VOLUME 24, ISSUE 4 — SUMMER 2010
As a special introduction to our new website, the text of the entire summer issue of Rethinking Schools is accessible here, free of charge. If you aren’t already a member of Rethinking Schools, we hope a look at the exciting and thought-provoking articles in this issue will inspire you to join.

COVER STORIES • POWER OF POETRY
The U.S. poet Robert Frost said, “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a love sickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.” Our cover section focuses on three teachers who guide students to find their voice through poetry, to take the lump in their throat and transform it into poetry that gives them a sense of their own power. At the same time, Tom McKenna, Renée Watson, and Elizabeth Schlessman show us how to use poetry to help students think critically about their personal experience and connect it to a larger social reality.

Pain and Poetry • Facing Our Fears
By Tom McKenna
McKenna uses Raymond Carver’s “Fear” with continuation school students struggling with issues ranging from police harassment to teen pregnancy, gangs, addiction, and incarceration. Their “fear” poems become a vehicle for strengthening the classroom community, critical thought about their collective experience, and pushing their teacher to push them.

Five Years After the Levees Broke • Bearing Witness Through Poetry
By Renée Watson
A poet in the schools leads students to compare three natural disasters—Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and the recent earthquake in Haiti—and turn their grief and anger into poetry.

Aquí y Allá • Exploring Our Lives Through Poetry—Here and There
By Elizabeth Schlessman
An elementary teacher uses the poetry of Jorge Argueta to help students express their feelings about leaving one country for another.

Also Highlighted in This Issue:

What’s Up with All the Teacher Bashing?
By the editors of Rethinking Schools

‘Greco-Roman Knowledge Only’ in Arizona Schools •
Indigenous Wisdom Outlawed Once Again
By Roberto Cintli Rodriguez
Fresh from arrest in a protest against the new anti-ethnic studies legislation in Arizona, Rodriguez explains the impact of this new attack on Mexican-Indigenous culture and links it to the current wave of anti-immigrant hysteria.