Taking Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education Seriously
One of the most-read articles Rethinking Schools has published, Miner’s 1991 interview of Enid Lee resounds today.
Racial Identity
Save Arab American Studies!
At first it seemed that ethnic studies advocates had won a major victory in California, but then a backlash targeted Arab American studies.
Honoring Exonerees
A high school teacher helps her students explore how DNA testing is used to free innocent people from prison and how science can support justice.
Who’s Crazy? Students Critique the The Gods Must Be Crazy
I wish I could say my colleagues Cresslyn Clay, Colin Pierce, and I had it all worked out from the beginning, and that we carefully crafted each nuance that prompted […]
Teaching the Prison Industrial Complex
“Harm comes from prior harm.” As Deandra says this, I am sitting in the back of my classroom, taking notes. My students are sitting in a circle in the middle […]
Losing Ground
Budget cuts threaten one of the nation’s best multicultural institutions.
Time to Get Off the Testing Train
While high-profile tests like the SAT are problematic, Karp argues that we need to end the routine standardized tests that plague students and teachers.
The Green New Deal and Our Schools
So often, the climate crisis is presented in frightening, threatening terms: rising seas, superstorms, raging wildfires, unlivable temperatures, species extinction, disappearing glaciers, dying coral, climate refugees. These are real. But the paradox is that this dystopian possibility is forcing us to imagine an entirely different kind of society. Schools have a central role to play in devising new alternatives and equipping young people to bring those alternatives to life. This is the work we’ve been assigned.
Racial Justice Is Not a Choice
High-stakes tests have not only failed to achieve racial equality in schooling, they’ve also made it worse for students of color.
“I Can’t Make a Teacher Love My Son”
After teachers label her son’s behavior as problematic and try to have him evaluated by a psychologist, a Black parent uncovers why schools fail Black boys and begins organizing her community to challenge practices detrimental to them.
Honor Their Names
Students’ names are the first thing teachers know about the young people who enter our classrooms; they can signal country of origin, gender, language. Students’ names provide the first moment when a teacher can demonstrate their warmth and humanity, their commitment to seeing and welcoming students’ languages and cultures into the classroom.
How Should We Sing Happy Birthday?
A kindergarten teacher looks at birthday celebrations in her classroom and whether all of her students’ home languages and rituals are being uplifted.
Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources 33.3
Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.
When Showing Up Isn’t Showing Up
A language arts teacher describes a school board debate in which she merely showed up, instead of showing up and fighting for communities of color.
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.
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.
Tax the Rich, Fight Climate Change
The latest installment of our Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms column looks to a piece of very good news that national media missed following the 2018 midterm elections. By a margin of almost two-to-one, tens of thousands of Portland, Oregon, voters approved an imaginative clean energy initiative that offers a model for the rest of the country — at the ballot box, but also in our 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.
“Did Any of You Just Search for ‘Physicist’?”
A physics teacher uses student research and other exercises to urge his high school class to wrestle with race, privilege, and representation.
Howling at the Ocean
A first-year teacher struggles with what it means to be a social justice educator.
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.
Rethinking Islamophobia
The increasing violence against Muslims, Sikhs, South Asians, and others targeted as Muslim, suggests we, as Americans, are becoming less tolerant and need educational interventions that move beyond post-9/11 teaching strategies that emphasize our peacefulness or oversimplify our histories, beliefs, and rituals in ways that often lead to further stereotyping.
Inclusivity is Not a Guessing Game
An elementary teacher tells how she works to include her Muslim students in the life of her classroom. “We can use or create curriculum and projects that allow students to learn about and incorporate their culture and religious practices if they want to. We can be deliberate in including, making space for, and recognizing our students in all aspects of their identities. Making schools inclusive doesn’t have to be a guessing game.”
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.