Instructional Resources for California Educators, Students, & Families
This lesson plan seeks to examine the ways in which the United States government ignored a disease that took thousands of American lives. It will debunk fallacies about HIV/AIDS and use the history of AIDS in the US to analyze how powerful activism can be.
This lesson seeks to bridge students’ own experiences with mourning and healing to those of people affected by the AIDS crisis. It is vital that students understand the serious impact that the AIDS epidemic had and continues to have on lives. In the course of these three connected lesson plans, students will be mentally prepared to enter into the healing space of The Grove.
In this lesson, students will engage in the historical context of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s exploring a timeline of major events and government responses to understand reasons for anger and unrest in the LGBT community. After establishing historical context, students will analyze activist responses looking specifically at different goals and methods used by the activist organization ACT-UP/Los Angeles.
This lesson allows students to critically examine the political countermovement that sought to disenfranchise the LGBTQ+ community, beginning with the 1970s efforts to repeal the United States’ early anti-discrimination ordinances protecting gay men and lesbians.