Pledge to Participate in the Black Lives Matter at School “Year of Purpose”
For the fall issue, in lieu of our regular editorial by Rethinking Schools editors, we are publishing most of the “Year of Purpose” call by Black Lives Matter at School. […]
Black Lives Matter at School: A Roundtable Discussion
In early August, Rethinking Schools managing editor Ari Bloomekatz sat down (over Zoom) for a roundtable interview and discussion with four organizers and national steering committee members of the Black […]
The Uprising and Our Schools: Educators Speak Out
We asked a group of teachers and students to write about their experiences of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd and during the uprisings for […]
Teaching the Radical Rosa Parks
My wife Linda and I began our COVID-19 shelter-in-place pretty early in the pandemic. I went to my last in-person meeting on Wednesday, March 11. The next day, we canceled […]
“Song for Tamir Rice”
Learning and Teaching Music as a Catalyst for “Coming to Voice”
Tamir Elijah Rice was a 12-year-old murdered by a white Cleveland police officer in 2014 who was responding to a 911 call about a male pointing a gun at random […]
Cops Don’t Keep Kids Safe at School: The Case Against School Police
Before I was taught a single teaching technique, I was taught to fight school shooters. At the start of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, we took a seat in the […]
Schools Reopen — and Teachers Fight for Their Lives, Their Students, and the Future of Public Education
As schools begin to reopen, within teacher unions around the country, teachers have been coming together to discuss the risks they’re willing to take — both to protect public health […]
Say Their Names
“I can’t breathe . . . please . . . Mama!”The knee choking the neck to deathPolice hands in pockets andIndifferent expressionsAnother day on the J-O-BAnd moreMore details I can […]
A Field Trip to the Future
Helping Students Imagine a Better World
“What’s the point of museums?” I ask one day to kick off class. I teach English at a public high school in Fall River, a deindustrialized city on Massachusetts’ southeastern […]
Our Stories: Students Curate the Museum of Corona History
The best teachers that I’ve had are still quiet voices in my head. In college, I took Professor Phyllis Jackson’s art history course “Black Aesthetics and the Politics of (Re)presentation.” […]
Lessons in 2020
2020 did not make me,But neither did you break me,Separating families like cheap blinds,With the vinyl bubbling up in the middle,I still found a way to see,Determining how much light […]
Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources — Fall 2020
*** Curriculum Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning (Abolitionist Teaching Network, 2020)bit.ly/2DUWg0E12 pp. This online Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning is […]
Protesting Pipelines
Teaching the Indigenous-Led Movement Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
There is something about oil and gas pipelines. The way you can look at a map of hundreds of thousands of miles of the terrible tubes, seeing how tightly the […]
