Libraries and bookstores should discontinue their active promotion of this series that appears to dedicate more resources to marketing than to researching and writing effective stories about social change for young people.
The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Before the Law,” have always been a sham.
The show also reminds us that regardless of parental, administrative, and legislative warnings against bringing politics into classrooms, teaching remains a political act.
Just as workers are going to need unions, young people need to be organizing as students to make collective demands on the system as well as to meet their needs in an emergency.
The letters are sweet and encouraging — had they been delivered, they could have changed their recipients’ lives.
“Do you feel like a boy?” “No, mom. I’m a girl.” My daughter’s statement could not have been more direct, honest, and clear. In that moment I glimpsed how deeply gender-expansive people feel who they are, no matter what society has labeled them as at birth.
I hope that centering Indigenous voices in the classroom and school garden will teach my students the value of Indigenous ways of knowing. As they develop an awareness of the social injustice and resilience that characterizes the stories of Indigenous peoples and their food cultures, I want them to be dissatisfied with the absence of Native narratives and seek out the voices of the tribes themselves.
In her new book, The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)member, Cynthia Dillard (now dean of the College of Education at Seattle University) provides language for what occurs when Black women teachers discover their spiritual wisdom and identities that are part of a long historical continuum of Black women’s resistance, creativity, and ultimately, their healing.
A 5th- and 6th-grade teacher asks her students to wrestle with what “identity” and “intersectionality” mean.
I recently stumbled across a podcast that made a wonderful addition to my students’ study of the climate crisis — As She Rises.
A kindergarten teacher helps students investigate issues of environmental justice — like access to green space — in their communities.
An elementary teacher helps her students express themselves about social justice issues like the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter through movement and dance, and helps them see how dance can celebrate diversity.
Christensen describes how poetry can be used in this moment to be something concrete — that can be felt, touched, or smelled — but also something to stir our students’ imaginations, allowing them to dream.
A 5th-grade teacher devises a mixer activity to help her students understand that the Civil Rights Movement was not fueled only by great leaders, but also by ordinary people who became change makers and organized with others.
Role plays can offer students engaging ways to learn, but require careful contextualization and follow-up. This article offers some cautions and guidance about using them.
Sanchez describes a role play about the demise of Reconstruction that helps students get beyond the question “Was Reconstruction a success or failure?”
A doctoral student tells the story of her experience with a dangerous role play — poorly conceptualized and taught — when she was an undergrad.
hooks’ influence on social justice education was so immense and so longstanding that we may not even recognize all the ways she touched our vision of the world — and our classrooms.
Wolfe-Rocca shares the results of the first-ever comprehensive review of state standards on Reconstruction, noting that Zinn Education Project researchers found that the standards fail to define the era or outline its crucial themes. The article also offers what the Zinn Education Project proposes for state and district standards.
Alexander and their middle school students use the powerful poem “To live in the borderlands means you,” by Gloria Anzaldúa, to explore the borderlands of their own lives.
Reflecting on educator and organizer Thomas Nikundiwe’s legacy reminds us to strive for liberatory learning.
Rethinking Schools editors and staff mourn the loss of Bob Moses (1935–2021), the extraordinary Civil Rights Movement activist and educator. Moses was a central organizer in Mississippi for the Student […]
Green and her students “cover” the standards by doing a representational inquiry and discover that most of the people they are supposed to learn about are white men.
Kaler-Jones invites young Black women to gather their loved ones’ oral histories; together they find threads of resistance, solidarity, and racial justice.
Christensen and Watson discuss powerful strategies for teaching writing — and deeply grounding curriculum in students’ lives through poetry.
