Teaching the Fight for Queer Liberation
Students imagine themselves as LGBTQ+ activists and debate key questions facing organizers through more than 50 years of movement history.
LGBTQ
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, […]
What I Found in Iowa
A poem by Linea King
Transgender Justice in Schools: It’s a Life-or-Death Thing
The death of Nex Benedict, a 10th-grade student and member of the Choctaw Nation, underscores the life-or-death consequences for nonbinary students when lawmakers play politics with their lives. Nex’s death […]
Trans Students Speak Out
We asked transgender students what teachers have done and could do to support nonbinary students. Here’s how they responded.
Nurturing a Rainbow of Resistance to Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws
Christensen describes teaching high school students about new anti-LGBTQ+ laws — and the growing resistance to them.
Existing Outside of the Binary in the Classroom
A nonbinary educator reflects on the difficulty and the power of being out in school.
What Makes a Baby, Really?
An 8th-grade teacher creates inclusive resources about human reproduction with his students.
Fighting for LGBTQ+ Youth and Families
Jody Sokolower interviews Melissa Bollow Tempel, the Wisconsin teacher — and former Rethinking Schools editor — fired for speaking out about her district’s decision to refuse to allow her 1st-grade students to sing “Rainbowland.”
What Is a Family?
A biology teacher describes inclusive teaching about families; sexual, reproductive, and parenting behaviors; and models of heredity.
The Day of Silence
A high school teacher navigates the tensions that arise in conversations with students about the Day of Silence, and how to bridge divides.
To the Past, with Love
The letters are sweet and encouraging — had they been delivered, they could have changed their recipients’ lives.
Can a 4-Year-Old Know Her Gender Identity? Yes.
“Do you feel like a boy?” “No, mom. I’m a girl.” My daughter’s statement could not have been more direct, honest, and clear. In that moment I glimpsed how deeply gender-expansive people feel who they are, no matter what society has labeled them as at birth.
Reproductive Justice and Our Classrooms
There is no end-point in the fight for justice and equality, no moment when the argument is finally settled. As Angela Davis has said, “Freedom is a constant struggle.” Although that proposition seems exhausting, it is also hopeful. If our wins are never wholly secure, then neither must our losses be permanent. The struggle for reproductive justice continues, and our curriculum must nurture our students’ capacity to envision and participate in its next stages.
Expanding Intersectional Queer History in the Elementary Grades
A 5th- and 6th-grade teacher asks her students to wrestle with what “identity” and “intersectionality” mean.
Protecting Trans Youth
The Right has declared war on trans youth. Recent headlines offer a sickening taste of what reactionary governors and state legislators have been cooking up in their laboratories of transphobic […]
Short Stuff 26.2
International Movement for Public Education Privatization, standardized tests, funding cuts, attacks on teachers’ unions and contracts—the issues that are central to teacher activism in the United States are international. In […]
Instructional Time
A transgender middle school teacher wrestles with a school and community that tries to hide their identity.
Queer Matters
While we were excited to support the opening of the educational closet
Money, Schools, and Justice
School funding systems mirror—and reproduce—the inequality we see all around us.
Do Ask, Do Tell
Two Chicago educators question the premier teacher education accrediting agency’s removal of social justice and sexual orientation language from its standards.
Heather’s Moms Got Married
This content is restricted to subscribers
How We Failed Nigel Shelby and Allowed the Abuse He Endured
A writer interrogates school culture and our collective role in the suicide of a gay 15-year-old 9th grader in Alabama.
Creating Bias Detectives, Blowing Up Stereotypes, and Writing Essays that Matter
“Part of the work of teaching students to read is teaching them to question not only the written word, but also the author,” Christensen writes in her article about teaching students how to confront writers whose stories erase the full truth and misrepresent people and places.
Welcome Poems Trump Hate
A teacher creates a welcome poems lesson to celebrate the diversity of students — and with students.