Teaching resources authored by Hamas sympathizers, praise for violent left-wing activists, and activities where students roleplay as “queer liberation” activists fighting against the “Religious Right” represent just a small sample of the material produced by the Zinn Education Project and its parent organization, Rethinking Schools. The nearly three-million-strong National Education Association has gone to great lengths to endorse and embed such materials in the public education system through a series of partnerships with the duo of left-wing organizations.
The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, has granted the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools prime space and opportunities to present at its conferences, partnered with them to design curriculums, united with the organizations to hold national teaching events, praised and promoted lessons developed by the groups in press releases, cited them in multiple teachers handbooks, and facilitated the dissemination of lesson plans they developed.
Materials published by Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project are replete with praise of violent organizations, riots, and other illegal activity oriented toward left-wing political goals.
One classroom roleplay activity developed by the Zinn Education Project, for example, intends to push back against assertions that the Black Panther Party was a violent organization by tasking students with pretending to be various individuals linked to the party — including some who were implicated in violent attacks on law enforcement. Among these were communist activist Angela Davis, who purchased firearms used by a fellow activist to murder a judge; Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who organized an armed ambush of Oakland police officers and fled to Cuba to avoid prosecution on attempted murder charges; and Assata Shakur, a left-wing activist who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper in 1977.
The descriptions of these individuals in the classroom materials often downplay or even justify their violent actions. In the case of Shakur, for instance, the lesson described her trial as a “legal lynching” and stated that her jury could not have been impartial because it was made up of white people. Davis, meanwhile, is described as a “freedom fighter against racism, sexism, homophobia, and capitalism,” and Cleaver, who ran for president in 1968, as an “anti-war, anti-racist alternative to the Democratic Party.”
Rethinking Schools’ text justifies much of the Black Panther Party’s mission, despite its members’ open calls for violent revolution against the United States and their many armed, and occasionally deadly, confrontations with law enforcement and rival activists.
The NEA has published a number of press releases and blog posts praising or promoting the Zinn Education Project’s classroom materials, stating that the organization “promotes and supports teaching history accurately.”
Racial violence wasn’t the only kind of political violence that received praise in materials published by Rethinking Schools and its affiliates.
“Teaching the Fight for Queer Liberation,” for example, tasks students with roleplaying as individuals involved in various historical stages of the gay rights movement, often casting them in opposition to the “Religious Right.” The document containing the lesson plan speaks highly of the Stonewall Riots, a series of violent confrontations between police officers and members of the LGBT community in 1969.
Crimes targeting critical energy infrastructure are also praised in Zinn Education Project materials as a valid form of protest.
The NEA’s relationship with the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools goes beyond simple mentions in blog posts.
In New Jersey, for instance, the duo of organizations is partnering with the state’s NEA chapter to develop curriculum and provide training for teachers. Nationwide, the NEA regularly partners with the Zinn Education Project to hold teach-ins and invites both organizations to table at its national conference.
The Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools have also waded into the recent controversies surrounding the conflict between Israel and Hamas, often hostile to the former and, at times, amicable toward the latter.
One such lesson, titled “Whose ‘Terrorism?’” encourages students to equate various actions taken by the Israeli and American governments to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Another resource from Rethinking Schools, Teaching Palestine, is a collection of lessons compiled to provide what it calls a “full-throated defense of Palestinian humanity centering Palestinian lives, uplifting and celebrating Palestinians’ struggle for justice.”
In one section of the book, following materials accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, the lesson’s author touts that his materials helped one student “understand the frustrations that led to Oct. 7.”
“[T]he U.S. helped Israel ruin so many lives and helped kill countless children and civilians,” reads another quote from a student intended to showcase the efficacy of the lesson. ”People need to understand this as the buildup to Oct. 7.”
The lesson in question was written by Adam Sanchez, an educator based in Philadelphia who also serves as Rethinking Schools’ managing editor. Sanchez is linked to the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, a group operating out of the School District of Philadelphia, having multiple acquaintances who help lead the group. Numerous “core members” of the RJOC — among them Philadelphia teachers Nick Palazzolo, Hannah Gann, and Keziah Ridgeway — have authored lessons for Rethinking Schools.
The RJOC attracted controversy on Oct. 7 when it helped plan and promote a rally intended to celebrate the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.
“October 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the Zionist regime has turned Gaza into,” a post promoting the demonstration on the RJOC’s Instagram account says. “Now more than ever, we must reject all normalization with the Zionist regime, uplift indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs.”
Hundreds of copies of lesson books published by Rethinking Schools, specifically their texts on black activism and transgenderism, have been distributed to NEA members this year alone. Additionally, Rethinking Schools was granted a table at the NEA’s 2025 Conference for Social and Racial Justice, where they distributed their books and shared excerpts, specifically from Teaching Palestine. Many of the lessons hosted on the Zinn Education Project’s website are also present in Rethinking Schools’ educational materials.
The NEA’s approach to the issue of Israel and Hamas recently landed it in hot water after it sent its nearly 3 million members an email linking to pro-Palestinian materials that defended the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, erased Israel from a world map, and downplayed Adolf Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people. This prompted the union to issue an apology.
PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS PLAN RALLY CELEBRATING HAMAS’S ‘RAGE AND RESISTANCE’ ON OCT. 7
Many of the Rethinking Schools and Zinn Education Project materials promoted by the NEA explicitly target younger children.
The NEA, for instance, on its official Instagram page, highlighted the work of Zinn Education Project fellow and third-grade teacher Sundjata Sekou, who hosts “racial literacy circles” where his fellow elementary educators discuss “cultivating genius in black and brown children.” Additionally, the Zinn Education Project has published reams of educational material aimed at teaching elementary school students about climate change, racism in America’s founding, and feminism, among other topics.
The NEA and Rethinking Schools did not respond to requests for comment.