaging, and joyous. 

Building on the foundations laid by the first two webinars—where we explored how educators can prepare to teach The 1619 Project and align its themes with existing curriculum standards—the third and fourth sessions deepened our collective understanding of how to make The 1619 Project both accessible to diverse learners and how joy is a core pedagogical practice. 

Throughout the first webinars, we heard how educators navigated their own miseducation while preparing to teach The 1619 Project and how they found ways to integrate it into their curricula to address critical historical gaps. The third webinar focused on strategies for ensuring accessibility for all students, especially those with diverse learning needs. The fourth webinar, though focused specifically on joy as a central theme, built on a thread that had emerged throughout the entire series: the use of joy in teaching difficult histories. 

In the "Making 1619 Accessible" webinar, 1619 Education Program alumni Kim Shanahan, Diana Rojas, Hannah Nolan-Spohn, and Amelia Acuña shared how they made 1619  accessible to diverse learners. 

Moderated by Padmini Biswas, professor of urban studies at Queens College in New York, the session exhibited innovative ways these educators have designed lessons that ensure all students, regardless of age, ability, or background, can engage with The 1619 Project.

Shanahan, an elementary educator with over 30 years of experience, discussed her approach to making The 1619 Project accessible for kindergartners. She introduced her students to the concept of book design as a gateway to grasping complex topics like enslavement.  

“Our youngest learners are fully capable of understanding the complex issues that are identified in Born on the Water, given these developmentally appropriate tools to discuss them,” Shanahan explained. 

By teaching her students about elements like the book’s “gutter,” or the space between pages that controls the pacing of a story, Shanahan was able to guide her students through the narrative in an engaging way. 

“For example,” she explained, “the gutter, which is the center seam between the pages of a book, helps to advance or slow the pace of a story. So when you explain the role of the gutter to students it helps them to feel the joy in the Born on the Water poem ‘And they Danced,’ or perhaps to be better able to compare the village of Ndongo on page 3 of ‘They Had a Language’ with that of the village in ‘Stolen.’”

Rojas, a Chicago-based educator who worked with students with disabilities—including autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and intellectual disabilities—shared how she used pictures, graphic organizers, and hands-on activities to make Born On the Water accessible to her students. Differentiation was the key to her success. 

By incorporating interactive materials, such as pictures, graphic organizers, and cut-and-paste exercises, she ensured that her students connected with the content and expressed their understanding in meaningful ways. Her students created “I Am” poems, an exercise that allowed them to explore their identities through the lens of The 1619 Project. Rojas’ work brilliantly showcases how differentiated learning strategies can empower students with diverse needs and enhance their educational experience.

Nolan-Spohn, a middle school educator, shared insights into her approach, which included creating text excerpts and providing multiple forms of assessment to meet the needs of English Language Learners and students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Along with her teammate, Jodi Hoard, Nolan-Spohn intentionally designed their unit, "Defenders of Democracy," to incorporate accommodating texts, podcasts, language supports, accessible assessments, and opportunities for inquiry and choice. 

One of their strategies for making The 1619 Project accessible was distilling complex texts into more digestible excerpts. For example, they condensed Jamelle Bouie’s 11-page essay, "Undemocratic Democracy," into two sentences that captured its essence. 

“This allowed students to engage with the sophisticated concept without struggling through a text that wasn’t at a seventh-grade level,” Nolan-Spohn explained. 

But the most important element of their design, according to Nolan-Spohn, was ensuring students could connect to and care about the material. The results were remarkable: Students not only grasped challenging concepts but also related them to their own lives, thinking more expansively about the ideas foundational to the unit than Nolan-Spohn and Hoard had initially anticipated.

Acuña, a fifth-grade teacher at one of Sacramento’s largest Title I schools, works with a diverse student population, many of whom are immigrants and refugees. Her unit was designed through the lens of designated English Language Development (ELD). 

Acuña employed strategies that ensured students could not only access, but also deeply engage with the content. These strategies included narrative input charts, story mapping, history graphic organizers, and a cognitive content dictionary. To make assessments more inclusive, Acuña structured them as group projects, allowing students to collaborate with peers who spoke the same or similar languages and worked with the same translations. This approach enabled students to engage with the material in transformative ways. 

“I had students who came in at a third-grade level and reclassified as fifth-grade-level English proficient,” Acuña reflected, “and it’s because they truly connected with this material.” 

This experience not only transformed her students’ learning but also revolutionized the ways that she viewed her own teaching. 

The through-line that emerged from these approaches was connectivity. Shanahan, Rojas, Nolan-Spohn, and Acuña were and remain committed to helping their students build meaningful connections to course content. The result of their commitment was not only accessibility, but also transformative engagement with the material.

The fourth and final webinar in the series, "Centering Joy," highlighted how educators can teach The 1619 Project and other hard histories in ways that celebrate the resilience and brilliance of marginalized communities. Donja Thomas, Charles Sanderson, Kim Tate, and Johanna Josaphat shared how they infused joy into their lessons, demonstrating the feasibility of teaching hard and complex histories in ways that uplift, engage, empower, and inspire.

Kim Tate, a dual-language instructional coach based in Illinois, shared how she combined her passion for literacy with her commitment to reimagining the teaching of Black history. Through her unit, which centers on the idea of Black genius, students explored historically accurate Black history. While implementing her unit, Tate was able to keep love and pride at the forefront, which for her are the key to centering joy while teaching hard histories.

Over the course of the unit, her students discovered their own genius and began to see how they could contribute to the world. “By the end of this unit, students were empowered to recognize injustice and called to use their own genius to enact change,” Tate said.

Johanna Josaphat, a founding teacher at the Urban Assembly Unison School, emphasized the importance of joy through community-building. Her unit was inspired by students' curiosity about the injustices around them and their desire to take action. Students’ curiosity led the staff at Unison to define their community identity and consider how to reflect that in both the learning environment and the content they taught.

One key decision was to center Black joy, which, for Josaphat and her team, meant teaching African American history through the power of narratives. Rather than using a deficit model, their unit focused on celebrating African American contributions and stories. For example, instead of solely teaching about ancient Rome, they taught sixth-grade students about African kingdoms, ensuring students saw themselves reflected in history.

Josaphat believed this representation was crucial for students to understand that this history was theirs, too. Her unit allowed students to see themselves reflected in history in ways they had never before encountered. The unit encouraged students to think critically about civic engagement and the actions they could take to address societal injustices. Through this project, Josaphat and the Unison team not only engaged and empowered their students but also transformed the entire school’s English and social studies curricula.

Charles Sanderson is an Oregon teacher at Vocal Justice, an organization that helps Black and brown students become socially conscious leaders. Sanderson entered joy in his classroom by focusing on stories of resistance and victory. “What is more joyous than victory?” Sanderson asked.

By teaching about figures like Gaspar Yanga, Vicente Guerrero, and events like the Haitian Revolution, Sanderson bridged gaps in traditional African American history narratives and encouraged his students to connect with these histories on a personal level. 

For instance, Vincente Guerroro, the second president of Mexico, abolished slavery in what is now known as Mexico. This opened up ways for Sanderson to teach students about how the Underground Railroad flowed south through Texas and into Mexico. This also allowed for resonance among his students, many of whom have Mexican heritage. 

“When we start to learn this beautiful history,” Sanderson explained, “what we have is an opportunity to build affinity between Black and brown communities and realize that we aren’t as polarized and separate.” 

His work was transformative, not just for his students, but also for their communities, as they had the opportunity to present their projects to the Oregon Association of Latino Administrators. This opened up a new avenue for joy: the joy of sharing learning with others. 

Because of the work that Sanderson did to cultivate a joyful learning environment for students, he was able to help build their intellectual, scholarly, and academic self esteem. Sanderson concluded his presentation by sharing reflections of one of his former students, who is now thriving at Yale University. The student wrote, in part, “I’m living the moments we used to talk about and await with such anticipation …Thank you for helping me find this joy.”

“Joy really is freedom,” explained Donja Thomas, an English educator and Black studies curriculum developer with 18 years of experience. Thomas reflected on how centering the ways in which Black consciousness, ways of being, and genius were foundational in the creation of the United States and the construction of American national identity created an environment where students could not only understand the history of Black Americans but also recognize their own power.

Employing various cultural forms, ranging from poetry to fashion shows, Thomas had students contemplate what it means to control historical narratives and center their own truths. 

Like Josaphat, Sanderson, and Tate, she allowed students to explore a history of Black Americans that centered on joyous moments. “Our story is of how we overcome,” Thomas shared. 

In teaching history in a way that restored agency to historical actors, Thomas demonstrated to students that they were the creators of their own realities.

Each of these educators showed the effectiveness of joy as a pedagogical practice. Joy not only fosters a deeper understanding of content, but also instills a sense of agency and pride in students.

The final two webinars of The 1619 Impact Series powerfully demonstrated what is possible in classrooms when educators prioritize accessibility and joy. It is possible to engage students with hard histories, to teach young learners about complex topics, and to create inclusive spaces for students with diverse abilities.

It is possible to inspire empathy and connection among students whose experiences may differ, and it is possible to embrace joy even when grappling with the painful realities of white supremacy. 

Joy, as these educators have shown, is not only a powerful tool, it's lasting, transformative, and transferable. By intentionally fostering connectivity and centering joy in their lessons, educators have proven that teaching difficult histories can be an empowering and uplifting experience for both students and educators. 

As we continue to support educators dedicated to racial justice education, we look forward to celebrating and documenting the continued impact of their work in classrooms and communities across the nation.