Middle School

Teaching Palestine

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 […]

Transgender Justice in Schools

Transgender Justice in Schools provides inspirational stories from trans students and educators and resources for teachers, students, and parents seeking to build communities where everyone flourishes. This book will educate, […]

Honoring Juneteenth

Juneteenth — June 19th — also known as Emancipation Day — is one of the commemorations of Black people seizing their freedom in the United States. Below is a list of resources […]

“Our Folks Were Badass!”

Four Asian American middle school students connect and grow during the pandemic through a virtual book club focused on Asian American history and literature.

Writing for Justice

Christensen has students reimagine literature and their own stories to talk back to and disrupt injustice — and build solidarity.

It’s a Big Fat Deal

A special education teacher tackles fatphobia in our schools head-on, pointing out how we fall far short in our efforts to rid it from the classroom and how fundamentally detrimental fatphobia is to teaching and learning.

To the Past, with Love

The letters are sweet and encouraging — had they been delivered, they could have changed their recipients’ lives.

Coming Home to Ourselves

In her new book, The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)member, Cynthia Dillard (now dean of the College of Education at Seattle University) provides language for what occurs when Black women teachers discover their spiritual wisdom and identities that are part of a long historical continuum of Black women’s resistance, creativity, and ultimately, their healing.

As She Rises

I recently stumbled across a podcast that made a wonderful addition to my students’ study of the climate crisis — As She Rises.

Poetic Pauses During the Pandemic

Christensen describes how poetry can be used in this moment to be something concrete — that can be felt, touched, or smelled — but also something to stir our students’ imaginations, allowing them to dream.

“I Saw Eyes Begin to Widen”

Role plays can offer students engaging ways to learn, but require careful contextualization and follow-up. This article offers some cautions and guidance about using them. 

“Take These Nametags Off!”

A doctoral student tells the story of her experience with a dangerous role play — poorly conceptualized and taught — when she was an undergrad.

Sin Fronteras

Alexander and their middle school students use the powerful poem “To live in the borderlands means you,” by Gloria Anzaldúa, to explore the borderlands of their own lives. 

Teaching the Green New Deal: The Prequel

In an article introducing the student-friendly short video, A Message from the Future, about life after the Green New Deal, Naomi Klein points out: Almost every vision of the future […]

Reparations Can Be Won — and Must Be Taught

The story of how activists, teachers, and, organizers won mandatory curriculum in the Chicago Public Schools for 8th and 10th grades about one the darkest chapters in the city’s history — the widespread torture of Black men under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.