Teaching For Climate Justice Booklet

This free booklet is an invitation to educators everywhere to join the national conversation about how we help our students understand what is happening to our climate, why it is happening, who it is affecting, and what we can do about it. This work belongs to all of us.

We Don’t Need No Education

Now Arizona Says Teachers Don’t Require College Degrees

Kathryn Joyce

As an example of how the right is waging war on teacher education programs, teacher unions, and the teaching profession itself, Arizona has rolled back teacher licensing rules. We could see similar measures proposed in other parts of the country.

Confronting Gun Violence Means Confronting Our Legacy of White Male Sovereignty

the editors of Rethinking Schools

On May 24, 2022, 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were killed in their classroom. Our horror at this mass shooting — the deadliest since the […]

Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources 37.1

Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.

Let’s Stop Using Metaphors that Celebrate Extraction, Colonialism, and Violence

Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms

Bill Bigelow

Too often our metaphors embed messages that are hostile to the Earth and to social justice. Metaphors can reflect — and legitimate — a violent, extractive, colonial worldview.

Teach Truth Days of Action

Educators Speak Out

Valencia Abbott, Tamara Anderson, Dawn Bolton, Christina Bustos, Anna O’Brien, Michael Rebne, Heather Smith, and Vanessa Williams

We asked teachers who helped organize “Teach Truth Days of Action” in various parts of the country to describe their days
of action and why they were important. Here’s what they said.

The Tragedy of New Orleans Is Not Unique

Leigh Dingerson

A Review of Public Schools, Private Governance by J. Celeste Lay

Teaching the Reconstruction Revolution

Picturing and Celebrating the First Era of Black Power

Adam Sanchez

A high school social studies teacher describes a lesson that uses improvisations, historical fiction, and found poems to help students appreciate the first era of Black power: Reconstruction.

Building the Foundation for Police-Free Schools

Mark R. Warren

On Oct. 25, 2015, student Niya Kenny filmed a white school police officer body slamming her classmate, a Black 16-year-old girl named Shakara, to the floor during math class at […]

In the Wake of Uvalde, a Teacher’s Plea for Police-Free Schools

Nataliya Braginsky

Braginsky argues that her students — and young people everywhere — are safer in school without police.