Support Ethnic Studies Classrooms

Help students make stronger connections to the world around them and grow into independent, adaptable learners by giving students the context they need to grasp the concepts they’re studying. From news articles of today, to primary sources of the past, learners have access to content that is contextualized to help them successfully progress beyond the memorization of dates and toward practicing analytical and critical thinking skills.

 

Empower Educators

With new content added and updated regularly, Gale In Context continually incorporates new ways to help students build and practice critical thinking skills. For help engaging students with curriculum-aligned content, teachers turn to Gale In Context: For Educators. Here, users find material that supports state and national standards paired with ready-to-use lesson plans—all to make it easier to achieve instructional goals and meet the needs of diverse learners.

With the instructional support available within Gale In Context: For Educators, teachers can:

  • Engage students with a wide variety of primary sources, informational texts from newspapers, magazines, journals, books, videos, images, podcasts, and learning activities—all aligned to the curriculum.
  • Differentiate instruction with customizable lesson plans to suit the needs of students at all levels.
  • Improve outcomes with built-in checks-for-understanding.
  • Collaborate with other educators to ensure continuity within and across teams.

Gale In Context: For Educators has over 1,200 lesson plans that feature questions designed to promote critical thinking by presenting students with artifacts and primary sources that give voice to numerous viewpoints, and by posing essential questions that can serve as readymade writing assignments or used to spark lively class discussions. For Educators teacher tools make it easy to find and organize content for these lessons. Some lesson plans to support ethnic studies include:

  • African American History: 1920s and the Jazz Age, African’s Rich History
  • African American Literature: African American Folktales, Maya Angelou’s “Harlem Hopscotch” Brainstorm, Between the World and Me: Epistolary Nonfiction, Harlem Renaissance
  • Asian American History: Asian American and Pacific Islander Contributions to the United States, Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers
  • Asian American Literature: Examining Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong,” Chinese New Year Poem
  • Hispanic American History: The Farm Workers Movement, Mexican American War
  • Latinx Literature: Feminine Gender Roles in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Imagery and Symbolism in Gary Soto’s “Oranges”
  • Native American History: Investigating the Lasting Impact of Native American Land History, Iroquois People
  • Native American Literature: Exploring Theme in Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Corn Mother Legend of the Penobscot People
  • Additional Topics and Biographies: Lessons about Amanda Gorman; Dolores Huerta; Antisemitism; Beginnings of a Diverse Society: Bulletin Board; Bias; Equality, Equity, and Liberation; Housing Inequality: Redlining; Intersectionality

 

Access Trusted Content

Gale resources support skill-building and the development of information literacy, across a breadth of content that includes financial literacy, sociology, government, and economics because while content is critical for gaining knowledge, the importance of developing source awareness and an in-depth understanding of the context of human events cannot be overstated.

Students seeking factual overviews can choose a reference source. Those wanting to see what people thought at the time can find a primary source. Students hoping to understand why a historical topic is still significant to the world today can consult news or magazine sources. This variety of sources brought together with intentionality enables well-rounded discussions about societal issues—with the necessary context and relevance.

 

Provide Essential Tools

Teachers and students benefit when content is available in digital resources that work for their individual needs. With the Gale In Context suite, school communities find:

  • Efficiency. Integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, including learning management systems like Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom. Add to that the power of Google Workspace for Education and Microsoft 365 tools, which enable users to easily share, save, and download content—including highlights and notes. 
  • Accessibility. Search for content by Lexile range, translate content into more than 50 languages, and view text using the OpenDyslexic font or a variety of readability tools.
  • Relevance. As standards and curricula change, your digital resources adapt to meet current and future goals.

EXPLORE RESOURCES

Help students build a solid foundation of historical, social, and cultural context to support a lifetime of learning with Gale In Context.

  • Gale In Context: Biography

    Build students’ cultural knowledge of their world by uncovering the truth about hundreds of thousands of the world's most influential people through continually updated contemporary and historic biographical entries. Search by name, nationality, ethnicity, and gender, to discover the people whose beliefs and actions have shaped our human story including:

    • Black / African American: Almost 44,000 people featured within the “African American” ethnicity category.
    • Latino / Hispanic: Almost 2,000 people featured within the “Hispanic American” ethnicity category.
    • Native American: About 1,4000 people featured within the “Native American” ethnicity category.
    • Asian American and Pacific Islander: About 1,900 people featured within the “Asian American” ethnicity category.
    • PLUS: Over 2,000 people from the LGBTQ+ community, searchable with a checkbox in the Person Search.

     

  • Gale In Context: Literature

    Facilitate the exploration of multiple perspectives and the development of personal connections to significant literary works from classic to contemporary authors and poets. Explore poetry, graphic novels, and speeches from diverse, relevant writers contextualized by a rich array of primary sources from the author’s world, podcasts, videos, and images. Titles covered by genre include:

    • African American Literature: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.
    • AAPI Literature: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, A Free Life by Ha Jin, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo.
    • Latinx Literature: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
    • Indigenous Literature: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac, and The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko.
    • PLUS: I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, and Maus by Art Spiegelman.
    • Full-text works of literature: including Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

     

  • Gale In Context: U.S. History

    Develop informed and effective citizens by providing firsthand access to our nation’s complex past through rare and vital primary source documents. Gain foundational knowledge and sharpen media literacy skills through primary source analysis, using continuously updated content from diverse perspectives. U.S. History features thoughtfully curated topic pages dedicated to:

    • African American Perspectives: Black Lives Matter Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Tuskegee Institute
    • Asian American and Pacific Islanders: Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese American Internment/Incarceration, Open Door Policy
    • Hispanic Americans: Chicano Movement, Hispanic Americans in the Military, Spanish Colonialism
    • Native Americans: Native American Boarding Schools, Native American Policy, Creek (First Nation)

     

Teach about Landmark Court Cases Webinar

Gale In Context: U.S. History supports secondary student research into landmark court cases through reference materials, engaging multimedia content, primary sources, biographies, and more. View this webinar to explore how to best discover and leverage the content to support learning.

Teach Your Students About the Evolution of Human Rights with Gale In Context

Teaching high school students about human rights can be a challenge. Not only is the topic complicated, but it can also become controversial. However, introducing your students to human rights concepts helps them better understand the history and develop more informed opinions on current social issues. Encourage your students to research and think critically about human rights history and its impact on the world by connecting them to authoritative content found in Gale In Context.

Discover Gale’s New Disinformation and Misinformation Portal

High school educators know that strong digital literacy is a cornerstone of successful education in the twenty-first century. As technology becomes ever more pervasive in the classroom, it’s important for students to learn how to maintain a responsible online presence and identify facts from biased or misleading information. Understanding how to navigate the digital world is instrumental to a child’s future success, but many schools don’t have the infrastructure or tools to fully embed these skills into their curricula.