Rethinking Schools is honored to announce that Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices won the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Gold Award in the education category.
Palestine has long been one of the great silences in the official curriculum. Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices provides educators with powerful tools to uncover the history and current context of Palestine-Israel in the classroom — poetry, personal narratives, interviews, role plays, critical reading and writing activities, and more. Teaching Palestine offers a defense of Palestinian humanity centering Palestinian lives, uplifting and celebrating Palestinians’ struggle for justice, and critiquing racism and inequality.
“Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices is a human-centered, truth-seeking compilation of resources for educators that challenges the mainstream, accepted exclusion of Palestine from education curricula. … At a time when freedom of speech is being curtailed, attacks on critical educators are rampant, academic freedom is on the chopping block, and various efforts to dismantle the US Department of Education are ongoing, Teaching Palestine is a crucial addition to a teacher’s toolkit and to a much-needed resource for the education community at large. Each of the book’s seven chapters offers a diverse array of personal narratives, poetry, history, art, interviews, timelines, role-playing exercises, critical reading and writing activities, frameworks for critical thinking about Palestine and Israel, maps, lesson plans, and even ready-made handouts for classroom discussion. … While seeking justice, centering humanity, and supporting young people’s ability to develop critical consciousness should be the norm in the classroom, one of the most contentious issues facing educators and education stakeholders today is the acceptance of and support for teaching about Palestine in schools. Teaching Palestine is an indispensable resource for teachers engaging in conversations about Palestine in their classrooms because it challenges dominant pedagogical and curricular choices and positions Palestinian experiences as central to the historical and contemporary story of the region.”
— Melina Melgoza, Harvard Educational Review editor
IBPA Book Awards are regarded as one of the highest national honors for independent book publishers since 1985. The awards are administered by the Independent Book Publishers Association, with support from more than 170 publishing professionals, including librarians, bookstore owners, reviewers, designers, publicity managers, and editors.