When I reflect on my experience of learning Black history as a student, the memories feel scarce. My family told stories about our history, and we attended events in our community, but I didn’t see those stories reflected inside my school walls. A lot of our history was missing there. My hope for today’s students is that they experience a richer, more complete portrait of Blackness across all aspects of their educational experience – including the pictures on classroom walls, the books on the shelves and the stories they learn in every unit.

For this hope to be realized, we need to introduce Black history to students outside of February – and we need to start with our youngest students. While I do value Black History Month, I truly believe it’s not a time for a mere introduction to Black history but for a true celebration of Black history. The teaching should happen year-round, starting in kindergarten, so when students encounter lessons about events and figures during Black History Month, they can approach them with familiarity and say, “Oh, we learned about that person,” or forge new connections, thinking, “Maybe this person knew that person. They lived during the same time.” Black history contains so much beauty, and students should encounter it woven throughout their learning.  

Our youngest students are ready to learn Black history.

Before taking on my current role supporting fellow educators, I taught for seven years – in a multi-age classroom and then as a kindergarten teacher. In elementary school especially, I see an opportunity to bring Black history into nearly every unit. When we teach about U.S. expansion, we can bring in stories about Black pioneers. When we teach science units, we can include discoveries made by Black physicians and astronomers. We can also teach students about contemporary African culture – stories, languages and ecosystems. Too often, elementary students learn about Africa only in association with slavery, and they consequently conceptualize Africa as a place of the past. It’s so important for them to learn about Black people living and existing there today and how these contemporary cultures touch American Black history, too.

During my time teaching kindergarten, I learned that even our youngest students were ready and hungry for historical inquiry. My kindergarteners responded so well to learning Black history, I’ve even received positive emails and calls from families sharing how their students were bringing their learning home and sharing it with their families and communities.

I want to offer some suggestions that I’ve gathered from my experience in leading  a year-long historical exploration of Black history in the classroom:

Lay a foundation through whole-class inquiry.

I started the school year by modeling research skills with the whole class, and students quickly began to pose their own research questions and employ the strategies we’d practiced together to answer them. Here’s how we began:

Step 1. Introduce picture books, including the author’s note.

Picture books served as my students’ first introduction to research. Many picture books centering Black history – or any history or nonfiction – contain an author’s or illustrator’s note. I told students, “It looks like the author left us some information. Let’s explore this information together.” I’d read the note before or after the story and show the students any accompanying information, like photographs or time lines. The students didn’t yet realize they were engaging in “research,” but it started there. Eventually, when I showed them new picture books, students began asking, “Hey, did they leave us a note?” 

Step 2. Lead students in primary document analysis with photos and songs. 

A lot of research in kindergarten centers on photography and art, and I moved on from picture books by printing copies of primary sources. I’d pass them out or put one on the board and ask questions like, “What do you see? What do you think is happening? Who’s in the photo? What do you think is going on? What do you wonder?” Songs sometimes contain information as well, so we’d engage in a similar analysis, looking for words that we recognized in songs, names mentioned in them and the stories they told.

Step 3. Model digital research and note-taking.

Many websites and apps contain information about people, plants, the natural world, histories and all kinds of topics. I’d show the students those apps when we explored questions as a class. We’d also watch videos and documentaries. Then, when it came time for students to learn about expansion or movers and shakers of America, they knew what resources could look like. Throughout, we practiced note-taking – which looks different for a kindergartner than a fifth grader. Kindergarteners can collect their information and thoughts by cutting and pasting images, drawing pictures or writing down one word.

Step 4. Introduce questions and give students space to explore their own questions.

Once we engaged in full-class research, students began to direct our inquiries. When they posed a question, they knew they could usually find a book to answer it. They asked, “Is there a picture of this person, Ms. James? What do they look like?” They directed me to my apps and websites, and I often just sat and gathered their questions, made a list, and then printed out information that responded to their questions. Sometimes, I set up stations where they could use iPads, look at images or choose picture books. They asked questions like, “Did they have a family? Did they have kids? What do their kids look like?”

We also engaged in independent research based on a common question. One year during Black History Month, I wrote this question on the board: “What Black history is in our classroom, and where can you find it?” The students became busy around the room, gathering materials. They found books, they found photos, they found different artifacts, and they brought it all together. Having engaged with resources and sources together, they knew they could find the answers.

Prepare yourself to serve as your students’ guide.

I often work with elementary educators and pre-service educators, and their hesitations about jumping into this work usually circle around questions about what’s appropriate for young students. They ask: What’s too much? What’s too hard? When it comes to concepts like racism, segregation, discrimination and the enslavement of Black people, a lot of teachers initially think, “I can’t teach this to little kids – it’s too heavy, too hard, too much.” In my experience, the challenge isn’t the content itself but in learning how to talk about it as teachers. I feel we sometimes don’t realize just how brilliant kids are and just how well they navigate complexity. 

My advice to new teachers is usually to let the students lead the discussion. I am mindful to allow space for the students to lead with their questions.

For example, one year, I approached our civil rights history unit without planning to discuss slavery, but one of my students expressed curiosity about the history leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. He couldn’t wrap his brain around books and images of the Civil Rights Movement without situating them within the larger history. He kept asking questions like, “Why are these people marching? What was happening before? How did we get here?” And so I thought, okay, we’ve got to go back in time. I brought out a lot of picture books about the longer history of Black people in America and asked what students saw and wondered. By accepting the student’s question, rather than ignoring it, I allowed students to engage with different voices to answer their questions, pulling from resources designed for young students.

I’ve realized that teachers’ worry is often rooted in concerns about the limitations of their own knowledge. As teachers, we can feel like we need to carry the full weight of the conversation and hold all the answers, when in reality, we can create space by handing that power over to our students and allowing their questions, discussion and research to guide them. When students ask us a question, we don’t need to shut down when we realize we don’t have an answer. Instead, we can consider the full world of podcasts, documentaries, websites, books and experts, and tell the students, “Let’s find out together.”

Take some time to build your Black history toolbox.

Building confidence in guiding our students’ historical inquiry begins with familiarizing ourselves with resources. Some of my educator friends and I have developed the concept of a “Black History toolbox.” For me, a Black history toolbox includes many elements: my connections to local experts I can engage, the books I can pair to teach Black joy and Black beauty, the set of songs I use to teach about Harriet Tubman, the pictures I use to teach about Rosa Parks or Ruby Bridges or Georgia Gilmore. It also includes websites where I know I can find more resources. I always recommend the National Museum of African-American History and Culture because they’ve curated learning labs – toolboxes in and of themselves. They draw together primary sources, artifacts from the museum and discussion questions for students.  

So when my student asked, “What happened before the Civil Rights Movement?” I knew which resources to draw from because I’d already spent time collecting options. With Black history and any history, our role as educators is not to contain encyclopedic knowledge ourselves, but to know how to guide students toward their own research discoveries.

Watch the connections deepen and expand. 

When we engage in this work year-round, February becomes a time for celebrating all that learning. I hope our students do encounter Black history in their physics units, and when they’re reading novels or hearing poets or learning about scientists and activists. I also hope they’re encountering stories about living Black people and seeing all the beautiful ways Black history continues to unfold today.

Looking for more support building your Black history toolkit? Dawnavyn collected her strategies and some favorite resources in her book, Beyond February: Teaching Black History Any Day, Every Day, and All Year Long, K–3.