Our History

What if the history classroom actually facilitated student agency? 

After an initial grant-funded project in 2018, Thinking Nation took its first steps as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 2020. Since then, we have made it our mission to effectively answer the above question.

Our organization was founded by our Board President, Dinah Ruch, in Los Angeles. Seeing growing polarization and diminishing thinking defining our political processes, she began to work with local charter network, Bright Star Schools to create something unique to reinvigorate thinking in our citizenship. At the time, our Executive Director, Zachary Cote, and board member, William Pulgarin, taught history at two schools within Bright Star and began to collaborate on assessments that could be normed across contents and grade levels that could better align a department around historical thinking. Zach and Will both experienced how historical thinking can empower students and wanted to create ways to streamline the inquiry and literacy processes of historical thinking across class contexts. Our Chief Operating Officer, Spenser Mix, came on as the project manager.

Together, they brainstormed ways to shift the paradigm of social studies education by creating both a common language for our discipline and a common language for success. Knowing that data can often act as a guide toward progress, a grading component to Thinking Nation assessments existed from the beginning. Historical Thinking is complex and rigorous, but finding simple ways to teach and assess it could transform social studies classrooms. 

Since this two classroom pilot, Thinking Nation has grown to serve students around the country. During the 2024-2025 school year, Thinking Nation served almost 40,000 students across 16 states. Our platform has grown to support teachers at all stages of implementation and we work strategically with districts and school networks to provide custom curriculum and professional development to meet local needs. 

At its core, our mission is a civic mission. We know that first, the social studies classroom is inescapable for students across the country; every student takes social studies classes. Second, it is perhaps the best core subject area to cultivate thinking citizens. For too long, however, we’ve failed to prepare students in this way. 

At Thinking Nation, we have a clear vision for how to do this work through classrooms across the country. When students actively engaging in doing history, rather than only learning about the past, they leave the classroom stronger than when they walked in. They are exert their agency to be the change-makers necessary to preserve and protect our democracy. Support our mission.