“We Did What Had to Be Done”
I worked with ArtXpress — a program for teens through the Milwaukee Art Museum — as an intern for three weeks over the summer. Our mission was to choose a […]
Latinx
Who Is Allowed to Teach Spanish in Our Public Schools?
The director of a world language teacher preparation program argues for an end to the edTPA because it bars native Spanish speakers from public school classrooms.
My First Year as a Teacher of Color
A teacher of color writes about obstacles he faced during his first year in the classroom and the support he received — and did not receive — from other teachers and administrators.
Deportations on Trial
A social studies teacher describes the role play trial she developed around a largely forgotten period: when during the Great Depression the United States deported thousands of Mexican American families.
Nurturing Student Activists in the Time of Trump
How we seed and support student activism will vary from community to community, school to school, and grade level to grade level. But this is a crucial moment in history, and what we do as educators matters. When we help students explore and analyze exploitation, injustice, and danger in the world, we can also help them develop the knowledge and skills to change it.
Fighting Manufactured Chaos in Puerto Rico’s Public Schools
Union activists have been tirelessly organizing with communities, recognizing that these are the same stories of communities across the United States. The fight will go on, even as disaster capitalism on steroids wants to destroy the public education system.
A Colonizing Agenda
Janice Jackson interviews Rethinking Schools editor Wayne Au about the failure of Bill Gates’ educational initiatives.
“Aren’t Grown-Ups Supposed to Keep Kids Safe?”
If there was ever any doubt, now there is only certainty, as educators we’re on the front lines of this fight. And when students like Kina ask us if we can keep them safe, our actions must be our answer. If we refuse to talk about these issues — because they are too painful, too complicated, too sensitive, or too politically fraught — that sends a clear message that we have relinquished our responsibilities, as adults, to try to keep them safe. Our silence is complicity. Now is the time for action and solidarity.
Seeing Ourselves with Our Own Eyes
A special education teacher uses poetry to help her middle school students write their own narratives and celebrate themselves.
How My 4th-Grade Class Passed a Law on Teaching Mexican “Repatriation”
How 4th-grade students in Southern California were helped by their teachers to develop curriculum surrounding the mass deportation of U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage in the 1930s and pass a law to investigate what happened.
A Hurricane in the Classroom
SPECIAL REPORT: Education “reformers” are using the disaster in Puerto Rico to close hundreds of public schools and convert much of the school system to charters. But teachers, parents, and students are fighting back.
The Women of Juárez
at the West tip of Texas
a line divides us from them
and on the other side
they all look like me
yet on my side we sit passively nearby
while the other side allows a slow genocide
“Young Women Like Me”
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.
Editorial: Defending Immigrant Students — in the Streets and in Our Classrooms
It has always been an educator’s responsibility to act in solidarity with vulnerable students. But with President Donald Trump’s September declaration that he will end DACA, we are called on to be more audacious, more resolute, and more imaginative in our solidarity with the 800,000 undocumented young people who now face a frightening uncertainty about their future in the United States.
Curtis Acosta on the Tucson Ethnic Studies Victory
A victory for ethnic studies in Arizona.
Unfolding Hope in a Chicago School
A middle school teacher describes the trauma experienced by his students over the year and struggles to create meaningful hope rather than slogans.
“I See Birds Everywhere I Go”
A science teacher in Washington, D.C., overcomes her students’ fear of nature by turning them into avid birdwatchers.
The Hidden Agenda of High School Assemblies
A high school teacher realizes that, despite her school’s diverse student body, the students on the stage at assemblies are virtually all white and male. She sets out to understand why and to change the pattern.
Cuentos del corazón
Los estudiantes de segundo grado escriben junto con sus familias, desafiando las políticas monolingües, anti-inmigrantes, y de segregación de Arizona.
“¿Qué es deportar?”
Una maestra de primaria se da cuenta que debe dejar a un lado el guión y la antología de su currículo para encontrar literatura latina en español y abrir un espacio a las vidas de sus estudiantes.
Cuentos del corazón/Stories from the Heart
Second graders and their families write together, countering Arizona’s English-only, segregated, and anti-immigrant school policies.
“¿Qué es deportar?”
An early elementary school teacher realizes she needs to dump the scripted curriculum and basal reader, find Latina/o literature in Spanish, and make space for her students’ thoughts and feelings.
Rethinking the Day of Silence
When the Day of Silence doesn’t work at a middle school, staff and students look for another way to talk about LGBTQ issues.
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.
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 […]