Announcing the Lost LA Curriculum Project

KCET has partnered with USC Libraries, the UCLA History-Geography Project and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West to create a new K-12 curriculum with lesson plans anchored by Lost LA episodes. Teachers and students can visit the Curriculum Project portal to navigate lessons by topic, watch episodes, download lessons and classroom activities, as well as find related articles and digital content pertinent to topics that range from Los Angeles' coded geographies to the city's original roots. The project has launched with eight lesson plans, with more are on the way.

Last fall, over 100 teachers applied for 12 spots to create this curriculum with the purpose of designing culturally relevant materials with an ethnic studies focus centered on local history. Encouraged by California state curriculum framework aimed at democratization with an effort to highlight contributions of people of color, LGBTQ community members and other historically marginalized groups, classroom teachers sought out education methods that not only satisfied the new standards but directly related to local cultural landscapes and stories. Lost LA's articles, videos and broadcast episodes are at the center of this new online prototype created to help students and teachers discover engaging, inclusive and state standards-aligned lessons. After months of planning, development and lesson-writing sessions, regional educators and historians are using this framework to ask historical and culturally relevant questions and using dynamic teaching strategies to stir and nurture student curiosity in the classroom.

Frank Salcedo, one of the the teachers working on the Lost LA Curriculum Project, commented, “I have lived in Los Angeles most of my life and was impressed by the breadth and depth of the episodes, and how they brought the city’s history to life. As a history teacher, I appreciate that. I simply wanted to create a lesson that would allow people to reflect on the city, the same way the show allowed me to.”

Visit the Lost LA Curriculum Project or read the press release to learn more.

On Sunday, June 9, Lost LA will be the basis of the third and final talk of the 27th Annual Marie Northrop Lecture Series at the downtown Los Angeles Central Library. KCET and PBS SoCal, now united to form the Public Media Group of Southern California, join with the Los Angeles City Historical Society to present a screening of an episode of the award-winning show and introduce the new K-12 curriculum. Producer Matthew Crotty will sit down with LA City Archivist Michael Holland to talk about the evolution of the episode from story idea, through archival research, to production for broadcast, to a teachable curriculum. Additional panelists will include educators who helped shape the curriculum. The 27th Annual Marie Northrop Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Los Angeles City Historical Department and the History Department of the Richard J. Riordan Central Library.

To register to attend the free event, please visit lacityhistory.org/events/2019/6/9/marie-northrop-lecture-series-lost-la.