Executive Director
Rethinking Schools editors and staff are thrilled to welcome Dr. Cierra Kaler-Jones as our first-ever executive director. Cierra may be new to this position, but she is no stranger to Rethinking Schools. Readers will know her byline from the recent articles “Coming Home to Ourselves,” about Cynthia B. Dillard’s The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)member (Summer 2022); and “Through the Lens of Those We Love: Uplifting Oral Histories and Finding Common Threads” (Fall 2021).
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, which launched in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic.
Cierra is a teacher, a dancer, a writer, and a researcher. 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.
Editorial Board Members
Wayne Au
Wayne Au is a former public high school teacher and currently is a Professor in 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, and his most recent scholarly book is A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World.
Linda Christensen
Linda Christensen is Director of 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. Linda is also the author of Reading, Writing and Rising Up, Teaching for Joy and Justice, and co-editor of Rethinking Elementary Education, Rhythm and Resistance, and The New Teacher Book.
Grace 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. He is currently Director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center.
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 4th and 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, 3rd edition. 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. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences throughout the United States and in several other countries.
Adam Sanchez
Adam Sanchez is a social studies teacher at Lincoln High School in Philadelphia. He taught high school social studies in Portland, Oregon and New York City before moving to Philadelphia in 2019. He is the editor of Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War (Rethinking Schools, 2019). 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.
Dyan Watson
Dyan Watson, formerly a social studies teacher, is an associate professor at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon.
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.
Editorial Staff
Elizabeth Barbian
Developmental Editor
Elizabeth Barbian taught bilingual 4th and 5th grades. She is the developmental editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and co-editor of Rethinking Bilingual Education: Welcoming Home Languages in Our Classrooms.
Bill Bigelow
Curriculum Editor
Bill Bigelow 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, and Rethinking Our Classrooms–Volumes 1 and 2. Most recently, he co-edited A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis. He co-directs the Zinn Education Project, on behalf of Rethinking Schools. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Linda Christensen.
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Business Staff
Missy Zombor
Marketing Director