WXXI

Go Public

Social Studies

American Buffalo PBS LearningMedia Collection

The American Buffalo PBS LearningMedia Collection is created from the two-part, four-hour film takes viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent’s most iconic landscapes, tracing the American buffalo’s evolution, its significance to the Indigenous people and landscape of the Great Plains, its near extinction, and the efforts to bring the magnificent mammals back from the brink.

To support conversation and instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

Veterans Connections PBS LearningMedia Collections & Military Families Resources

These videos, images, and media-rich lesson plans are from PBS LearningMedia New York , a service of WXXI Public Broadcasting in partnership with the NY State Public Media stations and PBS. This collection of resources will allow educators to bring stories from the battlefront into American history, world history, and health classrooms. They will also help students to better understand veterans and their contributions.

Explore the similarities and differences in veterans’ memories of World War II and Vietnam to uncover how these wars shaped American culture. Analyze artifacts and oral histories that reveal important experiences of a nation during times of conflict. Use recent veterans’ personal stories to engage in a discussion of how the choice to become a soldier and the experience of serving relate to personal values and goals. You will find content in the Experiencing War, World War II, Vietnam War, and Iraq & Afghanistan sub-collections.

Note: Please preview all media for age appropriateness before using it with students. See grade level recommendations on media listings and cautionary notes for guidance.

Experiencing War 

Returning From War

Commemorating War

Analyzing War

        By War:

Military Families from PBS NewsHour Extra Students Reporting Lab  for Grades 7-12: Students reflect on their experience as children in a military family.

Sesame Street Resources for Military Families

Taking Care of Us: A Guide to Help Military Caregiving Families Grow in Emotional Well-Being

Suffrage Moments Educational Resource:

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, acclaimed American soprano and  WXXI Classical host Kearstin Piper Brown takes listeners on a journey through women’s suffrage with these one minute features. Join Kearstin as she looks at aspects of the Suffrage Movement, from the Seneca Falls Convention and the National Woman’s Party to the various anti-suffrage efforts and the arrest of Susan B. Anthony. 

Listen On-Demand:

LISTEN ON-DEMAND & READ ARTICLES  SUFFRAGE MOMENTS AT WXXI CLASSICAL website

Anti-Suffrage Efforts

Opposition to Women’s Suffrage

Susan B. Anthony Arrested

Seneca Falls Convention

The Turning Tide

The Meaning of Suffrage

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony House

The National American Woman Suffrage Association

The National Women’s Party

The Nineteenth Amendment

New York State’s Role in Suffrage

Unstoppable The Road to Womens’ Rights E-Fieldtrip:

Take an e-learning field trip through history: Unstoppable: The Road to Women’s Rights to learn about the suffrage movement. elected. Additional Resources available in PBS LearningMedia UnStoppable collection 

Watch On-Demand:

This interactive live-streamed educational event focuses on the Women’s Suffrage Movement, the struggle for Women’s Equality and the role of Women in politics today. Unstoppable brings the history of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and its impact on resulting legislation to the classroom. Watch this e-field trip through history on-demand as we chart the path from the hundreds of women that tried casting votes before it was legal to the hundreds of women that make up the most diverse Congress ever elected. Also available in PBS LearningMedia UnStoppable collection  Access Connected Learning Resources (from APTV)

Description: Unstoppable follows two young hosts as they visit Seneca Falls, NY, and Washington, D.C., to learn about the women that came before them in the fight for women’s rights. We begin with The Road to Suffrage, where we visit the site of the Seneca Falls Convention, which took place in July 1848. Here we learn about the establishment of suffrage groups and the fallout and disagreements around the 15th Amendment, the Women’s Voting Rights Amendment and the fights for racial and gender equality. Our hosts will also explore civic engagement today with 1st Amendment 1st Vote at the site of the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Next we visit Washington, D.C., and, with the help of the White House Historical Association, place ourselves in the exact location that suffragists gathered to protest in support of the passage of the 19th Amendment. We examine the constitutional arguments and final push leading to passage of the 19th Amendment by the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and its ratification by the states in August 1920. Lastly, we tour the U.S. Capitol building with Congresswomen Terri Sewell to discuss Women in Politics and where we stand today. During the live interactive segments, the audience will have the opportunity to interact with Coline Jenkins, author and great-great-granddaughter of women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton Video Clips

Two women. One allegiance. Together they fought for women everywhere, and their strong willpower and sheer determination still ripples through contemporary society. 

Recount the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as they strive to give birth to the women’s movement. Not until their deaths was their shared vision of women’s suffrage realized.

Watch Video Clips | Read the Biography
Explore the PBS LearningMedia Collection of Not for Ourselves Alone

Women’s Suffrage: Suffragettes fought for voting rights for American women, but some people struggled with the social changes that this brought.

Winter Wheat: Suffragettes fought tirelessly for a woman’s right to vote, but it was a difficult endeavor. Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not live to see the laws change, but their efforts made ripples throughout history.

A Great Partnership: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton may have been very different people, but together they formed a great – and complementary – partnership.

Seneca Falls Convention: When Susan B. Anthony introduced the Declaration of Sentiments at the first convention on women’s rights, she prompted a passionate response from the audience.

Unladylike Collection On-Demand

Illuminating the stories of extraordinary American heroines from the early years of feminism, the American Masters —Unladylike2020 Collection is a multimedia series consisting of 26 digital short films featuring courageous, little-known and diverse female trailblazers from the turn of the 20th century.

 These women achieved many firsts, including earning an international pilot’s license, becoming a bank president, founding a hospital, fighting for the desegregation of public spaces, exploring the Arctic, opening a film studio, and singing opera at Carnegie Hall. Presenting history in a bold new way, American Masters —Unladylike2020, produced and directed by Charlotte Mangin, brings these incredible stories back to life through original artwork and animation, rare historical archival footage, and interviews with descendants, historians and accomplished modern women who reflect upon the influence of these pioneers.

The American Masters UNLADYLIKE2020 Project resources include:

  • 26 animated documentary short films profiling women from 100 years ago who changed America and contemporary women who now follow in their footsteps
  • A collection and articles at WNET American Masters Page
  • The PBS LearningMedia Unladylike 2020 Collection: A grades 6-12 U.S. history curriculum with over 70 videos and related resources regarding the Progressive Era women, diverse in profession, race, ethnicity, geographical and class backgrounds, sexual orientation and gender expression, who broke barriers in then-male-dominated fields such as science, business, journalism, exploration, and the arts.
  • The companion Unladylike.com website is a vast interactive website featuring the stories of over 100 diverse and extraordinary women from the turn of the 20th century who broke barriers and achieved tremendous professional heights

Native America in the Classroom

Explore the world created by America’s First Peoples with PBS’ Native America. The four-part series reaches back 15,000 years, revealing massive cities aligned to the stars, unique systems of science and spirituality, and 100 million people connected by social networks spanning two continents.

In this collection, you will find the program in full, along with stand-alone clips and classroom activities. The video clips and associated support materials bring the value of sacred origin stories and the complexity of early Native city planning to life, and culminate in hands-on activities designed to help students better understand both. 

Resources from the program include:

Sacred Origin Stories of 6 Civilizations

Ancient City Planning

Native Government & Early Democracy (Including the Haudenosaunee)

Watch the Full Program Series (4 Parts) from Native American Season 1

Native America Season 2 Resources

About the Native America Series (Season 1) Weaving history and science with living Indigenous traditions, the series brings to life a land of massive cities connected by social networks spanning two continents, with unique and sophisticated systems of science, art and writing. Made with the active participation of Native American communities and filmed in some of the most spectacular locations in the hemisphere, Native America illuminates the splendor of a past whose story has for too long remained untold.

Informed by Native American oral histories have led to a bold new perspective on North and South America – that through social networks spanning two continents ancient people shared a foundational belief system with a diversity of cultural expressions. This and other research is leading to revelations that will forever change how we understand Native America. The series highlights intimate Native American traditions and follows field archaeologists using 21st century tools such as multispectral imaging and DNA analysis to uncover incredible narratives of America’s past, venturing into Amazonian caves containing the Americas’ earliest art and interactive solar calendar, exploring a massive tunnel beneath a pyramid at the center of one of ancient America’s largest cities, and mapping the heavens in celestially aligned cities.

Narrated by Robbie Robertson (Mohawk and member of the famed rock group The Band), each hour of Native America explores Great Nations and reveals cities, sacred stories and history long hidden in plain sight. In what is now America’s Southwest, indigenous people built stone skyscrapers with untold spiritual power and transformed deserts into fertile fields. In upstate New York, warriors renounced war and formed America’s first democracy 500 years before the Declaration of Independence, later inspiring Benjamin Franklin. Just outside Mexico City, the ancient city of Teotihuacan is home to massive pyramids built to align with the sun and moon. On the banks of the Mississippi, rulers also raised a metropolis of pyramids and drew thousands to their new city to worship the sky. And in the American West, nomadic tribes transformed a weapon of conquest — the horse — into a new way of life, turning the tables on European invaders and building a mobile empire.  

Discovering New York Suffrage Stories On-Demand

The 70-year fight for suffrage began in Central and Western New York, an epicenter of reform. Women began their battle for the vote  in the mid-1800s. This part of the upstate region was an epicenter of reform, tackling societal issues like abolition, religion, temperance, and women’s rights. Success depended on many women whose stories are often forgotten.  Watch On-Demand & Access Classroom Resources

Meet Matilda Joslyn Gage, Paulina Wright Davis, Mary Burnett Talbert, and Hester Whitehurst Jeffrey, diverse suffragists who tirelessly navigated religious intolerance, sexism, politics, and racism as they fought for the vote and women’s equality. Learn more at the documentary website.  

Watch the Episode &  Access Classroom Resources & Video Clips

Discovering New York Suffrage Stories PBS LearningMedia Collection

Keep informed about what’s happening in your community and WXXI by signing up for our newsletters.

Sign Up