Social Studies

Connecting Students to Our Shared History: The American Revolution PBS LearningMedia Educator Webinar On-Demand

Explore The American Revolution series with this on-demand archive from a virtual educator event from PBS LearningMedia: Connecting Students to Our Shared History: A Live Conversations with the Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. The filmmakers behind THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION joined in a conversation moderated by Sharon McMahon known as “America’s Government Teacher.” You’ll hear how the film came to life, gather ideas for how to engage students in this shared history, and discover new ready-to-use classroom resources from PBS LearningMedia. This event video is for educators teaching social studies in grades 3-12, as well as other educators, including instructional coaches and curriculum specialists in social studies. This event may also be useful to anyone getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the creation of United States with children and youth.

Description

Participants will learn about the process of creating a historical documentary, consider the power of visual storytelling to engage with the past, and discover opportunities to use this film in the classroom with PBS LearningMedia’s newest collection Ken Burns in the Classroom: The American Revolution. The resources in the collection will support teachers in connecting students to the Revolutionary era and its legacies today in relatable and meaningful ways. This webinar is from 11/18/25.

Watch On-Demand

What you’ll see:

Hear from all three filmmakers about their experiences creating this documentary
Consider how the perspectives of a wide variety of individuals from the Revolutionary era can help students connect to our shared history, 250 years in the making
Discover more about the Ken Burns in the Classroom: The American Revolution Collection on PBS LearningMedia at pbslearningmedia.org/americanrevolution

What you’ll get:

Access to insights from The American Revolution filmmakers
Ready-to-use, curriculum-targeted, standards-aligned classroom resources
A more expansive view of the Revolutionary era and ideas for how to engage students in this shared history, supporting critical thinking skills and the ability to connect the past to the present

About PBS LearningMedia
PBS LearningMedia, a partnership between PBS and GBH, is a transformative digital media platform for PreK-12 educators, providing free access to thousands of media-centric classroom resources from PBS member stations and esteemed partners. PBS LearningMedia delivers a dynamic mix of national and locally relevant content—including videos, interactives, lesson plans, teaching tips, and primary sources—that elevates classroom teaching and brings learning to life. Designed with teachers and subject matter experts, classroom resources are aligned to state and national standards and are compatible with the tools teachers use most, such as Google Classroom.

The Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights On-Demand

The Niagara Movement | The Early Battle for Civil Rights explores the Black elite and intellectual society at the turn of the 20th century, a class rarely presented. It examines the heated debate and conflict between W.E.B DuBois and William Monroe Trotter with Booker T. Washington on how to best uplift the race and secure equality for their community.

The Niagara Movement PBS LearningMedia Collection: Explore Video Shorts and Lessons

About the Film:

The Niagara Movement: the Early Battle for Civil Rights, a powerful hour-long documentary by WNED PBS, delves deep into the movement’s pivotal role in shaping the civil rights landscape. The documentary explores the Black elite and intellectual society at the turn of the 20th century and examines the heated debate and conflict W.E.B DuBois and William Monroe Trotter had with Booker T. Washington on how to best uplift the race and secure equality for Black Americans.

In July 1905, a group of 29 men, including Black intellectuals, clergy, writers, newspapermen, and activists, was formed and led by a young sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois. The group adopted the resolutions which lead to the founding of the Niagara Movement. Its Declaration of Principles stated, in part: “We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression, and apologetic before insults.”

The Niagara Movement was, in large part, a repudiation of the methods of Booker T. Washington, the unchallenged leader of Black liberation at the time. This was a time of widespread violence against Black Americans, as the end of Reconstruction brought oppressive Jim Crow laws and widespread lynching. How were Black Americans to respond to this oppression? Washington argued that the progress for Black Americans depended on practical but limited education – that legitimate protest against white supremacy would only make things worse, and that rights were secondary to survival. The formation of the Niagara Movement was a counter-movement: a national group dedicated to accepting nothing less than full civil rights.

Although the Movement was disbanded only four years after its inception, its impact and legacy have proven long-lasting. The Niagara Movement was a critical turning point in fighting inequality and it laid the cornerstone of the modern American Civil Rights Movement. Its influence and legacy are wide: it changed the tone and approach to Black protest in America, it created tactics, such as fighting in the courts for integration, that would be used by the NAACP, and it influenced the ideology of both the “black power” movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter movement of the 21st century.