DC Public Schools emails reveal the promotion of Black Lives Matter lessons from Seattle Public Schools for Pre-K to 5th grade which include topics such as BLM’s thirteen principles, ‘police violence,’ and ‘queer and trans affirming’

Incidents

SUMMARY

A Freedom of Information Act request to DC Public Schools reveals 2025 emails between elementary school teachers preparing for Black Lives Matter (BLM) at Schools Week, including access to a trove of Pre-K to 5th grade lessons from Seattle Public Schools that feature topics such as BLM’s thirteen principles, “police violence” and “queer and trans affirming.” The correspondence gives an inside look into how teachers at this school come up with lessons for BLM week and where they obtain them from.

While it is unclear from the emails which lessons, if any, were utilized from the repository, it does point to the fact that teachers across the country have access to this information to use in their classrooms. It is also highly likely that many of the lessons are used inside Seattle Public Schools classes.

EMAILS

A January 15, 2025, email between elementary school teachers shows one staff member promoting a BLM “Bulletin Board Coloring Pages” to other staff members. Another staff member responded with “I love this!” and then shared a resource from DC Area Educators 4 Social Justice.

A January 22, 2025, email to the whole staff from the “SEL Team” states that from “February 3-7th is the 8th annual DC Area Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action” and that “over the years we have had a few staff members implement lessons, read alouds and discussions aligned with the 13 guiding principles.” The email continues by stating that they “believe this is a great experience and extension to our SEL work” and “also supports our work around student belonging data.”

The email then lists multiple links to resources including a Google drive for Seattle Public Schools’ collection of BLM lesson plans for students Pre-K through high school.

2025_DC_DC Public Schools_FOIA-BLM plansDownload

SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS LESSON PLANS

The following are a selection of lesson plans for K-5 graders pulled from the linked Google Drive.

A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

A lesson titled “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement” focuses on K-5 students taking a “deep dive into A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” It includes students studying the “13 Core Principles of Black Lives Matter Week” such as:

  • “Black Villages” which states that they are “committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”
  • “Queer Affirming” which states that they commit to “fostering a queer-affirming network” with the “intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.”
  • “Transgender affirming” which states that they commit to “embracing and making space for trans brothers and sisters to participate and lead” and “being self-reflexive and doing the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.”
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza – Google DocsDownload

Do Black Lives Matter in America?

A 4th-5th grade lesson titled “Do Black Lives Matter in America?” focuses on “Police Violence” where students will “use current statistical data to determine whether black people are being treated fairly by American law enforcement.” The lesson instructs teachers to ask students “How many of you have been touched by police violence? Raise your hands.” It continues by having teachers allow students to “elaborate – 5 minutes.”

The lesson continues by having students engage with statistics provided with in the document. The teacher is prompted to read the following “statistic” – “Unarmed black people were killed 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015” – and have student participate in a stand up, sit down exercise. Another “statistic” provided states “If you are black you are 7 time more likely to be killed by police in Oklahoma than Georgia.”

The teacher is instructed to have students read the following list aloud:

Monday BLM Police Violence(4-5)Download

What is Transgender, and How Can I Be an Ally?

A lesson titled “What is Transgender, and How Can I Be an Ally?” for Pre-K through 3rd grade focuses on the BLM principle of “Trans and Queer Affirming.” The lesson states that students will “know that gender expression is how a person presents to the world (hair style, what they wear, etc.)” and “when a person is able to express their gender in a way that makes sense to them, they are able to be how they are and feel happy.”

Vocabulary for the lesson include the words “biological sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, non-binary, gender spectrum.”

The closing for part 1 of the lesson states that the teacher is to “explain that gender isn’t always so easy to identify” and that “if our doctors and our parents assign us a gender and it matches what we feel inside, then we can say we are cisgender.” It continues: “However, we may look like what society says a girl or boy should look like, but inside, we feel something different than just boy or just girl, we are somewhere in between, we can say that we are gender-expansive or transgender.”

prek -3 transgender lesson planDownload

Below is the 4th and 5th grade version of the same lesson plan.

4-5th transgender lesson planDownload