Volume 26, No.2

Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline

By The Editors of Rethinking Schools

“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, […]

Schools and the New Jim Crow

An interview with Michelle Alexander

By Jody Sokolower

The author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness applies her thought-provoking analysis to children, schools, and priorities for education activism.

Arresting Development

Zero tolerance and the criminalization of children

By Annette Fuentes

The author of Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse reviews the history, impact, and future of zero tolerance policies.

The Classroom to Prison Pipeline

By Linda Christensen

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.

Haniyah’s Story

Haniyah wrote this article as a 17-year-old participant in Project WHAT! a program of Community Works West, based in Berkeley, Calif. The young people in Project WHAT! all have family […]

Teaching Haniyah

By Jody Sokolower

Several years ago, I taught a unit on power in my 9th-grade social studies classes at Berkeley High School in California’s Bay Area. It’s a diverse school—rich folks from the […]

Chicago’s Peace Warriors

By Kazu Haga

A group of students from Chicago’s North Lawndale College Preparatory High were in the middle of a weeklong summer training to become Peace Warriors—peer nonviolence leaders. Suddenly, a sophomore named […]

Teaching the Prison Industrial Complex

By Aparna Lakshmi

“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 […]

Candles in April

By Jamila Appleby

This story has lived in me for more than 25 years. I was in the 7th grade. This is a time when how others see you is crucial to your […]

Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance

By Bridget Brew, Crystal Proctor, Adam Renner

Media depictions of San Francisco show idyllic images of fog pouring under the Golden Gate Bridge or happy tourists riding cable cars, but rarely the mostly nonwhite neighborhoods of the […]

Who’s Crazy? Students Critique the The Gods Must Be Crazy

By Chris Hawking, with Cresslyn Clay and Colin Pierce

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 […]

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 […]

Occupy Movement Spurs Education Activism

“Banks got paid off, teachers got laid off” sounded through the streets of downtown Seattle as education activists and protesters from the Occupy Seattle movement marched on Chase Bank Oct. […]

Heroes or Cultural Icons? Of Thee I Sing : A Letter to My Daughters

A critical review

By Beverly Slapin

Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My DaughtersBy Barack Obama Illustrated by Loren Long(Knopf, 2010) On the title page of President Barack Obama’s picture book, Of Thee I Sing: A […]

Ordinary Heroes

By Waahida Tolbert-Mbatha

A review of The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt, 2004)

Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice education resources 26.2

Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.