ABSTRACT
As the chapter moves through a planning session and several lessons, teachers address the complexity of understanding our students, and the reality that teaching is a recursive process that relies on continuous assessment and revision in response to student and curricular needs. Critical Democratic Literacy (CDL) provides a foundation for the larger conceptual goals of our lessons about civil disobedience. At its core, civil disobedience is the informed and purposeful disobeying of laws in order to make the community better for all of the members of the community. As students gain an understanding of the abstract concept of civil disobedience they also use primary source comprehension as they learn facts about the US Civil Rights Movement (CRM). This includes information about Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the bombing of the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, among others.
