Rethinking Schools Staff
Cierra Kaler-Jones
Executive Director
Cierra Kaler-Jones is the first-ever Executive Director of Rethinking Schools. Cierra is also on the leadership team of the Zinn Education Project, which Rethinking Schools coordinates with Teaching for Change, and has hosted many of our Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes.
Cierra is a teaching artist, a dancer, a writer, and a researcher. Cierra has been teaching in community-based and university settings for over a decade. With her roots in dance and arts education, Cierra has also taught classes on writing, storytelling for change, public policy, U.S. history, and digital literacy. She continues to teach dance and dance professionally in the D.C. Metro Area. She also organizes a program called Black Girls S.O.A.R., which supports Black girls through training in arts-based advocacy, action research, and community organizing to address educational injustice.
Most recently, she has been director of storytelling at the Communities for Just Schools Fund, a national collaborative that links philanthropy with grassroots organizing, which grew out of Black parents in Mississippi demanding justice for their children in schools.
Missy Zombor
Deputy Director, Operations & Administration
Adam Sanchez
Managing Editor
Adam Sanchez is the managing editor of Rethinking Schools magazine. He taught high school social studies for over a decade in Portland, Oregon, New York City, and Philadelphia. He is the editor of Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War and a forthcoming book about teaching Reconstruction. He co-edited Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices. He was the Zinn Education Project (ZEP) 2017-2018 Teacher Organizer and Curriculum Writer and continues to be a ZEP Teacher Leader. In addition to Rethinking Schools, his articles and curriculum have appeared in The Nation, Teen Vogue, and Newsela.
Bill Bigelow
Curriculum Editor
Bill Bigelow taught high school social studies for many years. He is curriculum editor
of Rethinking Schools magazine and author or co-editor of several Rethinking Schools books: A
People’s History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and
Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an
Unjust World, Rethinking Our Classrooms – Volumes 1 and 2, and A People’s Curriculum for the
Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis. Most recently, he co-edited the
Rethinking Schools book, Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices. He co-directs the Zinn
Education Project on behalf of Rethinking Schools. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, with his
wife, Linda Christensen.
Editorial Board Members
Wayne Au
Wayne Au is a former public high school teacher and currently is dean and a professor for the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time Rethinking Schools editor, and he has edited or co-edited several Rethinking Schools books, including Rethinking Ethnic Studies, Teaching for Black Lives, Rethinking Multicultural Education. As an academic and an activist he remains involved in local and national struggles over racial justice in schools. His most recent books include Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality (2nd ed) and Asian American Racialization and the Politics of U.S. Education.
Linda Christensen
Linda Christensen is a Rethinking Schools editor and author of Reading, Writing, and Rising Up and Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom. She co-edited Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice. For many years Christensen directed the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. During her thirty-year career in Portland Public Schools, she taught language arts at Jefferson and Grant High Schools and worked as Portland’s Language Arts Coordinator.
Grace Cornell Gonzales
Grace Cornell Gonzales has worked as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Oakland, San Francisco, and Guatemala City. She joined the Rethinking Schools editorial board in 2013 and served as submissions editor from 2017-2021. She now lives in Seattle, Washington, where she works in teacher education at the University of Washington while pursuing her doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture. She is a co-editor of Rethinking Bilingual Education and is currently co-editing a book about family and community engagement.
Jesse Hagopian
Jesse Hagopian teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is the editor of the book, More Than A Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives. Jesse serves as the director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award and is on the national steering committee for Black Lives Matter at School.
Stan Karp
Stan Karp taught English and Journalism to high school students in Paterson, New Jersey for 30 years. After retiring from Paterson, he served as Director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center. He has written frequently for Rethinking Schools about education policy and funding issues and is co-editor of several books, including Rethinking Our Classrooms – Volumes 1 and 2 and The New Teacher Book.
David Levine
David Levine is a retired high school teacher and education professor. His research interests include U.S. educational history, urban education, and the role of radical pedagogy in the civil rights movement.
Larry Miller
Larry Miller taught for over 17 years in Milwaukee Public Schools. He is now president of the school board for Milwaukee Public Schools. This is now his 12th year as a school board member.
Bob Peterson
Bob Peterson taught 5th grade in the Milwaukee Public Schools for 30 years. He is a founding editor of Rethinking Schools and co-editor of Rethinking Elementary Education, Rethinking Mathematics, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization, Teacher Unions and Social Justice, and The New Teacher Book. He was a founder of and teacher at La Escuela Fratney, Wisconsin’s first two-way bilingual school. He served as President of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association from 2011-2015 and was on the Milwaukee School Board from 2019-2023. He is a member of the Rethinking Schools Board of Directors. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences throughout the United States and in several other countries.
Dyan Watson
Dyan Watson, formerly a social studies teacher, is currently the Director for Equity & Inclusion at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland. She co-edited Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice.
Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
Ursula Wolfe-Rocca has taught high school social studies since 2000. She is a regular contributor to Rethinking Schools and works as a curriculum writer and teacher organizer at the Zinn Education Project.
Moé Yonamine
Moé Yonamine teaches Social Studies at Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon. She writes regularly for Rethinking Schools and is the mother of four.
Gabriel A. Tanglao
Gabriel A. Tanglao (he/him) is an educator-activist who is deeply committed to advancing racial, social, and educational justice. He started his career as a social studies teacher serving a culturally rich community at Bergenfield High School in New Jersey. He quickly became active in his union at the local, state, national, and global levels. This work led to a liberating movement-building journey as Associate Director with the New Jersey Education Association. Gabriel’s activism extended cross-sector throughout multiple community-based and national organizations. Gabriel now serves as Manager in the Human and Civil Rights Department with the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, to advance racial and social justice throughout our public school system.