“This Is Not Happening Without a Fight”
Puerto Rico’s teachers are resisting the onslaught of privatization efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Organizing
Student Athletes Kneel to Level the Playing Field
In the initial weeks of the 2016 football season, as Kaepernick’s fledgling protest began to take shape, critics bombarded him with insults and it was unclear what the response around the country would be. And that’s when Garfield, and high schools and students around the nation, stepped up to the challenge.
Elementary Student T-Shirt Workers Go on Strike
An elementary school teacher uses his students’ T-shirts to launch a lesson about child labor, basic economics, factories, unions, and strikes. “When I was a child, I remember ‘playing pretend’ with my cousins. We could be anyone we imagined, and in that moment, we were those people. Why not use that energy and imagination as a resource? When we use our imagination to walk in another’s shoes, that’s where real learning begins.”
How One Elementary School Sparked A Citywide Movement to Make Black Students’ Lives Matter
Teachers at one Seattle school show the important role educators have to play in the movement for Black lives, in part by creating a Black Lives Matter at School day, having 3,000 teachers wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts, and responding together to issues like the death of Charleena Lyles.
Editorial: Making Black Lives Matter in Our Schools
As we return to our schools this fall, we need to rededicate ourselves to building an education system and a society that values Black lives.
Standing with Standing Rock
A high school social studies teacher centers Standing Rock Sioux history and leadership in a unit on resistance to DAPL.
The Seattle Educators’ Strike
On Sept. 20, 2015, thousands of Seattle Education Association (SEA) members voted to approve a new contract with the Seattle Public Schools. The vote officially ended the strike, which delayed […]
Who Made the New Deal? Part II
A history teacher helps his students see the conservatism of the early New Deal and the impact of organizing and mass resistance.
We Begin to Know Each Other
An administrator describes the journey of her K-8 school as it welcomes a transgender 8th grader and the gender transition of another student.
Activism Is Good Teaching
Two elementary school teachers in Albuquerque resist the proliferation of harmful standardized tests. They see it as a professional responsibility.
Stealing Home
The historic destruction of the Chávez Ravine neighborhood in Los Angeles – to build Dodger Stadium – paves the way for students to understand changes in their own neighborhood. Second in a two-part series.
The Problems with the Common Core
The rollout of the Common Core has seemed more like a marketing campaign than an educational plan. A look at the funders, origins, and uses of the new standards shows why the pushback is building.
Connecting the Dots
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom this past summer produced some brilliant commentary about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. One of the […]
“Coal Poisons Everything It Touches”
Ninth graders explore a plan to strip-mine coal in Wyoming and Montana, send it by train to the Northwest, then ship it to Asia to be burned.
Education in the Time of the Coronavirus
Now is not the time to pull away from social justice education activism, but to find new ways to express it. As schools go onto the internet (at least for older students) — or into hibernation — we need to make sure this happens in a way that does not promote greater inequality.
The New Teacher Book-3rd Edition
Newly revised and expanded third edition! This expanded third edition of The New Teacher Book grew out of Rethinking Schools workshops with early career teachers. It offers practical guidance on […]
Rethinking Ethnic Studies
As part of a growing nationwide movement to bring Ethnic Studies into K-12 classrooms, Rethinking Ethnic Studies brings together many of the leading teachers, activists, and scholars in this movement […]
#StandWithOkinawa: We Need The World With Us
By Moé Yonamine “Don’t cry here,” an 86-year-old Okinawan grandmother I had never met before told me. She stood next to me and took my hand. I had been visiting […]
Rethinking Bilingual Education
Rethinking Bilingual Education is an exciting new collection of articles about bringing students’ home languages into our classrooms. How do we bring social justice curriculum into our bilingual classrooms? How […]
Pencils Down
This powerful collection from the groundbreaking Rethinking Schools magazine takes high-stakes standardized tests to task. Despite overwhelming evidence that the tests are invalid ways to measure teaching and learning — […]
Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 1 – Second Edition
Since the first edition was published in 1994, Rethinking Our Classrooms has sold over 180,000 copies. This revised and expanded edition includes new essays on: science and environmental education immigration […]
Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 2
With more than 180,000 copies in print, the first volume of Rethinking Our Classrooms broke new ground, providing teachers with hands-on ways to promote values of community, justice, and equality […]
Rethinking Columbus Expanded Second Edition
Why rethink Christopher Columbus? Because the Columbus myth is a foundation of children’s beliefs about society. Columbus is often a child’s first lesson about encounters between different cultures and races. […]