Since 1993, the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez has been shaken by disappearances of teenage girls and young women. Officials say they have few leads. The murders in Juárez have received some international attention, primarily due to government inaction. Yet little has been done by the government to prevent violence against women and girls, as officials neglect to bring their perpetrators to justice.
Residents do not let these deaths go unnoticed as hundreds of pink crosses — a symbol of these missing women — dot the border. An increase in these deaths coincided with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). A treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, NAFTA sought to increase investment opportunities by eliminating tariffs and, like many other economic agreements, benefited the economic elites of the three countries while resulting in widespread unemployment, increased class stratification, and mass emigration. Most of the “disappeared” women work in assembly plants or maquiladoras, owned by the United States and transnational corporations that dashed to northern Mexico post-NAFTA to reap the benefits of lower wages and lax environmental regulation.
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.
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.
A high school social studies teacher centers Standing Rock Sioux history and leadership in a unit on resistance to DAPL.
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 […]
A history teacher helps his students see the conservatism of the early New Deal and the impact of organizing and mass resistance.
An administrator describes the journey of her K-8 school as it welcomes a transgender 8th grader and the gender transition of another student.
Two elementary school teachers in Albuquerque resist the proliferation of harmful standardized tests. They see it as a professional responsibility.
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.
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 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 […]
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.
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 — […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
