Teach the Struggle for Voting Rights
Let’s bring the election of 2020 into our classrooms and help our students learn about democracy — and those who would subvert it.
Middle School
New Online Workshop Series from Rethinking Schools
Join The New Teacher Book editors, authors, and early career teacher-scholars who wrote and shaped this book. Sign up for the entire workshop series or sign up for one workshop at a time.
We Need to Ask Our Students to Dream — and to Dream Big
Back in the 1980s, I taught an elective class at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, called Literature and Social Change. It centered around the questions “What is a good […]
Ordinary Heroes
A review of The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt, 2004)
Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance
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Chicago’s Peace Warriors
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Teaching Haniyah
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Haniyah’s Story
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The Classroom to Prison Pipeline
A master teacher faces a classroom revolt. She realizes that, no matter how imminent the high-stakes test, stopping the school-to-prison pipeline begins in the classroom with student-centered, meaningful curriculum.
Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline
“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try—that’s my fate, too.”—11th-grade African American student, […]
Coal at the Movies
Video resources for the classroom, plus links to activist websites.
Talking Back to the World
Student poetry about what raised me is woven into graphic art.
Putting a Human Face on the Immigration Debate
For those of us working with immigrant populations, we have in our students living examples that we can use to bring the immigration issue to the forefront and teach all of our students.
Textbook Scripts, Student Lives
Textbooks
Acting In and On the World
Oregon students and teachers learn life lessons by participating in the ‘Theater of the Oppressed’.
Beyond Anthologies
A veteran teacher laments the trend toward mandated curriculum and argues that teachers should choose materials that address students’ lives and social issues.
Taking A Chance With Words
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Can’t Buy Me Love
Linda Christensen gets students to write critically about clothes, class, and consumption.
Following The Flame
Teacher and students discover that even critically acclaimed literature can disenfranchise as well as empower.
Living Algebra, Living Wage
Eighth graders finally get what they ask for: an algebra lesson for the real world.”
On the Question of Mexicanidad
Encouraging prospective teachers to examine their cultural heritage.
Lies My Spanish Textbooks Tell
Latinos dance, they sing, they happily play baseball. And what great food!
‘Use Another Word’
One school’s campaign against put-downs.
Overhauling NCLB: What You Can Do
8th-grade algebra meets rising gas prices and peak oil.
The War in Iraq and Daily Classroom Life
Suggestions from a 5th-grade teacher on bringing the War in Iraq into the curriculum.