A kindergarten teacher uses images, literature, poetry, and collages — as well as her own history — to challenge students’ implicit bias and preconceived notions surrounding the color black and to teach the lesson that Black is beautiful.
A victory for ethnic studies in Arizona.
As we return to our schools this fall, we need to rededicate ourselves to building an education system and a society that values Black lives.
Teachers at one Seattle school show the important role educators have to play in the movement for Black lives, in part by creating a Black Lives Matter at School day, having 3,000 teachers wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts, and responding together to issues like the death of Charleena Lyles.
A public school teacher-librarian describes a vibrant library program—and exposes the harm when librarians are seen as dispensable and libraries become testing centers.
Its total failure and the movement against standardized testing finally brought the demise of No Child Left Behind. But is its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, any better?
Ethan Michaeli’s The Defender is a beautifully written, passionate account of the history and influence of the Chicago-based African American weekly newspaper the Defender. The first issue was published in […]
A paraprofessional exposes the harm of substituting compliance for content at a school for special needs students.
In 2012, Kate Connell — a photographer with two children in the Santa Barbara public schools — learned that her son’s freshman seminar had a Marine recruiter as a guest […]
Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.
An English language teacher uses Naomi Klein’s concept of sacrifice zones—from This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate—to help her immigrant students understand connections between oppression in their home countries and in the United States.
Una maestra de inglés usa el concepto de zonas de sacrificio de Naomi Klein, de Esto lo cambia todo: El capitalismo contra el clima, para ayudar a sus estudiantes inmigrantes a entender las conexiones entre la opresión en sus países de origen y en los Estados Unidos.
Educator Debbie Wei, co-founder of a folk arts-based school in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, describes her journey—from growing up as the child of Chinese immigrants who never spoke to her in their native language, to advocating for heritage language programs.
Returning to her home country of Okinawa at 13, Moé Yonamine was hit by a teacher for speaking her Indigenous language. She reflects on the history of colonial oppression in Okinawa and the importance of keeping culture and language alive.
A science teacher in Washington, D.C., overcomes her students’ fear of nature by turning them into avid birdwatchers.
The executive director of San Francisco’s Arab Resource and Organizing Center describes the successes and obstacles for a community-based campaign to offer Arabic language instruction in the district’s schools.
One of a Kind, Like Me/Unico como yo by Larin Mayeno // Illustrated by Robert Liu-Trujillo // Blood Orange Press, 2016 Jacob’s New Dress by Sarah and Ian Hoffman // […]
The edTPA has become a credentialing requirement in many states. Its implementation has distorted relationships throughout teacher education.
Sara Holbrook’s poems appear on the Texas STARR tests. Her efforts to answer the questions about her own poetry expose the narrowness of standardized testing.
Two days after the election, 21 plaintiffs, aged 9 to 20, won a critical court ruling on the constitutional obligation of the U.S. government to protect our children’s right to […]
Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.
A high school social studies teacher centers Standing Rock Sioux history and leadership in a unit on resistance to DAPL.
Middle schoolers explore how Shakespeare plays with gender expression and expectations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Inspired by students’ responses to her own pregnancy, a high school English teacher develops a unit based on teen pregnancy and motherhood—rejecting the usual deficit-based narrative of teen parenting.
“You have got to come out here and see this!” That’s how a transgender student was introduced to her homeroom teacher at a high school in my district. When I […]