Teach Like a Community Organizer: Practical Tools for Community-Building, Civic Engagement, and Progressive Change

This book is an invitation to participate in the “world as it is” with your students. When you teach like a community organizer, you help your students to notice the world as it is, to dream about the world as it should be, and to move toward closing the gap between the two. With this book, you will be able to:

• Develop the mindset of a community organizer
• Apply organizing concepts to the classroom
• Determine how you can make a difference in supporting progressive change in your own school and community
• Take action in bringing democratic practices to your own school

For teachers who have been witness to attacks on public education in the past few years and feel like something needs to change, but are unsure of what to do or are dismayed by the enormity of the size of the problems that we are facing, this book provides tools and examples for direct application to the classroom. The book encourages teachers to try organizing methods in their teaching, building community in the classroom and beyond.

This is an excellent resource for any teacher who has the desire to create a more holistic vision for teaching, learning and civic life, particularly for Social Studies educators and those teaching civic engagement.

Jacob Goodwin is a Social Studies educator with over a decade of experience in public schools. A 2015 James Madison Memorial Fellow, Mr. Goodwin was recognized in 2021 as the NH History Teacher of the Year. In 2023, he was named a Progressive Education Fellow for his advocacy work for public schools and was one of the 23 teachers nationally selected for the Peace Teacher Program at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan, independent institute founded by Congress with a mission to help prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflicts. Mr. Goodwin has also been honored as an Innovator in Civic Education Fellow by the David Mathews Center for Civic Life.