From SEL To SJP: CODEPINK’s School Activism Playbook

The webinar featured advice on bringing Palestine into classrooms, clubs, social-emotional learning and student demonstrations.

QUICK TAKE-AWAY:

• Presenters urged teachers to tie Palestine-related lessons to state standards, suggesting that standards alignment would offer protection if parents or colleagues objected.

• A California public school teacher described relying on students’ broader speech rights to advance activism on school grounds,using dance lessons to teach students about Palestine and helping students form an SJP chapter.

• The same teacher appeared to link her recent marriage, over Zoom, to a man in Gaza to Palestinian-rights activism, while her public social media includes anti-Israel conspiracy theories and material invoking antisemitic tropes, including claims about “Satanic bankers,” Jewish deicide, Israeli blackmail and support for detaining American Zionists.

Full Story:

In the June 16 CODEPINK webinar “Challenging Zionism In Our Schools,” a California public school teacher appeared to describe her marriage to a Gazan man as a symbolic “action” for “Palestinian rights and freedoms.”

During the webinar, CODEPINK’s Marcy Winograd announced that Laura Pinho, a dance teacher at Canoga Park Senior High School in California, had married a Gazan man over Zoom.

Later in the webinar, Winograd said to Pinho:

Laura, I know that you also have to go because you are teaching dance tonight, and we do want to congratulate you on your marriage. And maybe if you want, you could share just a personal story about where you’re heading this summer or whatever you feel like sharing.

Pinho responded:

Yeah, so basically it’s just… let me take it back a notch. Seeing what has happened to the Palestinian people and their complete erasure of their culture, their land, their rights, all of it, has led me to believe that any action we take, doesn’t matter what the action is, it’s in the right direction if it’s for Palestinian rights and freedoms. Period. End of story. Doesn’t matter. Because of the complete imbalance that exists in terms of rights and freedoms that they have. And so I think it was symbolic for me to offer. I have power as an American citizen. I have a passport that I was just born with, and how can I live in this world if I don’t make every effort to equalize the playing field on whatever way that I can, really, on whatever way that I can. And I just see that, I mean all personal feelings aside, that for me was the motivating issue was, I cannot accept this. It’s unacceptable that these people have no rights to travel, no rights to land, no rights to anything, not even citizenship now. So, that was for me, a motivating thing, that the US policies towards Palestinians, but also just people of color is outrageous. So I mean, you get me started here. I’m going to go, okay…

Watch the full exchange below:

In October 2025, Pinho wrote on Facebook: “Why I will marry Palestinian(one of many reasons), inshallah,” and linked to the anti-Israel public Facebook group “Norman Finkelstein.”

In October 2025, Pinho writes about wanting to marry a Palestinian

That was the final version of a caption Pinho edited three times before settling on: “Why I will marry Palestinian(one of many reasons), inshallah.”

Pinho’s edited Facebook captions on October 15, 2025

Pinho’s public Facebook account, where she also posts videos of her students and events at Canoga Park Senior High School, regularly features anti-Israel content, conspiracy theories, and material invoking antisemitic tropes.

On December 18, 2025, Pinho shared an image asserting that “Israelis are not Israelites,” that “Ashkenazis are not Hebrews,” and that “the Satanic bankers who created the country of Israel in 1948, are imposters; they are not the real Jews,” adding the caption “Just to clarify.” The claim that modern Jews descend from Khazar converts rather than the ancient Israelites is a long-discredited conspiracy theory widely identified as antisemitic. On February 17 2026, she wrote that “the Jewish religious leaders demanded that Jesus be put to death by Rome” and that “Not much has changed” — echoing the deicide charge historically used to justify the persecution of Jews.

Other posts amplify tropes about money, control, and child exploitation. On February 6 2026, Pinho shared a meme claiming U.S. politicians won’t end the war in Gaza “because Israel is blackmailing them with the Epstein files,” captioned “The truth we all know but few are willing to say out loud.” On February 2 2026, she approvingly posted a clip of Candace Owens saying “we are ruled by satanic p*dophiles who work for Israel,” asking, “And she’s wrong how???” On June 9 2026, she shared a graphic reading “I’m actually anti-satanic… You don’t get to bomb hospitals, commit a genocide and traffic children to blackmail politicians and then play the victim.”

Pinho has also signaled support for detaining American Zionists. On May 23 2026, she shared a news article headlined “Outrage after Democratic candidate calls for ‘American Zionists’ to be jailed in ICE detention center,” commenting, “Yes.” And on April 1 2026 she posted a graphic declaring Israel “the problem,” “not Hamas,” “not Hezbollah,” “not the Palestinians,” writing, “If this isnt clear by now then I dont know what is.”

Using Students to Bring Palestine Activism Into School

The webinar focused on bringing Palestine into the classroom. Pinho said she used her position as a dance teacher to teach Dabke — a Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian and Palestinian dance — as a way to educate students about Palestinian “resistance.”

And so while I was instructing the students the actual steps of the dance, I would tell them the meaning, the significance of what the steps symbolized and what they meant to the dancers. They danced them. And of course that prompted the question, well, why are they so connected to the land? Why do they stomp on it? Why are they so passionate about their land, land, land? And then I was able, because they asked the question to share the history of what has happened to their land and the students, the more they found out, the more questions they asked….

It really moved them to see what was happening to Palestinian people and to their land.

Pinho mentions that because the dance was part of a cultural event with lots of different cultural dances, administration “had to let [her]do it”. But of course, it’s not the dance that is at issue but the use of the lesson for Pinho’s political advocacy.

Pinho also helped students set up a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at their school.

Pinho noted that it is important to have students lead demonstrations and the like because they have greater speech rights at school than do the teachers. Pinho talks about the role that teachers have in guiding and encouraging protests. She brings out one of her students to present during the CODEPINK webinar.

Pinho shared a video of one such demonstration in which a child is shouting on school grounds that what is happening in Gaza is exactly like the Holocaust.

I’m going to say students have an amazing voice on campus. Students have rights, powers and abilities that if we let them shine, they do the talking, they do the fighting, they do the protesting, and we are there to guide them, encourage them, supervise them, keep them safe. But that is the role that I have found as one of the co-sponsors actually for the Students for Justice in Palestine Club at Canoga Park High School.

Pinho shares the student protests on the Canoga Park High School Dance youtube channel. The videos Pinho shares on the youtube channel are also shared on the students’ SJP Instagram page.

A video posted just two weeks ago shows that the SJP club at the school was allowed to present a speech just before a school dance recital:

Pinho talks about taking her students off campus to different protests and actions, including an “emergency town hall meeting” with Hani Almadhoun, the senior director of UNRWA USA. A recent report found that hundreds of UNRWA workers are members of or tied to terror groups and in April 2026, the Office of the Inspector General of the US Agency for International Development found further evidence that current and former UNRWA workers were directly involved in the October 7 terror attack.

Pinho also appears to have accompanied her students in protests with Palestinian Youth Movement. PYM has alleged ties to the U.S. designated terror organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Senator Tom Cotton has called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate a member of PYM as a threat to national security.

Bringing Palestine Into the Classroom

There isn’t a children’s book that has been written by a Palestinian that doesn’t somehow talk about the history of Palestine, the nakba, expulsion, displacement, et cetera, but in very appropriate ways

Merrie Najimy, former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the co-founder of NEA Educators for Palestine, spoke about how to incorporate Palestine into any class, including math.

The key, Najimy said, was to ensure that teachers show that incorporating Palestine into any class is aligned with state standards.

It is time that we put our foot down and say, no longer will we let Palestinians be marginalized in our schools, in our curriculum, and in our culture.Align what you do with your state and local standards that gives you even more protection. They can’t accuse you of just doing these add-on things. If you know what your reading standards are or what your writing standards are or what your science and social studies standards are, tie it into the rest of your curriculum.

She pointed, for example, to the push to incorporate Social-Emotional Learning into schools.

So when you’re reading these stories, you are going to encounter the history of Palestine, but think about the bigger themes. How do you talk to kids about “what are the values of the kids in this book"? What do the people, the adults care about? What are the relationships like? What are the lessons we can learn from them about belonging? What are the lessons we can learn from them about being resilient?” And with our social emotional curriculum, we are using words like resilience and flexibility with our students. So put these in the same context as your social emotional curriculum.

Lobbying for Palestine

Collette Kavanaugh, education director at the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, reiterated Najimy’s point: teachers should always tie Palestine-related lessons to state standards.

…when Zionist families come for you, if other educators come for you, and you are targeted for teaching about Palestine in your classroom or uplifting Palestinian voices in your classroom, it can get very intimidating and it can get jarring

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always cite the teaching and learning standards that you are fulfilling with the content.

Kavanaugh continued:

Just make sure that any materials that you have regarding Palestine that are saved on your work computer or any notes that you have about your lessons, just cover yourself, and always have those standards written in there. And there are so many ways to incorporate this content into all different subjects. These are just a few examples of things that you could bring into history classrooms, English classrooms, even some science classrooms.

Kavanaugh echoed Pinho’s point that students have more free speech rights at schools than do teachers. Therefore, Kavanaugh suggests, student-led projects should be pushed.

Kavanaugh stressed that parents should engage with the school on multiple levels - befriend the school librarian, take part in committees, attend school board meetings.

Join your Parent-Teacher Association or School Site Council depending on what there is. Attend school Board of Education meetings. Your school board is the one who decides what textbooks are used in your classroom. They will decide on a lot of things that can show up in the curriculum. You need them on your side.

Kavanaugh notes that the ADC is trying to get “training in the classroom for teachers, administrators, and school counselors” on Palestinians and “different communities.”

She added:

Volunteer at school events or in the classroom. Again, proactively building those positive relationships. And also just get to know, participate in surveys, forums or listening sessions. You can get to know the community members. They’ll get to know you. That teaches them about if you are Palestinian, it will teach them about Palestinian history and culture. Even if you’re not Palestinian and you talk about your activism for Palestine, it will teach them about it. It demystifies it a bit and it helps people form different opinions. One of the things we work on with teachers is these deeply embedded and implicit biases that people have against Palestinians in particular.

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Building relationships with other families and introducing them a bit more to the history and culture helps to start to break that down. Donate K-12 books by Arab authors and about Arabs to your school library. This is an amazing thing that you can do if teachers have at least five copies of a book in the school library that can allow them a lot of times to do classroom projects with that book. Also, again, students seeing their stories represented in the school library does make a difference. Get to know the school librarian when Arab American Heritage Month rolls around. Offer to help them put up a display in the library for Arab American Heritage Month. If they have those books on hand, they can use them. And again, build better relationships beyond with just teachers, with the school principal, even the district superintendent. If you can provide positive feedback, not just negative feedback,again, foster those positive relationships so that you’re a voice that they trust and will turn to in situations where you really need their support.

What is key here is the full-court press to bring Palestine into every aspect of school life: clubs, cultural events, science and math classes, and social-emotional learning, where presenters suggested tying the SEL-coded language of “resilience” and “belonging” to Palestine. But the most revealing portion of the webinar was Pinho’s discussion of students: helping them form an SJP chapter, encouraging student-led demonstrations, and pointing to students’ broader speech rights as a useful means to advance pro-Palestinian activism on school grounds.