What Makes a Baby, Really?
An 8th-grade teacher creates inclusive resources about human reproduction with his students.
LGBTQ
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
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.
Money, Schools, and Justice
School funding systems mirror—and reproduce—the inequality we see all around us.
Heather’s Moms Got Married
Last spring, my second graders gathered on the rug, discussing the impending 50th anniversary of the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision. I asked how their lives would have […]
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.
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.
Welcome Poems Trump Hate
A teacher creates a welcome poems lesson to celebrate the diversity of students — and with students.
Diversity Is What Makes It Interesting to Study Living Things
A biology teacher focuses on how rethinking classroom language around gender and reproduction can impact inclusion.
Teaching Them into Existence
A high school English teacher (also the QSA staff advisor) wrestles with the suicide of a transgender student and calls on heterosexual and cisgender teachers to integrate LGBTQ authors, themes, and history into their classrooms.
Queering Black History and Getting Free
A Black freedom organizer demands that teachers and activists radically change their frameworks around Black history by lifting up the stories of Black LGBTQ people like Marsha P. Johnson.
On Behalf of Their Name
The staff advisor for their high school’s Queer-Straight Alliance delves into the complexities of a student-led training for teachers on the importance of using students’ preferred pronouns.
Celebrating Transgender Students in Our Classrooms and in Our Schools
What can teachers, schools, and districts do to meet the needs of trans students? To make them visible? To keep them alive? To celebrate them?
“What Kind Are You?”
A school librarian describes children’s books with strong transgender characters and themes.
Pushing Past Hate, Pushing Past Paladino
Trump supporter Carl Paladino’s racism, misogyny, and transphobia galvanized community members to oust him from the Buffalo School Board. Their struggle also laid the groundwork for new coalitions and progressive change.