Volume 35, No. 4

Summer 2021

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  • Right-Wing Legislators Are Trying to Stop Us from Teaching for Racial Justice. We Refuse.

    By Editors of Rethinking Schools

    “The alphabet is abolitionist.” This powerful statement comes from an 1867 Harper’s Weekly editorial rallying its mostly Northern readers to the fight for robust public education as part of the […]

  • Pledge to Teach the Truth

    By Alexandros Acedo, Ericka Alfaro, Cassandra Black, Stephanie Melendez, Greg Michie, Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, Kumar Sathy, and Zach Wilson

    To respond to the right-wing legislation across the country, which attacks racial justice teaching, the Zinn Education Project organized a “Pledge to Teach the Truth” and invited educators to say […]

  • “I’m Going to Keep Doing What I Do”

    Iowa Educators Resist New State Law

    By Monique Cottman, Lisa Covington, and Jesse Hagopian

    Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian interviews Iowa educators and Black Lives Matter at School-Iowa activists Monique Cottman and Lisa Covington.

  • Pledge to #TeachTruth Day of Action

    On Saturday, June 12, educators in more than 20 states across the country participated in a Day of Action, pledging to “teach the truth” in the face of a growing […]

  • More Than McCarthyism

    Activists Our Students Deserve to Know

    By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

    Wolfe-Rocca critiques textbooks’ focus on McCarthyism and describes how, instead, she centers radical activists who have been victims of ongoing government harassment and repression.

  • The Story of a Seed

    Food Sovereignty in an Elementary Classroom

    By Caitlin Blood

    An agriculture teacher describes teaching “every seed has a story” with 1st graders by honoring the story of, and planting, the Makah Ozette potato.

  • Voting for and from the Margins

    Reimagining Electability Through Poetry

    By Kurt David

    A high school language arts teacher and his students use poetry to question who gets elected.

  • The Resurgence of Teacher Unions

    By Arlene Inouye and Jackson Potter

    Inouye and Potter share organizing strategies from the 2019 United Teachers Los Angeles and Chicago Teachers Union strikes, which centered common good demands.

  • What Catalina Taught Me About Inclusion

    By Megan McQueen

    Asking a student about her communication preferences brings interdependence and solidarity into a kindergarten classroom.

  • What I Wish I Had Said

    By Anita Stratton

    An elementary teacher stories her struggle to speak up to a colleague about a racist nickname.

  • Big Reactions to Small Steps

    One Teacher’s Story About Using Inclusive Children’s Literature

    By Nettie Harrington Pangallo

    Harrington Pangallo describes pushback for reading a book to answer a student question — “What does gay mean?” — and her response.

  • The Attack on Anti-Racist Teaching Is an Attack on Environmental Justice Teaching

    By Bill Bigelow

    In his magnificent new book, How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith quotes the Rev. Dr. William Barber II: “The same land that held people captive through slavery is now […]

  • Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources 35.4

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