RESOURCE CENTER

CGCT maintains a citywide resource center, currently situated in the dynamic community of Uptown at 4554 N. Broadway, Chicago, Il., 60640, Suite 326. We have excellent resources for all grades - especially grade 3 through 16 - with a focus on children’s trade books, social sciences, history, civics, literacy, grassroots publications, and education/teaching materials (local, U.S., and global). While there’s often someone present, we prefer folks make an appointment. Please call 773.275.CGCT (2428) or email  to make an appointment

MISSION

The Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce (CGCT) seeks to transform traditional curriculum models by compiling collective knowledge of Chicago’s communities. CGCT seeks to foster intergenerational exchanges by bringing students, their families, community elders and educators to the table. We’re working to compile, publish, and apply critical, justice-centered materials & programs of learning and action in schools and communities.

VISION

Fueled by a desire to create curricula that interrogates and challenges traditional perspectives and systemic inequities, students and teachers will engage in community-oriented critical analysis through academics, the arts, and movement-building. With this critical reshaping of curriculum CGCT envisions a day when students are excited about learning, active in their intellectual growth, and invested in a lifelong commitment to justice and transformation. We see the construction and dissemination of grassroots curricula as a means of speaking to student, familial, and community needs, realities and hopes. We envision schools and organizations embracing grassroots content and curricula that emphasize the importance of the histories, lived experiences, values, and struggles of those perpetually marginalized in traditional school settings.

BRIEF HISTORY

Although formally initiated in 2009, CGCT’s immediate roots were planted three years earlier in a graduate level course at Chicago State University. The participants in the course, all practicing teachers in alternative schools, agreed with the assessment that Chicagoans learn very little about Chicago – and almost no history from a critical perspective. As a result, they decided to launch the Chicago Area Curriculum Exchange (CASE) in order to begin developing Chicago-focused curriculum from the perspectives of historically marginalized peoples.

After meeting for about a year, the collective dissipated, but was resurrected when a young Chicagoan expressed interest in presenting Chicago history from a grassroots perspective at the Social Justice Student Expo (a local student event held at the University of Illinois at Chicago). His presentation inspired a revival of the work.

Several longtime Chicagoans heeded the call, including David Stovall, Anton Miglietta, Myrna Garcia, Nzinga Hill, Gabriel Cortez, and Lindsay Smith. This group then presented a workshop at the 2009 Teachers for Social Justice Curriculum Fair in Chicago. The presentation was called The Battle for Relevant Curriculum – Creating a Social Justice Course on Chicago from the Grassroots by Us! The response by educators and community members was overwhelming. People from across the city quickly joined the effort to produce a series of curricular units. The series was called A People’s Chicago: Our Stories of Change and Struggle, and a group of 6 to 8 people met regularly to design a prototypical unit of study that resulted in our first curriculum unit, URUR (2012).

THE WORK

By honoring students' requests for relevant curriculum, The People’s Chicago: Our Stories of Change and Struggle (series of 8 units) and the Grassroots Community Tours situates community and student expertise as the unit of analysis and intends to develop skills and strategies for students to generate, investigate and address critical issues in Chicago, according to their own inquiry. As culturally relevant curriculum, this peoples' history of Chicago seeks to develop a comprehensive narrative of Chicago from the view of those traditionally excluded in mainstream curriculum (African-Americans, Latinoa/s, Asian-Americans, LGBTQA residents, Eastern European Immigrants, disabled residents, etc.) This curriculum seeks to develop a social and structural analysis of Chicago along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, spacial analysis, and development. As culturally relevant curriculum, The People’s Chicago seeks to identify the roles of young people in social justice movements throughout the city.