Pledge to Participate in the Black Lives Matter at School “Year of Purpose”
For the fall issue, in lieu of our regular editorial by Rethinking Schools editors, we are publishing most of the “Year of Purpose” call by Black Lives Matter at School. […]
Editorials
The Fight of Our Lives
This has been a year like no other. Fear. Illness and death. Trauma for our students, their families, their communities — and for us, as educators. We are becoming new teachers, […]
Short Stuff 26.2
International Movement for Public Education Privatization, standardized tests, funding cuts, attacks on teachers’ unions and contracts—the issues that are central to teacher activism in the United States are international. In […]
Teaching More Civics Will Not Save Us from Trump
A high school social studies teacher argues for rethinking how we teach civics so that students learn that organizing, activism, and civil disobedience are as important as the Constitution.
Who’s Behind the Money?
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Outlawing Solidarity in Arizona
“Banned in Tucson.” As many Rethinking Schools readers know, in January Tucson school officials ordered our book Rethinking Columbus removed from Mexican American Studies classes, as part of their move to shut down the […]
Occupy Education
The South African poet and activist Breyten Breytenbach once said, “You Americans have mastered the art of living with the unacceptable.” We hope this is coming to an end—in schools, […]
Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis
Why is there so little teaching or discussion of climate change in classrooms?
A Time to End the Silences
When texts don’t talk about racism
‘Hurricane Vicki’
Portland’s former superintendent gets a big stage with Gates Foundation assignment.
Editorial Winds of Change
After years of being hushed by rightwing demagogues and a compliant media, teachers, students, parents, and activist are getting loud and proud
Lego Fascists’ (that’s us) vs. Fox News
What’s so wrong about questioning modern American values such as consumerism and militarism?
Editorial: White Supremacy Is Not Color Blind
Supreme Court rulings affecting Louisville and Seattle could wipe out the last vestiges of the 1954 Brown decision.
Katrina’s Lessons
It wasn’t just the hurricane that devastated the Gulf; it was also a slower, more preventable surge of racism and poverty.
Editorial: The Small School Express
If we ignore race and money inequities, small school reform won’t help anything meaningful take root.
We Are the World
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The Tsunami and Other Disasters
The Dec. 26 tsunami swept away the lives of more than 200,000 people and ravaged the livelihoods of millions more. Throughout the world teachers and students discussed the tsunami and […]
What About Play?
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Time to Renew Movements for Justice
Encourage movements for social justice at the national level.
The Green New Deal and Our Schools
So often, the climate crisis is presented in frightening, threatening terms: rising seas, superstorms, raging wildfires, unlivable temperatures, species extinction, disappearing glaciers, dying coral, climate refugees. These are real. But the paradox is that this dystopian possibility is forcing us to imagine an entirely different kind of society. Schools have a central role to play in devising new alternatives and equipping young people to bring those alternatives to life. This is the work we’ve been assigned.
Black Lives Matter at School: From the Week of Action to Year-Round Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Protest
Every social justice educator should make building the BLM at School Week of Action during the first week of February a top priority.
Celebrating Transgender Students in Our Classrooms and in Our Schools
What can teachers, schools, and districts do to meet the needs of trans students? To make them visible? To keep them alive? To celebrate them?
Nurturing Student Activists in the Time of Trump
How we seed and support student activism will vary from community to community, school to school, and grade level to grade level. But this is a crucial moment in history, and what we do as educators matters. When we help students explore and analyze exploitation, injustice, and danger in the world, we can also help them develop the knowledge and skills to change it.
Beyond the Travel Ban
In May 2016, while I was carrying out ethnographic research in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, a Form 4 (12th grade) history teacher asked me if I would teach his students about U.S. democracy. We flipped through the history and government textbook to one of the last chapters where the national curriculum outlined political systems in Kenya, England, India, and the United States. It was a peculiar moment to put the U.S. democratic system on display.
#SchoolsToo: Educators’ Responsibility to Confront Sexual Violence
The ongoing, persistent verbal and physical violence against women, youth, and LGBTQ communities has not been adequately addressed in most schools. Instead of educating children and youth about gender equity and sexual harassment, schools often create a culture that perpetuates stigma, shame, and silence. Student-on-student sexual assault and harassment occurs on playgrounds, in bathrooms and locker rooms, on buses, and down isolated school hallways. Students experience sexualized language and inappropriate touching, as well as forced sexual acts. And they encounter these at formative stages of their lives that leave scars and shape expectations for a lifetime. What isn’t addressed critically in schools becomes normalized and taken for granted.