Kushya Sugarman and Laura Taylor
Sugarman and Taylor detail the challenges and successes of teachers using Teaching for Black Lives study groups to refuse isolation and defy the crackdown on anti-racist education.
Linda Christensen
A veteran teacher laments the trend toward mandated curriculum and argues that teachers should choose materials that address students’ lives and social issues.
Linda Christensen
Do small schools change teaching practice?
Juan Córdova
A teacher of color writes about obstacles he faced during his first year in the classroom and the support he received — and did not receive — from other teachers and administrators.
Linda McNeil
More testing might sound nice as a policy soundbite. But as Texas shows, the move toward high-stakes tests shortchanges learning in the classroom.
Linda Christensen
It’s teacher “work” day — two days before students arrive — and I’m trying to reconstruct my classroom between faculty, department, and union meetings. Mallory leans over my desk, her […]
Carolina Valdez, Farima Pour-Khorshid, and Stephanie Cariaga
As former K–12 teachers who are now teacher educators in California, we share grave concern regarding the expectation for preservice teachers to complete their Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) in order […]
Christensen and Watson discuss powerful strategies for teaching writing — and deeply grounding curriculum in students’ lives through poetry.
the Editors of Rethinking Schools
Catchy slogans, top-down mandates and shallow reforms won’t improve teacher quality. Real progress will only happen if teachers, parents, teacher unions and school and community leaders all play a role.
Leanna Carollo
A teaching assistant working with students with autism realizes the behavior modification-based teaching strategies she is told to use are robbing her students of voice and independence. She tries something else instead.
Barbara Miner
It’s difficult and complex work, but this city’s teacher quality initiatives are making a difference.
Suzanna Kassouf
A high school teacher and co-editor of Teaching Palestine details a classroom simulation revealing some of the inequities Palestinians face throughout Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Gregory Michie
Advice for new teachers on how to survive their first years.
Teddi Beam-Conroy
Texas is the model for President Bush’s education agenda. Your classroom may never be the same.
Mary Rhodes Hoover
A point-by-point rebuttal to some of the prevailing myths about Ebonics, literacy among African-American children and education.
David Levine
The restless spirit of curriculum reform stalks the educational landscape. It is conjured up from the cries of battle. weary teachers, from parents whose children aren’t learning, from business people […]
Bill Bigelow
In the latest installment of our regular column “Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms,” Rethinking Schools curriculum editor Bill Bigelow writes about global youth activism around climate justice and the urgency of the crisis, and introduces readers to the Zinn Education Project’s Teach Climate Justice campaign.
Linda Darling-Hammond
An insightful look at a country that decided to invest in teachers and social support instead of standardized testing.
Traditional approaches to teaching are back in vogue. Get ready for a return to memorization and recapitulation of accepted facts – and don’t forget to keep those desks in straight rows.
Gloria Ladson-Billings
What does it take to be a successful teacher in an urban classroom? An excerpt from Ladson-Billings’ new book, Crossing to Canaan.
Barbara Miner
UCLA’s Center Xsets out to help Los Angeles’ struggling schools.
Leon Lynn
The lead article of a Rethinking Schools special report about right-wing efforts to dress up religious dogma as pseudo-science, keep the theory of evolution out of U.S. schools, and wipe away the separation between church and state.
Sarah Jourdain
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.
This 31-year veteran of Oakland classrooms explains the effects of the Standard English Proficiency program, which recognizes the systematic, rule-governed nature of “Black English” while helping students learn Standard English, and how respect and cultural awareness can help teachers reach their students.
PACT: Intrusion or Opportunity to Learn? I just read Ann Berlak’s piece, “Coming Soon to Your Favorite Credential Program: National Exit Exams”(Summer 2010). Professor Berlak makes substantive arguments about the dangers […]