Public school teachers in Loudoun County, Virginia, looking to teach their students about American holidays can draw from a list of district-approved lesson plans, including one recommended for second graders that declares Thanksgiving a "Day of Mourning" and another that calls Columbus Day a "Debated Celebration," documents obtained via a public records request and shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon show.
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) appears to have developed its "Resources for Recognition Days & Months" guide in 2024 and updated it for the 2026-27 school year. It consists of "external resources" the Northern Virginia district's teachers can draw upon when teaching their students about federal holidays. It was obtained by the watchdog group Protect the Public's Trust.
The guide's Thanksgiving section includes a lesson plan for grades 2-5 titled "The Real Story of Thanksgiving," which the district notes "focuses on the traditions as well as the Native American perspective." Indeed, the lesson features slides aimed at pushing back on the "traditional depictions of the first Thanksgiving," including one titled "Day of Mourning."
"Some Native American groups protest Thanksgiving as a Day of Mourning," the slide says. "They claim that the arrival of European explorers and settlers is not a cause for celebration, because it began the ill treatment and deaths of millions of Native Americans. For them, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of a long period of violence and discrimination."
A district-approved Thanksgiving lesson plan for middle and high school students, meanwhile, is titled, "Thanksgiving: A Day of Mixed Blessings." It includes a video produced by the left-wing media outlet HuffPost titled, "Why These Native Americans Observe A National Day Of Mourning Each Thanksgiving." "It's just like Malcolm X said," a man says at the start of the video. "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us."
The LCPS guide also gives Christopher Columbus the cold shoulder. Its list of October holidays refers to Indigenous Peoples' Day rather than Columbus Day and recommends a lesson plan titled "Columbus Day- A Debated Celebration." The plan asks middle and high schoolers to "reflect on the controversy of this holiday and its impact on indigenous populations."
The lesson plans indicate that the district has done little in recent years to shed its left-wing reputation.
LCPS, which did not respond to a request for comment, became the face of "woke" K-12 education in the United States during Republican Glenn Youngkin's 2021 gubernatorial campaign. Youngkin routinely rallied in deep-blue Loudoun, one of the wealthiest counties in America, after the district released a 22-page "equity" plan at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. The plan called for "implicit bias training" in the county's public schools and created a "Student Equity Ambassador" program that was originally open only to "students of color." The district also adopted a policy allowing students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The policy became the subject of intense scrutiny after a reportedly "gender-fluid" male sexually assaulted a female student in a women's restroom at a Loudoun County high school.
Youngkin campaigned against the district's "equity" plan and called to "ban teaching critical race theory in our schools." He also called for an investigation into the Loudoun County School Board's handling of the sexual assault case. Youngkin carried 44 percent of the vote in Loudoun County in 2021, improving on President Donald Trump's 2020 performance by 8 points.
LCPS did not moderate during the Youngkin years. When the Republican signed an executive order banning school mask mandates, several Loudoun County schools said they would suspend students who showed up maskless.
In addition to its Thanksgiving and Indigenous Peoples' Day sections, the district's "Resources for Recognition Days" includes a section on "LGBTQ History Month." The section's "Guiding Questions for Teacher Planning" includes, "How might we teach about LGBTQ History Month while recognizing that inequality and prejudice
continue to exist?" and, "How might we teach LGBTQ History in a way that extends the conversation and celebration beyond October?" A recommended lesson for elementary school students says, "During this month and all year long, people learn about LGBTQ+ inventors, musicians, explorers, and more."
The guide also recommends lesson plans on Women's History Month, but only after pointing teachers to an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center's education program, Learning for Justice, titled, "The Trouble With Women's History Month."
"The trouble with Women's History Month—with all these special months—is that they encourage people to think that problems have been solved. The female heroes of yesterday are acknowledged, the debt paid and the slate wiped clean," the article reads. "Let's teach students to hunger for justice, know how to recognize its absence and fight for it in the imperfect world they inherit."
Absent from the guide is any mention of Christmas. Though the month of December is included in the guide's table of contents, it is not referenced again; the guide jumps from Thanksgiving in November to Martin Luther King Day in January.
