Unpack Your Impact: How Two Primary Teachers Ditched Problematic Lessons and Built a Culture-Centered Curriculum

O’Brien, Naomi and Lanesha Tabb

 Reimagine social studies through culture, diversity, and inclusivity for all primary students.

Primary educators know that little kids can do big things. So why teach the same old lessons when we can expose students to impactful, interesting, and beautiful ideas about the real world?

In an era of heightened political tensions and narrowed curricular focus, superstar educators Naomi O’Brien and LaNesha Tabb have found a surprising way to expose our youngest learners to more perspectives, center culture in the primary classroom, and take the need—and potential—for teaching about citizenship seriously: social studies!

By laying out their revolutionary approach to teaching social studies, O’Brien and Tabb explain how to provide students with a deep but achievable understanding of global social systems as they’re transformed by history, sociology, economics, geography, and civics.

And, because the Unpack Your Impact curriculum can be folded into existing lessons for almost any topic, students garner an inclusive and interdisciplinary appreciation for how all learning shapes, and is shaped by, a diverse array of human cultures. Inspiring, optimistic, and empowering, Unpack Your Impact shows that primary teachers can make a positive impact—individually and globally.