Volume 36, No. 1

Fall 2021

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  • Confronting the Right-Wing Attacks on Racial Justice Teaching

    By Rethinking Schools Editors

    it is critical and righteous work. And that by doing this work, we join an esteemed collective of educators, past and present, who went for broke teaching children that, to paraphrase Eduardo Galeano, tomorrow can be more than just another name for today.

  • In Memory of Thomas Nikundiwe

    By the Education for Liberation Board

    Reflecting on educator and organizer Thomas Nikundiwe’s legacy reminds us to strive for liberatory learning.

  • Listening Between the Lines

    The Sound of Curriculum

    By Anne Smith

    A music teacher stories her tense journey to listen to and include a parent in her child’s education.

  • The People v. the Hip-Hop Industry

    By Jessica A. Rucker

    A high school teacher and her students question “Who owns and controls hip-hop?” — and put the hip-hop industry on trial. 

  • The Power of Teaching Poetry

    A Conversation Between Renée Watson and Linda Christensen

    Christensen and Watson discuss powerful strategies for teaching writing — and deeply grounding curriculum in students’ lives through poetry.

  • Through the Lens of Those We Love

    Uplifting Oral Histories and Finding Common Threads

    By Cierra Kaler-Jones

    Kaler-Jones invites young Black women to gather their loved ones’ oral histories; together they find threads of resistance, solidarity, and racial justice.

  • To Teach About the Climate Emergency, Let’s Learn from the Movement to Abolish Slavery

    Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms

    By Bill Bigelow

    The climate justice resolution passed unanimously by the school board in Portland, Oregon, in 2016, says that all students should “come to see themselves as activists and leaders for social and environmental justice.” A good place to start is to connect students with radical activists and movements — past and present — that respect life more than property and authority.

  • “We Will Remain Standing on This Land and Teach”

    By Nina Shoman-Dajani

    Book Review: Determined to Stay, by Jody Sokolower. Reviewed by Nina Shoman-Dajani

  • Fifth-Grade Detectives Uncover the Dominant Narrative

    By Erin Green

    Green and her students “cover” the standards by doing a representational inquiry and discover that most of the people they are supposed to learn about are white men. 

  • Sin Fronteras

    Writing Poetry About Borderlands to Bring Down Walls and Build Connections

    By Katy Alexander

    Alexander and their middle school students use the powerful poem “To live in the borderlands means you,” by Gloria Anzaldúa, to explore the borderlands of their own lives. 

  • Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources: Fall 2021, Volume 36.1

    The best picks from Rethinking Schools for resources for your classroom and for your mind.