How Portland Teachers Led the Longest K–12 Strike in Decades
Two strike captains reflect on what they learned from spending three weeks on the picket line in Portland teachers’ first-ever strike.
News
Students Address Racial Justice at “Model Gary” Convention
Drawing inspiration from the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, New Jersey students and teachers organize a convention to discuss issues facing Black communities today.
Teaching about Ukraine
Dear Rethinking Schools friends, Like you, we are angry and fearful about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is already causing immense suffering — which will only increase. These are […]
As States Build Barriers to Racial Justice Teaching, Educators Fight Back
Teachers nationwide have been standing up to register their resistance and solidarity, organizing rallies, supporting school board candidates who reject these bills, and doubling down on their own efforts to learn and teach about race.
Pledge to Teach the Truth
To respond to the right-wing legislation across the country, which attacks racial justice teaching, the Zinn Education Project organized a “Pledge to Teach the Truth” and invited educators to say […]
Coronavirus, Sick-Outs, and the Fight to Close New York City Schools
New York City has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and its public schools, which serve 1.1 million students and employ nearly 135,000 people, officially closed on March 17. […]
Rethinking Ethnic Studies Named 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Winner!
Rethinking Ethnic Studies has been recognized as an INDIES Book of the YEAR Awards Winner in the education category.
Action News – Wisconsin Uprising
Wisconsin Uprising — Justice Is in the Air
¡Sí, se puede!
From Chicago to Dallas, from Atlanta to Nebraska, from Maine to Los Angeles, and in small towns throughout the land, an outpouring of millions of Latinos and human rights supporters […]
Childhood Is Dying
Iraq’s children have been more gravely affected by the U.S. occupation than any other segment of the population.”
Pressuring the Gap
Ohio attempts to close achievement gap by focusing on 9th-grade males
Students Galvanize for Immigrant Rights
Viviana, who had only lived in the United States for two years, walked nervously to the speaker’s podium at a press conference on the steps of her high school. Although […]
Youth Take the Lead on High School Reform Issues
Sistas and Brothas United.
A Little School in a Little Chinatown
One of the founders of a folk arts-based school slated to open in Philadelphia this fall hopes small schools can create possibilities for reclaiming communities.
California’s Grassroots Grow
Sacramento On Aug. 13, 2004, the California Supreme Court settled a historic case— Williams v. the State of California. The Williams decision validated the concerns of many Californians that the state had fallen […]
Houston’s ‘Zero Dropout
Texas schools report dropout rates, Enron style.
Rethinking Our Classrooms Among Race and Education Books Censored at Illinois Prison
In late January, authorities at the Danville Correctional Center in east-central Illinois removed more than 200 titles from the prison’s library. One of the books that was confiscated was the Rethinking Schools book Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice, first published in 1994 and edited by Bill Bigelow, Linda Christensen, Stan Karp, Barbara Miner, and Bob Peterson.
Teacher Unions Take on the Climate Crisis
As young people across the country join the global movement to mobilize school strikes to demand climate action, one group is starting to think more seriously about how to best support those efforts: their teachers.
Red for Ed: The Movement Strengthens and Continues
In 2018, numerous commentators portrayed the West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky school walkouts as a purely “red state” phenomenon. But events this year have made clear that the strike […]
Who Is Allowed to Teach Spanish in Our Public Schools?
The director of a world language teacher preparation program argues for an end to the edTPA because it bars native Spanish speakers from public school classrooms.
“We Did What Had to Be Done”
I worked with ArtXpress — a program for teens through the Milwaukee Art Museum — as an intern for three weeks over the summer. Our mission was to choose a […]
Walk the Line
A Los Angeles teacher paints an intimate self-portrait of what it was actually like on the picket line during one of the most important public sector strikes in recent years.
You Need Rank and File to Win: How Arizona Teachers Built a Movement
An elementary teacher who helped organize Arizona educators to strike explains how their movement formed and operated, and how it can inspire other teachers’ movements.
Teaching Social Activism in Prison
A Connecticut educator who taught English to incarcerated young men for 20 years describes what happened when she introduced her students to the Canadian “Leap Manifesto.”
Tax the Rich, Fight Climate Change
The latest installment of our Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms column looks to a piece of very good news that national media missed following the 2018 midterm elections. By a margin of almost two-to-one, tens of thousands of Portland, Oregon, voters approved an imaginative clean energy initiative that offers a model for the rest of the country — at the ballot box, but also in our classrooms.