Listening Between the Lines
A music teacher stories her tense journey to listen to and include a parent in her child’s education.
Curriculum Articles
Necessary Trouble
Wolfe-Rocca describes her mixer around the “Valve Turners,” a group of climate disobedience activists who put their bodies on the line to stop the harm of pipelines.
Teaching the Green New Deal: The Prequel
In an article introducing the student-friendly short video, A Message from the Future, about life after the Green New Deal, Naomi Klein points out: Almost every vision of the future […]
The Teaching for Black Lives Starter Pack
Get the free Teaching for Black Lives Starter Pack when you sign up today for email updates from Rethinking Schools.
Reparations Can Be Won — and Must Be Taught
The story of how activists, teachers, and, organizers won mandatory curriculum in the Chicago Public Schools for 8th and 10th grades about one the darkest chapters in the city’s history — the widespread torture of Black men under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.
Honoring Exonerees
A high school teacher helps her students explore how DNA testing is used to free innocent people from prison and how science can support justice.
Who’s to Blame?
A middle school teacher organizes a tribunal for her students on responsibility for the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Among those on trial are Mother Nature, Gen Z/Millennials, the Healthcare Industry, Racism and White Supremacy, the Chinese Government, the U.S. Government, and the Capitalist System.
Protesting Pipelines
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 […]
A Field Trip to the Future
“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 […]
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”
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 […]
Teaching Voting Rights in the Time of Coronavirus
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which promised “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or […]
Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance
Media depictions of San Francisco show idyllic images of fog pouring under the Golden Gate Bridge or happy tourists riding cable cars, but rarely the mostly nonwhite neighborhoods of the […]
Who’s Crazy? Students Critique the The Gods Must Be Crazy
I wish I could say my colleagues Cresslyn Clay, Colin Pierce, and I had it all worked out from the beginning, and that we carefully crafted each nuance that prompted […]
Writing for Justice
An elementary school teacher takes us inside his classroom to see how he builds on his students’ lives and passions to help them create persuasive essays.
Sin Fronteras Boy
Fourth-grade English language learners use wikis to study border issues and gain literacy skills.
The Classroom to Prison Pipeline
A master teacher faces a classroom revolt. She realizes that, no matter how imminent the high-stakes test, stopping the school-to-prison pipeline begins in the classroom with student-centered, meaningful curriculum.
Teaching the Prison Industrial Complex
“Harm comes from prior harm.” As Deandra says this, I am sitting in the back of my classroom, taking notes. My students are sitting in a circle in the middle […]
Got Coal?
Students play a game promoted by the coal industry, then dig beneath the surface to look at the realities of mountaintop removal mining.
Science for the People
Ninth graders develop science literacy as they become neighborhood environmental experts and activists.
Talking Back to the World
Student poetry about what raised me is woven into graphic art.
Putting a Human Face on the Immigration Debate
For those of us working with immigrant populations, we have in our students living examples that we can use to bring the immigration issue to the forefront and teach all of our students.
TV Selfishness and Violence Explode During ‘War On Terror
Six years into the ‘War on Terror
Polar Bears on Mission Street
San Francisco fourth graders learn about global warming and take action to save the polar bears.
Living Algebra, Living Wage
Eighth graders finally get what they ask for: an algebra lesson for the real world.”