Melissa Brodsky is a copywriter and content strategist based in Florida, who became what she calls an “accidental activist” after Oct. 7. See her Substack here.
(Oct. 15, 2026 / JNS)
In December 2023, teachers in Oakland, California, organized an unauthorized “Palestine teach-in” for students from elementary school through high school. Younger children were introduced to the book P Is for Palestine. Older students could read Life Under Blockade, a collection of essays written by young Palestinians in Gaza. The program included lesson plans, videos, activities and a virtual panel with teachers and community activists.
Oakland Unified Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell later told families she was “deeply disappointed” by material she considered harmful and divisive. She said some resources presented opinion as fact.
The teach-in came weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but the teachers hadn’t assembled those materials overnight. Organizations had spent years developing Palestine curriculum, training educators and connecting the conflict to American subjects like race, colonialism, immigration, indigenous history and social justice.
One of the organizations producing these materials is Teach Palestine, a project of the Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA).
Its K-12 curriculum library includes Youth Incarceration and Resistance in Palestine, Borders & Walls and Why Isn’t Palestine on Our Map? A mathematics lesson is titled Bombs in Gaza. Suppose It Was Chicago? asks students to calculate an equivalent amount of explosives for an American city.
Teach Palestine also hosts educator Samia Shoman’s Teaching Palestine/Israel: A Multiple Narratives Approach. Its description says the curriculum was developed for situations where “pushback from Zionist parents, administrators and/or organizations is likely.”
The organization offers workshops, professional development, classroom visits, and assistance to teachers and administrators. In 2018, it spent three days at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico, connecting Pueblo and Navajo experiences with Palestinian history.
Shoman later helped edit Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices, published by Rethinking Schools in February 2025. The book provides teachers with lesson plans, maps, timelines, handouts and activities addressing Zionism, the nakba, Gaza, apartheid and Palestinian “resistance.” A national Teach Palestine webinar attracted more than 2,000 educators.
Rethinking Schools also jointly operates the Zinn Education Project with Teaching for Change. By the end of 2025, Teaching for Change reported approximately 177,000 registered educators using Zinn resources across all 50 states.
That figure covers the entire Zinn Education Project, rather than Palestine curriculum alone. But Palestine-related lessons are available through the same national distribution system. Teachers can download material without waiting for a school board to adopt a textbook.
On Jan. 31, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich., hosted a professional-development workshop called “Palestine in the Classroom.” Rethinking Schools and Visualizing Palestine were partners. Teachers received classroom resources and could earn Michigan State Continuing Education Clock Hours. Visualizing Palestine describes its work in terms of shifting narratives toward Palestinian liberation.
California’s ethnic-studies programs provided another route into public education. The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC) works with school districts on curriculum development and teacher training. Palestine appears within its broader framework, addressing colonialism, oppression and resistance.
According to contracts compiled by Defending Education, Berkeley Unified paid LESMCC $111,120 in 2023 and another $9,840 in 2024. Hayward Unified authorized a contract worth up to $35,395 in 2022 for ethnic-studies consulting and teacher development. Those payments covered broader ethnic studies work, not exclusively Palestine curriculum.
A separate 2025 Defending Education investigation identified $17.52 million in ethnic-studies contracts and related expenditures across 55 school districts, including approximately $10.13 million in federal funding.
Palestine appears within its broader framework addressing colonialism, oppression and resistance.
San Diego Unified allocated $9.4 million in federal COVID pandemic relief money to the development of ethnic-studies programs. That money was not earmarked for Palestine lessons, but it supported the larger educational infrastructure in which those lessons could be introduced.
In Santa Ana, Calif., Jewish organizations sued the school district over its ethnic-studies curriculum, alleging open-meetings violations and anti-Jewish bias. Internal communications disclosed during litigation included discussions about keeping curriculum work “under the radar” and disparaging Jewish critics. In February 2025, the district settled, agreeing to stop teaching three challenged courses until they could be redesigned through a process allowing public participation.
MECA receives philanthropic support, although its humanitarian programs account for much of its spending. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund awarded it $150,000 in 2021 and $75,000 in 2023 for its Rawa: Creative Palestinian Communities Fund. Those grants were not designated for Teach Palestine.
The Lannan Foundation, however, offered to match donations to Teach Palestine up to $20,000. MECA said the money would support curriculum development, teacher workshops, educational resources and efforts to incorporate Palestine into ethnic-studies programs. Its fundraising appeal explained that $300 could purchase a classroom set of Determined to Stay, accompanying curriculum and teacher coaching.
Another organization, Project48, developed a nakba curriculum with the Participatory Action Research Center for Organizing (PARCEO). It includes eight core sessions, facilitator guides, and a high-school track. A Defending Education investigation in January identified separate $50,000 Open Society network grants to Project48’s fiscal sponsor, Forward Leap Foundation, and PARCEO. The available records do not establish that those grants were earmarked for the curriculum.
On Sept. 28, Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee referred MECA to the IRS for investigation and possible revocation of its tax-exempt status. Lawmakers alleged financial relationships involving organizations with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
The referral was a request for investigation, not a finding of wrongdoing. MECA remains the parent organization of Teach Palestine.
In June, CODEPINK organized a four-night online series called “Challenging Zionism in Schools.” Its registration page recorded 539 RSVPs. CODEPINK materials also appeared on Share My Lesson, the American Federation of Teachers’ curriculum-sharing platform. A 2026 report, “Extremism in American Classrooms,” documented activist-created lessons about Israel, Zionism, Gaza and South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Some assignments asked students to produce social media content.
The presence of a lesson on an open platform doesn’t establish that a school district adopted it. It does make the material accessible to teachers searching for classroom resources.
Teacher networks have also organized in New York and Philadelphia. In April, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title VI investigation involving allegations connected to NYC Educators for Palestine and New York City schools. The school system said the group wasn’t officially affiliated with the district.
A federal court opinion in January involving Philadelphia teacher Keziah Ridgeway documented a proposed professional-development session titled “How to Teach the Genocide in Palestine in the Classroom.” The district canceled it.
Universities also participate in educator training. UCLA’s Center X has operated an Ethnic Studies Certificate Program for K-12 teachers, with Teaching Palestine appearing among connected materials. Teach Palestine has reported programming involving the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; and the University of San Francisco.
These organizations don’t all share the same funding, leadership, or institutional relationships. Their activities nevertheless show how Palestine-related curriculum can travel from activist organizations into teacher workshops, university programs, professional development courses and public school classrooms.
By December 2023, Oakland teachers who wanted to organize a Palestine teach-in didn’t have to write a curriculum. The lessons were already written, the books had already been selected, and the teacher networks were already there. They only had to open the folder.