TJ Crowley Introduced to Kansas Social Studies Teachers at 2026 State Convention
KCSS President Amy Walker joins Grant Overstake at the TJ Crowley exhibit at the 2026 Social Studies State Convention. The rendering of TJ Crowley captures the internal tension of a young person on the edge of history—a reflection of the same complexities students face today when navigating issues of identity and the "red lines" still present in our modern landscape.
TOPEKA, Kan. — (GVP) There’s a particular energy when committed educators gather. I felt it immediately at the newly renovated Kansas Museum of History during the 2026 Kansas Council for the Social Studies State Convention.
Scores of teachers filled the space this past weekend — the largest turnout since before COVID, organizers said — united by a shared mission: helping students understand civic life in real, grounded ways.
For The Real Education of TJ Crowley: Coming of Age on the Redline, the weekend marked a turning point.
For the first time, teachers encountered the new visual rendering of TJ Crowley as a modern teen wrestling with identity, belonging, and intense conflict. Again and again, I heard the same reaction:
“My students will relate to this boy.”
Set in 1968 Wichita, the story follows a seventh-grader caught between a racially divided neighborhood and a newly integrated school. As housing policies and neighborhood boundaries shape daily life, TJ faces a moral crossroads: follow inherited prejudice or choose courage.
That tension — historical, local, human — is what teachers are looking for to spark helpful discussions in the classroom.
The Academic Anchor
A powerful session presented by by Tina M. Ellsworth, president of the National Council for the Social Studies, was titled Turning Tension into Teaching. She challenged educators to engage real public controversies rather than avoid them — to prepare students for civic life by practicing civil discourse inside the classroom.
That’s precisely where TJ Crowley fits.
We are preparing an expanded classroom rollout this fall, including interactive study materials aligned to Kansas and national Social Studies standards.
By pairing the 2025 Audie Award for Best Young Adult Audiobook–winning audio drama with the classroom Scriptbook, teachers gain a structured model:
Students listen.
Students read.
Students analyze primary sources.
Students discuss with evidence, not impulse.
The audio slows the room down. The script builds a shared baseline. The documents ground the discussion. When conversations grow tense, students return to evidence.
Teachers weren’t asking, “What is this story?”
They were asking, “How can this help me navigate tension in my classroom?”
Why It Resonates
Educators in Topeka saw TJ Crowley as:
A way to confront redlining through local history.
A framework for civil discourse grounded in evidence.
A trauma-aware structure for discussing race and power.
A bridge between 1968 and today’s students.
An Invitation
To the teachers I met in Topeka: thank you.
To those 7-12 grade Social Studies teachers looking for tools that honor both truth and steadiness in the classroom: click below explore the 7-minute sample, review instructional resources, and complete the brief form to join the pilot program to bring TJ Crowley to your classroom.