Educational Toolkit

We prioritize and empower students, who are at a critical life stage to make an impression and help shape values. 

We believe students need to hear a diverse set of stories from all marginalized communities and understand how they are equally affected by and can play a part in fighting racism.

Please sign up by filling out the form to download and gain access to the Make Noise Today Educational Toolkit.

Toolkit Overview

The Educational Toolkit includes 13 lessons split into 5 chapters with storytelling at its core. We can Make Noise Today by teaching young people to tell their own stories to counter the mainstream narrative. Click on the links below for an overview of lessons covered by each chapter.

  • CHAPTER 1

    Create a Storytelling Community

    Create a community in which issues of race and racism can be authentically and productively engaged with.

  • CHAPTER 2

    Stock Stories

    Identify mainstream stories told by dominant groups to see what society considers important and establish a groundwork for other stories.

  • CHAPTER 3

    Concealed Stories

    See a different perspective from the mainstream that exposes and challenges stock stories to reveal a bigger picture of society.

  • CHAPTER 4

    Resistance Stories

    Expand our vision of what is possible in anti-racism work by looking at historical and contemporary stories of resistance.

  • CHAPTER 5

    Counter Stories

    Enable new possibilities for inclusive human community and deliberately construct new stories that challenge stock stories.

Objective

The main objective is to garner instructor participation and applying the curriculum as part of their existing class curriculum or as an extracurricular activity.

Our Asks:

  • Feedback - complete a curriculum survey to help assess the effectiveness and challenges for the overall program

  • Follow us - @makenoisetoday so that you can be current with announcements and updates and advocate about the program to teacher peers

Sharing the Make Noise Today Educational Toolkit

We encourage you to share this toolkit with colleagues, and we request that you refer them to this page to register. Please refrain from sharing the direct link to documents/materials, as it’s critical for us to obtain teacher contact information in order to provide updates and measure success.

Goals

Goals for students:

  • Students consider what we collectively lose when stories of and by diverse groups are concealed or lost

  • Students consider what we collectively gain when we listen to and learn from the multitude of stories that exist

  • Students learn to ask and answer “What?”, “So what?”, “Why?” and “Now what?”

  • Students can identify the challenges they face in a racialized society

  • Students can tell their own stories

  • Student can articulate their visions for a future that offers inclusion, equity, and justice to all of the diverse people who make up our society

Community Feedback

During our research, we collected community perspectives on why we need this type of material in the classroom. Our goal is to refine and update the Educational Toolkit based on educator feedback. Please help us by providing your feedback after teaching each lesson.

  • Soukprida Phetmisy, Teach For America, Chicago, IL National Senior Managing Director, Asian American & Pacific Islander Community Alliances

    Asian American educators feel invisible in the curriculum.

  • Morell Jones, Teacher

    We need to teach kids to be advocates for themselves and for each other — “your struggle is our struggle.”

  • Tommy Chang, Education Advisor, Former Superintendent Boston Public Schools

    We need to be unapologetic on the AA experience and not be on the sidelines. The Model Minority Myth is not serving us. But we cannot take airwaves from BLM, this is not the oppression Olympics.”

  • Carol Brockway, Administrator

    Principals don’t want yet ANOTHER thing.

  • Natasha Quinn, Student

    Keep it positive and short and sweet. Don’t give kids rules and push too hard, but arm them with resources.

  • Michael Kucera, Teacher

    The challenge when you put those two (bullying and racism) in the same sentence is that it allows people who don’t want to talk about racism to not talk about racism.