Volume 37, No. 1

It’s a Big Fat Deal

How Schools Teach Contempt for Fat People — and What We Can Do About It

By Katy Alexander

A special education teacher tackles fatphobia in our schools head-on, pointing out how we fall far short in our efforts to rid it from the classroom and how fundamentally detrimental fatphobia is to teaching and learning.

Fatphobia Showed Up in My Classroom 

Here’s What I Wish I Had Done Differently

By Ruben Abrahams Brosbe

It is the noisiest time of the day at school. It’s lunchtime and I’m sitting with two of my 3rd graders in the basement cafeteria of our public school building […]

In the Wake of Uvalde, a Teacher’s Plea for Police-Free Schools

By Nataliya Braginsky

Braginsky argues that her students — and young people everywhere — are safer in school without police.

The Tragedy of New Orleans Is Not Unique

By Leigh Dingerson

A Review of Public Schools, Private Governance by J. Celeste Lay

Building the Foundation for Police-Free Schools

By Mark R. Warren

On Oct. 25, 2015, student Niya Kenny filmed a white school police officer body slamming her classmate, a Black 16-year-old girl named Shakara, to the floor during math class at […]

Teach Truth Days of Action

Educators Speak Out

By Valencia Abbott, Tamara Anderson, Dawn Bolton, Christina Bustos, Anna O’Brien, Michael Rebne, Heather Smith, and Vanessa Williams

We asked teachers who helped organize “Teach Truth Days of Action” in various parts of the country to describe their days
of action and why they were important. Here’s what they said.

Teaching the Reconstruction Revolution

Picturing and Celebrating the First Era of Black Power

By Adam Sanchez

A high school social studies teacher describes a lesson that uses improvisations, historical fiction, and found poems to help students appreciate the first era of Black power: Reconstruction.

Confronting Gun Violence Means Confronting Our Legacy of White Male Sovereignty

By the editors of Rethinking Schools

On May 24, 2022, 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were killed in their classroom. Our horror at this mass shooting — the deadliest since the […]

We Don’t Need No Education

Now Arizona Says Teachers Don’t Require College Degrees

By Kathryn Joyce

As an example of how the right is waging war on teacher education programs, teacher unions, and the teaching profession itself, Arizona has rolled back teacher licensing rules. We could see similar measures proposed in other parts of the country.

Eugene Debs and the Idea of Socialism

By Howard Zinn

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the scholar-activist Howard Zinn (1922–2010), author of A People’s History of the United States. In each Rethinking Schools issue this year, we have published a “Zinn at 100” essay. This is not nostalgia. We commemorate Howard Zinn because his writing continues to provide needed context for today’s events.

Let’s Stop Using Metaphors that Celebrate Extraction, Colonialism, and Violence 

Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms

By Bill Bigelow

Too often our metaphors embed messages that are hostile to the Earth and to social justice. Metaphors can reflect — and legitimate — a violent, extractive, colonial worldview.

Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice resources 37.1

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