Efforts to privatize education, eliminate teachers' unions, reduce spending on public education, and quantify student performance have demoralized teachers in the USA, and educators struggle to keep up with the many changes while still effectively teaching and caring for their students. Within these reforms, however, there is support for history education that prepares students to be globally competent citizens. This paper describes an innovative collaboration among teachers and historians and how it led to historical thinking promoted by common core and edTPA policies. In particular, the most marginalized students made powerful connections with the material, illustrating that education for social justice is still possible in these difficult times. [For the complete Volume 12 proceedings, see ED597979.]