Volume 32, No. 2

Winter 2017

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  • Editorial: Defending Immigrant Students — in the Streets and in Our Classrooms

    By The Editors of Rethinking Schools

    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.

  • Rethinking Islamophobia

    A Muslim educator and curriculum developer questions whether religious literacy is an effective antidote to combat bigotries rooted in American history

    By Alison Kysia

    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

    By Chelsea Vaught

    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.”

  • Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution

    By Adam Sanchez

    Teaching the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee helps students see the Civil Rights Movement as being fueled by thousands of young people like themselves instead of a few charismatic leaders. “Without the history of SNCC at their disposal, students think of the Civil Rights Movement as one that was dominated by charismatic leaders and not one that involved thousands of young people like themselves. Learning the history of how young students risked their lives to build a multigenerational movement against racism and for political and economic power allows students to draw new conclusions about the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and how to apply them to today.”

  • Elementary Student T-Shirt Workers Go on Strike

    Alaura Borealis (alauraborealisart.com)

    By Michael Koopman

    An elementary school teacher uses his students’ T-shirts to launch a lesson about child labor, basic economics, factories, unions, and strikes. “When I was a child, I remember ‘playing pretend’ with my cousins. We could be anyone we imagined, and in that moment, we were those people. Why not use that energy and imagination as a resource? When we use our imagination to walk in another’s shoes, that’s where real learning begins.”

  • It’s Imperialism.

    How the textbooks get the Cold War wrong

    By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

    A high school teacher critiques the textbook treatment of the Cold War and U.S. imperialism. She describes her approach to the “curricular conundrum” that the Cold War presents because it lasted so long, and was so far-flung. “”If we are ever to create a different world, one in which the United States does not cast an outsized and militarized shadow across the globe, we need our students to understand how and why that shadow was created in the first place.”

  • Jailing Our Minds

    By Abbie Cohen

    An education researcher explores “no-excuses” discipline policies and the rate of out-of-school suspensions at charter schools in Denver and around the nation. “Democracy is healthiest when our educational institutions reflect our best virtues — creativity, joy, and growth. We must strengthen our oversight over no-excuses charter schools, thereby ensuring that no child in that city — or our country — is subjected to policies that could have been culled from one of Denver’s neighboring prisons.”

  • Fourteen Days SBAC Took Away

    By Moé Yonamine

    A teacher wrestles with her frustrations with having to administer a standardized test that she wouldn’t even allow her own daughter to take. “Fourteen days I enforced SBAC testing to be the priority of our classroom learning — or rather, our classroom “unlearning.” Fourteen days SBAC took away.”

  • What About the Students Who Are Not Labeled as “Gifted”?

    By Kipp Dawson

    A middle school English teacher calls for an end to separating students into groups of “gifted” and “not gifted” and argues that labeling students damages them — and us. “We are going down too many roads that push too many of our children aside, reinforcing the worst of our society’s racist and classist limitations. Let us push back hard.”

  • Our Winter 2017 Picks for Books, Videos, Websites, and Other Social Justice Education Resources 32.2

    By Bill Bigelow, Deborah Menkart, Adam Sanchez, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

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

  • “This Is Not Happening Without a Fight”

    By Ari Bloomekatz

    Puerto Rico’s teachers are resisting the onslaught of privatization efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

  • Student Athletes Kneel to Level the Playing Field

    By Jesse Hagopian

    In the initial weeks of the 2016 football season, as Kaepernick’s fledgling protest began to take shape, critics bombarded him with insults and it was unclear what the response around the country would be. And that’s when Garfield, and high schools and students around the nation, stepped up to the challenge.