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I articulate an autoethnographic narrative of using different songs to counter dominant interpretations of gender, class, immigration, slavery, and education in the secondary social studies classroom. Framing it as the Critical Music Framework, the practice of using music addressing social issues and historical representations of women and people of color provided students with reflective learning opportunities. The resulting conversations illustrate the importance of music not just on the personal but also the academic aspects of individuals.

The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: "Shaolin" and "swarming." This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate ways to disrupt hegemonic, oppressive, and racist educational structures and master narratives. In particular, we use two Wu-Tang tracks (e.g. "Can it be all so simple," "Triumph") to demonstrate how static approaches to hip-hop--specifically the Wu-Tang--reduce and flatten engagements with hip-hop music in educational contexts. Central to our argument is that the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan are more than economically damaged narratives that tether various culture entities together: Wu-Tang "is" theory.

Artists have long addressed social injustices within popular music. As teachers consider how to deconstruct and teach the events of 2020 (and beyond) with an eye toward the future, we offer a novel pedagogical approach to incorporating music into the social studies classroom: the set-list. The set-list can be understood as containing temporal conditions insofar that all traditional demarcations of time (e.g., past, present, and future) are implicated in its construction. Extending the concept of the set-list into education holds excellent potential for teachers and students seeking to develop a more complex perspective about criticality and social in/justice. Our set-list example originates from years-long conversations around our experiences as former secondary social studies teachers, current teacher educators, fathers, spouses, and individuals living in the United States. Music encourages students to recognize how the past, present, and future are intertwined in learning history. While the official social studies curriculum does not include music as an approach to learning history in the social studies classroom, using a student-generated set-list starts transforming the world within the context of social justice.

Genealogy and family history projects can be an excellent way to foster students' sense of identity and connectedness to their heritage and relatives. Such activities can help students develop pride and knowledge in their identities and personal histories. Because knowledge of family histories is often valued within Indigenous communities, and central to many Indigenous social, cultural, and diplomatic traditions, such projects have the potential to be a meaningful form of culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogical practice. This article begins with a brief literature review on the value and practice of using family history projects in social studies/history classrooms. Following this review, the authors offer a more detailed discussion of Indigeneity and the ways in which Indigenous identities are entangled with family history projects. To demonstrate the importance of rethinking family history projects, they offer three vignettes that illustrate how normative discourses and practices can live in tension with students' lived experiences. This provides context for their subsequent outline of a variety of considerations for social studies educators that they assert can challenge and complement the approaches described. In so doing, the authors' hope is to foster spaces and practices that support Indigenous students, as well as challenge normative notions of family that constrict the diverse range of cultural and familial expressions that already exist--and should be supported--in classrooms.

I position the use of counter-narratives as a critical approach that grants students agency and meaning in their learning and provides teachers with opportunities to present silenced curricular narratives as relevant and necessary in a globalized setting such as North America. Counter-narratives focus on a subject that preserves colonial and neo-colonial narratives to millions of K-12 students daily: social studies. The counter-narratives in this article, drawn from the collective actions of the Young Lords Party, provide the reader with concrete examples of how counter-narratives empower students who have been marginalized by the dominant social studies curriculum and educators who have been flustered by the standardization of the curriculum.

Drawing from Cervantes-Soon's (2012) framework of "testimonios" as confessions, counter-narratives, and "consejos," we explore how writing letters to our children serves as a process of historical documentation, healing, and a passing down of social justice principles and family history. Additionally, we expand on Cervantes-Soon's framework by utilizing "testimonios" as a process by which to affirm intergenerational memory. Finally, connections are made to the potential role of letter writing as an important pedagogical tool.