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Arizona Civics Podcast
Welcome to the Arizona Civics Podcast. This podcast aims to share our journey of sustaining Arizona’s interests in reforms to civic education by working with civic educators in our state. This work is being done by the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University. I am your host, Liz Evans, Civic Education and Outreach Program Director at ASU, and I will interview Arizona teachers, content experts, and leaders in civic education. We hope you enjoy our journey to make Arizona a national civics model!
Arizona Civics Podcast
How Retro Report Turns History Into Today’s Lesson
What if a 10-minute story from the past could make today’s headlines finally click? We sit down with David Olson, Director of Education at Retro Report, to unpack how short documentaries and first‑person voices turn history into a powerful lens for understanding civics now—without turning classrooms into battlegrounds. David shares why narrative structure matters, how unintended consequences make the best teachable moments, and why the “40-word” version of a story can distort what students think they know.
We trace vivid examples—the Berlin Airlift’s path to NATO, the real stakes behind the McDonald’s hot coffee case, and camp newspapers from Japanese American incarceration that list baseball scores next to a military draft notice. Along the way, David lays out practical routines for tackling fast-moving news: mapping what we know, what we think we know (with sources), and what questions still stand. We dig into primary sources as a safer foundation for hard conversations about political violence, polarization, and rights, shifting authority from opinion to evidence.
You’ll also get a first look at timely classroom tools: a new film on the 2008 financial crisis for students born after it, an eye-opening exploration of Island Trees v. Pico and who decides what stays on library shelves, plus upcoming pieces on Tiananmen, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and America 250. Every resource is free, scaffolded for diverse learners, and built with teacher feedback through Retro Report’s ambassador network.
If you’re a civics, history, ELA, or social science teacher looking to connect past and present with less risk and more clarity, this conversation is your playbook. Dive into the full library at retroreport.org, share these resources with a colleague, and tell us which story helps your students “get” the world today. And if you found this helpful, follow, rate, and leave a review—your support helps more educators find practical, free tools that work.
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Welcome back to the Arizona Civics Podcast. I am stoked to interview my friend, my Civics Dusty colleague, David Olson, who currently works for Retro Report. David and I'm quoting Matt because in the age of amazing networking, we were both part of the iCivics Network. We both kind of transitioned out of teaching and we've kept in touch. He's come to Arizona to do lots of really cool things. So David, thank you so much for being here. Can you start by introducing yourself and telling us about Retro Report's mission of connecting past events to the challenges of today?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Liz. I really appreciate being here. All of the things, or at least 90% of them, are true. So uh I, you know, have long enjoyed uh working with you and seeing all of the amazing things you've been able to do in the civics world. Um, and it's a pleasure to talk to you. So uh yes, before I get into retroport, a little bit about my backgrounds. Um, I came to this particular position um uh really through a combination, right? One of being a longtime classroom teacher. Um I've I've actually taught at a bunch of different levels. I I started my career as a middle school teacher, and man, was that an adventure. Um, I spent the bulk of my teaching career as a high school teacher. Um, I taught at a uh large uh urban public school in Madison, Wisconsin. Um, I've also taught community college courses, I've taught some undergraduate courses. Um so usually I tell people like 13 to 35. That's my uh my wheelhouse of students. Um, and then as you mentioned, like during my time in the classroom, um, you know, civics and history is a passion of mine. So uh I was able to get connected with places like iCivics to be part of their educator network. Um, done work with the National Constitution Center, um, done uh a lot of work with PBS, wrote some lessons for some Ken Burns films, and uh done you know some cool webinars and things like that with them. So all of those were sort of stepping stones to uh my current position, which is uh director of education at Retroport. Um, and when I made this transition a few years ago, uh the way I describe it is sort of like switching my day job and my side gig, right? Uh my day job was classroom teacher, my side gig was I do this other stuff uh to not only make myself a better teacher, but also promote history and civic education. Now that's what I do full time, and then when I can, uh I find my way into a classroom and you know, teach a class here and there. So um what we do at Retro Report uh is uh primarily our goal is to create short form documentary films really with the goal of trying to connect past and present. Um, and so our our job in finding and crafting and telling these stories is to demonstrate that there is a connection between history and what's happening in our world today. So uh I would say a typical retro report sort of goes one of two ways. Either we start with this story from the past, uh, a great example. We have a this amazing film about the Berlin airlift, um, and a guy named Gail Halverson, who is known as the chocolate bomber, right? A guy who tied up little packages of chocolate bars, dropped them to children uh in West Berlin during the blockade. Um, and we tell this story from history, and then we connect it to the present. We say, here's why this is still relevant to us today, right? And really the Berlin airlift and these early actions uh of the Cold War, of trying to figure out what is this uneasy tension uh between the US and the West and the Soviet Union gave birth to NATO, right? And I probably don't have to tell your listeners, uh, NATO still pretty relevant, something that has been in the news lately, something that we should understand what it is, why it exists, what's the history behind it? Um, and we can grapple with questions of what should NATO do? Should it still exist? What role should it have when there's conflict in Europe or elsewhere? Right? So that's one example. Another example would be uh we start with here's this thing happening today, and then we ask the question, what's the history and the backstory that helps us understand it to put it in perspective? Yes, right? So really, those are you know, it's kind of two sides of the same coin, but the goal here is how can I make connections between history and the world that I live in now? And and honestly, this was was and and still is when I'm in the classroom, one of one of the things I love to focus on. Um, I generally started, I don't know, 90% of my classes by asking my students the same question. I would say, what's going on in the world? What do we need to know? Right. Because I wanted students to come to class and talk about the news and be able to say, I saw this thing, I don't really understand it, what's happening here? Or I saw this thing, I think I know what's going on. And then as a class, we go, ooh, is that what's going on? Or do we need to do we need to find more sources? Do we need to evaluate our sources? And I know sometimes the hesitation uh of teachers in in doing that of saying, oh no, we carve out time for current events, is oh, am I gonna have enough time? Is it is it gonna be worth it? Is it gonna connect to my standards? The answer is yes. It is gonna be worth it. It is like honestly, the way it's gonna connect to your standards is your students are actually gonna understand the history better when they can go, oh, I get why this thing is happening, right? It might not happen that day, but inevitably, two, three weeks, 10 weeks down the line, they're gonna go, oh, that was like that thing that happened in the news. Or I get why the political party said that, or I get why this country uh has this relationship with this other country, right? That we have to understand history in order to understand our present. Um, and so our work at Retro Report, number one, is we create short documentary films to try to tell that story, and then job number two, uh, this is primarily where I come in, is to create the classroom resources so that a teacher can use that seven, 10-minute video to be able to address here's this thing we're learning about in history or civics or geography or environmental science.
SPEAKER_01:And so, listeners, if you listen to the podcast before this, I talked to Liam Julian and he talked about why teachers are afraid to teach civics in classrooms. And to me, retro report is a direct answer to teachers of here are things that are ready-made, they're classroom friendly. I'm looking at uh the front page, right, of retro report right now, and there is something on vaccine skepticism, there's something on the financial crisis. Like there are so many things here that connect and that again, and I think that you know, we have a unique view because both of you and I did middle school, we did high school, right? We know what that's like to be like, I want to make sure that the things that I use in my classroom are legit, they're classroom friendly, and everything you have is because you used to be a teacher. And before we go, I do want to talk about how you utilize teachers because I think that's so important. But so retro rapport often highlights the unintended consequences of history, right? Why is that focus important? And how do you decide which stories to tell?
SPEAKER_00:So I think the unintended consequences part, I mean, honestly, part of how that makes its way into what we do uh is because frankly, it makes for a great story, right? Those are the engaging stories, those are the hey, didn't turn out like we thought it would kind of stories, right? Uh I mean, this is this is the reason that we read great works of fiction. This is the reason why we go see thriller movies in uh the movie theater. It's because we go, oh, there was a twist, there was something else that we didn't foresee uh that was gonna happen here. Um and honestly, the the way that we try to do that, and and I think one of the things that makes Retro Report different than a whole lot of other great resources out there is that what we do is we try to focus on story and narrative. So uh a typical Retro Report film, what you're gonna see, because again, we're trying to connect past and present, what you're gonna see is multiple interviews, ideally first-person interviews, right? We want to hear from the people who lived or made the history. Now, sometimes that's not possible, right? I have teachers a lot, uh, US history teachers who are like, what do you have from the founding era? And it's like, well, we have a couple things, but it's really hard uh when you know, when we go to make a film about the election of 1800, sadly, those candidates no longer with us. Right. So ideally, we want to pair first-person narratives. Uh, we'll couple that with uh experts, right? It's it's great when we hear from historians, academics, those folks. And then the last thing we want to include there is primary sources, right? We want to see how did things look, feel, sound at the time, right? And so a lot of our work, which is like post-war US history connected stuff, um, it's great because we've got video. We can look and see how did the news cover it in that moment? Uh, you know, what was the media saying? What is, you know, can we get footage from the actual event uh to sort of get that message? Um, you know, some great examples of the sort of unintended consequences ones. Um, I mean, there's there's many, uh, some of the ones that immediately jump to mind. One of my favorites is we have a film that gets a lot of use about the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit.
SPEAKER_01:Um my gosh, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a yeah, right. So this is a story that at least in part because of how the media covered it, uh, we all think we know. Turns out I encourage you to go watch our video. Uh, it's great. Um there's more to that story, right? Uh, this is not just a case of an overly litigious person going, I burned myself on your coffee, McDonald's paying me millions of dollars. Um that's not the actual truth of that story. Um, but the thing that that I I love, my favorite chunk of that film, um, is we talked to uh some veteran reporters, uh, including one guy who talked about how the I'm gonna so you'll have to fact check me on the on the numbers here because it's okay, I'm not gonna get them exactly right. I'd have to go look at the transcript. But he says something like when this original story was reported, right, after the the initial verdict, in a major American newspaper, it was hundreds and hundreds of words long, right? But this was a sensational story that gets picked up everywhere. So it goes from several hundred words or over a thousand words down to 200 words to, you know, back in the day of physical newspapers. This was that tiny little blurb of we've got 40 words to tell you what happened in this story. And that's the story that made its way around the world. The 40-word version, not the thousand-word version, right? And there's a big difference in what you can tell, in what you can communicate in nuance, complexity, and truth in 40 words versus a thousand words, right? And so, if nothing else, uh part of what that story tells us is we should dig a little deeper, right? We should we we shouldn't depend on the headline. Uh, we should we should go, you know, I should go find out for ourselves, do some additional digging, see what else we can learn uh about stories that happen in history. Um, another great one, uh we so this actually has been in the news a bit. Um back in the I think it was 1960s, uh, there was a very famous book uh by a guy named Paul Ehrlich called The Population Bomb, uh, which basically said, hey, within the next uh couple decades, we will outstrip the carrying capacity of the globe. We will have mass famine, starvation, and death because there are too many people. Um today, uh, you look around the globe, not only have we gone from, you know, I think at the time around 4 billion, 5 billion people to over 8 billion people, um, but we have plenty of countries around the globe that are trying to figure out how to promote uh population growth, right? Uh and figure out how do we get birth rates up. Um, so this is, you know, another one of those of like, what kind of policies did we make and create based on a work that was proven to not be correct, right? Now, clearly there are still environmental factors and things like that that that population growth challenges the population growth poses. But when a person says in 20 years we're all gonna die because uh there are too many people living on this planet, and now we have double the number of people, like clearly that was that was an incorrect uh assumption.
SPEAKER_01:So you talked about primary sources. Your work with Library of Congress really emphasizes primary sources, and I think everybody in the civics and civil studies world, when they hear primary sources, like yes, right? How can teachers use these materials to help students think more critically about history and current events together?
SPEAKER_00:Um I'll address this. I'll I'll I'll talk a little bit about the the project as well. And then do you put links in in show notes, Liz?
SPEAKER_01:Sure do.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, brilliant. Well, we will connect to this wonderful collection we have. Yes. Um so you you mentioned you know your previous podcast uh guest. Um talked about you know some of that fear and hesitation that teachers have, right? Yes. Um, you know, teaching civics, it's hard. Um if for no other reason, I mean, we we are having this conversation on October 1st, uh, early afternoon. Uh, we are 12 hours, 12-ish hours into uh government shutdown, right? Yep. Um I guarantee you there are what tens of thousands of civics and government teachers around the country who are like, uh, how am I gonna here we go? Yeah, how am I gonna explain what a government shutdown is? How am I gonna explain like uh what is the lawmaking process and the budget writing process that got us here so that my sixth graders or my tenth graders can understand what any of this is, right? Okay, so number one, teaching civics is hard. Number two, teachers sometimes are scared to wade into this minefield. I think I think that one of the biggest fears that teachers have is when their students go home and say, my teacher said fill in the blank, right? We as teachers, I I mean, I know thousands of them, by and large, they are really excellent people, okay, who are dedicated to their craft and who want to do right by their students. A teacher cannot control what how a student finishes that sentence, right? The my teacher said, fill in the blank. And that's right, that's where a lot of teachers end up receiving criticism, right? Something was misconstrued. Now, granted, there have been plenty of teachers who've said things they shouldn't have said, but there's that fear of what are my how are my students communicating what I think the intent of this lesson is. Okay. One of the ways to sidestep at least a part of that problem, is use primary sources. Right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Instead of standing in front of your class saying, here's the here's the real story about X. Well, let the people of the time tell you their perspective. Let's use images and cartoons and song recordings and photographs and government documents to tell the story in that moment, right? It's a fundamentally different statement out of the student's mouth, right? On one hand, if you compare my teacher said dot dot dot versus we read or we saw photographs of this event. Uh, we we read or listened to an interview with a person who was there and here's what they said, right? Now, that is not a cure-all, but that is absolutely a safer approach, right? It is a different conversation in homes across America when it's here's what the documents say, here's what the people who lived it say, as opposed to here's what my teacher said. So that's that's something that that you know we take into account not only in our filmmaking style, but also in how we construct the materials that go with our films, right? Um, so a great example of this. Uh, we have a this wonderful film about uh the legacy of the Koromatsu decision, uh about Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Um again, there's some amazing, like unknown or very, you know, lesser known uh pieces of that story, and how we get from uh the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in the 1940s to reparations, payments paid to them and their descendants, uh signed into law by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Like there's there's a there's a couple really interesting steps along the way, but uh this is one of those times where you know I found uh absolute primary source gold, right? So uh Library of Congress has this amazing collection of historical newspapers um called Chronicling America. You can search stuff all the way back to the 1700s through the 1960s, and some of the newspapers that they have uh digitized include a set of historical newspapers from Japanese internment camps. So these are newspapers produced uh by people who were imprisoned in these camps. Um, and they they talk about not only the the sort of news of the day, but they chronicle births and deaths and weddings. They talk about the the results of uh their camp baseball teams uh against each other. There's some amazing stuff in there. Um and in June, I was using uh using some of these resources and showing a clip from our film and then some primary sources related to this. Um, and I I clicked on one of the newspapers, I think it was from uh June, when was it? June 27th, 1942. Um, and one of the articles talks about how that coming week at the camp itself, uh, they were going to be holding the military draft for all young men between 18 and I think it was maybe 25. And to see in a in this document that people who have been removed from their homes and imprisoned now are going to be subjected to the military draft to fight for the country that has imprisoned them. I mean, that's like put that in front of students and go, what is you know, what do we make of this? What questions do you have? I mean, I have a million questions, right? Sure do. But that's I I think that's one of those things where that primary source tells us a whole, I mean, it tells us some things, it it sparks many questions, but that's pretty powerful, right? Uh that's that's something that a primary source can do. That uh, you know, if you if you put that side by side with just a a talking head historian who said, Oh, we even subjected uh incarcerated prisoners to the draft. Like uh it's different to see it in writing, uh to see it next to articles about, you know, here's what happened in our camp yesterday. Uh it hits different. So the the bigger picture, this uh this Library of Congress project, um, the way it came about was uh we'd actually done this pilot with uh a school outside of New York City um called the Windward School. Um it's a a school that specializes in working with students with uh language disabilities. So uh primarily dyslexia, but but a few others as well. Um and they go through, they they utilize um uh a specific way to teach students uh uh critical analysis and writing strategies. It's called the Hockmann method. Um and so we we had approached them and worked out this pilot where uh we said, hey, you you folks use uh all sorts of short articles with students where students go through, they annotate, uh, and then they respond to a writing prompt, right? Uh they have to come up with their thesis, they have to provide supporting evidence, they have to link it, all of that sort of thing. Um, and so the the impetus of this project was, hey, would you be willing to try using a handful of short videos occasionally in place of the short articles that you've been using? And the folks at Windward were like, yeah, this would be great. We'll we'll try it out. Uh, we'll work this into how we create our resources and report back. Well, they reported back shockingly, uh, that students really liked using short videos. Uh, it was a great break from another article, right? And so uh they used these, they created some of the resources and said, this this works really well. Uh, this, you know, is a solid way to go about teaching um this sort of critical analysis and then construction of uh an expository paragraph and that sort of thing. So what we did then was we took this sort of pilot project, uh, applied for a grant uh from the Library of Congress, a teaching with primary sources grant, and said, we want to take 25 of our films um that cover sort of post-reconstruction to present-day US history, plenty of civics connections in there as well. What we're gonna do is we're gonna create these scaffolded resources for students uh at you know different levels of their writing and analysis. We're gonna couple it with a primary source pack for each of these and put them all together so that uh within a classroom, uh almost no matter sort of what learning differences a teacher would have in front of them, they would have sort of multiple versions to work from to say, let's watch this seven-minute video. Uh then, you know, about uh the Great Depression or the Cold War or civil rights era, that sort of thing. We're gonna watch the video, uh, we're gonna analyze primary sources, and then we're gonna respond to uh a writing prompt. Um, and uh this grant has enabled us not only to create this set of resources, but also to go out and actually do professional development with uh with teachers. And hopefully now, uh if we get year two and three funding um as we move forward uh to be able to do it with districts um and and really get these materials into the hands of teachers to say, look, there's great stuff, it's free, uh, it will help you meet the needs of all sorts of different learners in your classroom. Um, and it's really engaging stuff.
SPEAKER_01:I love that you brought up Koramatsu because I don't know that a lot of people know that the state of Arizona had Japanese internment camps. Um and it it again, like showing that they have baseball leagues, like there's so many things that we can show. And I love where you're like, what questions do you have, right? Because it really allows the students to dig in. Unfortunately, another thing that's connected to Arizona is political violence. Um and I don't want to talk necessarily about current day, but you know, our congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a victim of political violence. Unfortunately, we're seeing it a lot more, or it feels like a lot more lately. So in your video on political violence, you show that tensions over democracy really do go back to the founding era. How can teachers use these parallels to make sense of today's polarization in their classroom? Because again, teachers are afraid to talk about it. We we've seen people lose their jobs over things. So, how can teachers use these videos and again use these past events to really um make sense of it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I you know, I I don't have the perfect answer and the perfect response here because I I don't think it exists, right? Nobody does, exactly. I mean, uh the dealing just as a member of society in a country where political violence is a reality is tough. And then to turn around and to try to provide context and understanding and space for questions and opinions in a classroom about political violence is really, really hard. Yes. I again, this you know, gets back to my sort of operating ethos in the classroom of we want to understand history in order to understand today. You cannot understand the world you're living in without understanding history, and history is just not as meaningful unless you can find ways to connect it to your present, right? And so this is one again, you you referenced a film we have uh that really looks at you know essentially how political violence has been part of US history since the beginning. Um now, certainly we can point over our history to waves, ebbs and flows. Uh, I've seen a lot of conversation recently about uh the 1970s as a time of tremendous turmoil recently. Um, you know, if we go back to the founding era, right, uh what leads us to revolution, at least in part, are some acts of political violence. Um the the time frame in between winning the revolutionary war and the creation of the constitution is marked by and the the drive to the constitution is hastened by political violence, right? Shea's, I mean, I would argue Shea's rebellion um. I don't know. I I know some people say, oh, it's it's maybe a little overhyped, but I it might be one of the 10 to 15 most important events in US history in terms of its outcome, right? When you when you convince a group of 13 states, which really operate like their own independent countries, to say, see, there's danger afoot, you need a stronger national government, we must come together. That's a pretty big deal and change. And then, you know, once we have the constitution, there's plenty of political violence that occurs between then and the biggest act of political violence of a country going to war with itself, right? And so, really, that's you know, in 10 minutes, the video tries to tell this story and say, look, this, you know, whether it's an arc or a straight line, or I don't know. I'm not, I don't, not great at geometry. It's there, right? It's it's been part of us since the beginning. Um, certainly not to say like it's a good thing, uh, but it's but it's but it's there, it's something we have to contend with and to understand how political violence has had an effect in the past should help us understand the impact of political violence today.
SPEAKER_01:And I I appreciate that you're like, there's no right answer here. I think when we look at events of today, teachers sometimes feel like they have to have the answer now. And it's it's the same argument I've had with scholars where it's like, how long does the president have to be out of office for you to be able to judge their right? We we sometimes get caught in this presentism of I need to know everything now. And it's it's impossible. It's a lot. And I love that you're conducting, like, let's take it, let's take a breath and look back and understand, you know, why. And then again, I I love that you say asking like all the questions you have. And teachers, if you're asked a question that you don't know, it's perfectly fine to say, I don't know. That's a really great question. Because we don't have to know everything.
SPEAKER_00:And I and I think, you know, if for teachers trying to deal with breaking news. Um and and this is I I mean, this is this is a a for a uh history or civics and government teacher, this is a daily issue. Right. Yes. But when when you have one of those big events that bubbles up where you know students have thoughts, have questions, um, have seen snippets on TikTok and Instagram or wherever, right? This is a great time. Use that whiteboard in the front of your room and make a list of what are the things that we think we know, what are our sources of that information? What are the things we definitely don't know? And what are the things that we have questions about that we, you know, that we don't even know we don't know, right? And and you know what? Your questions list is probably gonna be the longest. And there are some of those questions you may never answer. Um but that's the I mean, that's that's what learning is, right? That's how and that's how we make that's how we make sense of the world that we live in, that's how we make sense of history. Um that's you know, teaching students to be uh quality consumers of news and information, uh, to be able to analyze and and dissect stories uh and and figure out what what is it that we know and don't know. And I, you know, it's one of those, again, I I could be on a up on a soapbox all day uh arguing for these sorts of things, but I you know I think it's important so that the next time that there is a big piece of news, don't shy away. Don't as hard as it is, don't interject of here are here are my thoughts and they must be right. Right? Yes, but let's figure out what do we know, what do we think we know, or what are the sources, what are the questions we have. And you know what? You can come back to that the day after, the day after, the following week, and update those things. Um granted by the next week it's probably gonna be replaced with the next issue event, controversy. Uh, but you know, that's I mean, that that's what social studies is. Uh we we gotta figure out how we interact with each other and uh inhabit this world and live together in societies. Uh, if we don't spend at least a little time uh figuring out what's happening outside of the classroom uh and talking about it, I you know, I don't know what we're doing here.
SPEAKER_01:And that kind of cognitive mapping is critical for building critical thinkers, building media literacy, because even if you can't answer the questions, you've now taught your students to hear something and to say, hmm, I wonder, I wonder where the source is, I wonder what else I don't know. And again, we're creating responsible consumers of of media, and that is so important. So looking ahead, what upcoming retro report stories? So I know we talked about like the 2008 financial crisis, uh, the Americans with Disability Act, Supreme Court cases. Do you think what do you think is going to be most impactful for teachers and students? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so some of the things we we have coming down the pike. Well, our our most recent film was about the 2008 financial crisis. Um, this is definitely one of those areas where I'm like, I was already a professional, like had a real job and lived through this. How can we be teaching this as history? Uh, and then you know, you look in your classroom of 10th graders and go, oh, you know, you people were babies. You don't you don't know about this. Um, so that one was uh recently released. The one that will be released probably by the time uh this podcast uh is out in the wild, um, looks at a uh kind of little known Supreme Court case uh called the Island Trees uh school district versus Pico.
SPEAKER_01:Um I'd never heard of that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it it's actually the Supreme Court case, really the only one that deals with the constitutionality and First Amendment aspects of book banning. Um, so here this looks back to the 1970s um Island Tree School District. Uh, it's in Levittown, New York, on Long Island. Um, and here it was a high school student who uh essentially sued his school district for removing uh items from the school library. Um, his claim was he had a First Amendment right uh to have those resources available in the school library. Um now, the the unfortunate part uh for teaching this, right, is that this is one of those times where the Supreme Court does not give us like a nice clean opinion. We don't get the like, oh, here's the quote I can use for all time that lets me understand, you know, there's no separate, uh is inherently unequal line in Island Trees V Pico. In fact, it is such a fractured opinion. There are there are seven different opinions that are offered or authored in this case. Um, we get a plurality that basically says, like, yeah, students have some First Amendment rights to be able to access information, but this is messy. Well, you know what? It's messy currently, everywhere in the country. Um, and so one of the things we have students do is uh analyze this issue from a couple different perspectives um to come up with an argument about who is it that should decide, right? Do we put that at the federal government level, the state government, the school boards? Should we leave it to families and the community, right? Grappling with those issues of who does and should have the power. Um, we have students, uh, you know, part of it is we want students to go to their look at their own school district policy uh to analyze like how do these decisions get made, right? And so this is one that I mean, my hope, right? We are we aim to be a a nonpartisan uh organization, right? Um, we do not take the stance that like book banning is good or book banning is terrible. We want to tell you an interesting and engaging story from history, tell you, guess what? This is still with us today. It's something we're still arguing about, and create an activity for students to do some of this mental heavy lifting and grappling with this issue for themselves. So that one should be out very soon. Uh, upcoming films, uh, one about uh Tiananmen Square, um, one about the Americans with Disabilities Act. Uh we also are finally, it's taken us a little bit, but we're we're getting cooking on some uh some new films and materials that'll be connected to uh America 250 that sort of look at that you know, revolution to the Constitution time period. Um those uh a little bit further out, probably uh spring, um, but but definitely things that we're we're hard at work on. Um, you know, and my my goal is that uh, you know, we every week we're we're putting something new out into the world uh for teachers and students. Um we we try to release a new film uh usually a couple times a month. Um we have new lessons and activities that are connected to our films, new ones just about every week. Um and our goal is, you know, I I would say history and civics are our our bread and butter, our our wheelhouse. Um but we have a ton of great resources. If you're a geography teacher, if you're an English teacher, I mean the book ban ones, we've got a separate lesson uh for English classrooms as well. Um, you know, we've got great stuff for uh science courses, for psychology courses. So um whether you are listening to this and you're uh a civics teacher, wonderful. If you're not a civics teacher, we probably have something for you. Um, but share this, you know, share this with your colleagues because they'll find some great videos, some great lessons uh that are entirely free that you can uh put to use in your classroom.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. And my last question for you because you and I know how important it is for educators to be involved, I know that retro report really leans on teacher advisors, ambassadors. So if I am currently a teacher, whether I'm a civics teacher or an English teacher, because here at the Center for American Civics, we do believe that civics belongs everywhere and it all ties in together. If I'm like, oh my gosh, I listened to David, like this sounds so cool as a teacher. How can I get involved? What are some ways for Arizona teachers and I mean teachers around the country, right? To get involved and help Retro Report make the things they have even more classroom friendly and better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Uh thank you for asking that question. Allows me to make my pitch to teachers. Um, so we have uh a couple different teacher advisory groups. Um, the you know, my ethos here is we can't serve teachers unless we actually listen to teachers. Um so we we have uh you know our our biggest group, uh it's a group of uh retroport ambassadors. Uh it's about 300 teachers from states all across the country, including some wonderful Arizona educators. Um, what we ask of teachers is to uh use some of our materials, tell us about them. Uh, did it work? What did you like? What did you not like? Um, to help us spread the word to other educators and share our resources and provide us feedback. Tell us what are the things you need in your classroom? Uh, what can we create to make your life easier? Um, and in exchange for this, beyond our undying gratitude, um, you know, we provide you with a non-life-changing sum of money. I mean, it's a stipend. It is not gonna, you're not gonna retire on the uh retro report ambassadorship, but we want to make sure you know that that your time and expertise uh is valued. So there's a stipend, we send you some great swag, um, you know, we hopefully provide some some great opportunities for folks through uh you know virtual PD and other experiences. Um and then honestly, uh, you know, if if there are teachers or district leaders who are listening to this, um, you know, we do professional development, um, you know, things obviously uh uh approaches for uh working with primary sources, approaches for integrating current events uh into the classroom. Um, you know, we're we're happy to do custom PD for folks as well. Um and and sometimes we can do that at no cost if it's uh with a grant, otherwise, you know, we can do it at low cost for folks. Um, so yeah, all of our resources are entirely free. They always will be. Um, and our goal really is to to reach as many teachers as possible and uh continue to listen to teachers so that we can uh keep making more resources that uh that have a home and classrooms across the country.
SPEAKER_01:And teachers, if you're listening to this, hopefully you've been on Retro Report's site. I've actually been kind of cruising it uh while listening to David because I want to make sure that, you know, between David and I, we put as many links for you in our show notes that really show um what our friends at Retro Report are doing. And I, you know, for us at the Center for American Civics, we really focus on the founding. And that's kind of our jam. And I appreciate that we have people in the civics world that do things like current events and you know put them together with history. And I think I'm sorry, I don't think, I know my favorite thing about the civics world is we all offer something a little bit different. Um, and we're all each other's biggest supporters. So, David, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, to tell us about Retro Report. Um, listeners, if you have questions, I I know maybe I shouldn't say this, and if not, I'll cut it out. But David's easy to reach. And he, you know, I think for both of us, because we are classroom educators, if I have a hundred emails, but I have two from teachers, the ones from teachers are the ones I always answer first. So never hesitate to reach out for help or anything like that. David, you are a superstar. And I I really do appreciate you being on our podcast, all the things you do for the teachers of Arizona, but also the teachers um from around our country.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Liz. And if folks want to learn more, I'm I mean, I'm probably a terrible salesman. I don't think I've plugged our website enough. Go to go to retroreport.org. Uh, you can find the full library. We have over 300 films, most of which have ready-to-use lessons and activities. Uh, if you have individual questions or things you're looking for or feedback based on what you heard, um, as Liz mentioned, you can reach out to me directly. Uh, my email is simple. It's dolson o l at retroreport.com. Uh, let me know what you think. Let me know if there are stories that we ought to tell uh or things that you absolutely need in your classroom that you think we should create.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thank you.
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