Like you, we are angry and fearful about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and these are terrifying times for our students. As Ukrainian educator Igor Tsyvgintsev reminds us, “The entire curriculum of school studies comes down to humaneness.”
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 […]
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 […]
A review of The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt, 2004)
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 […]
By Julie Treick O’Neill A review of the film Maquilapolis [City of Factories]
“I would really like to see a new movement that gives the kind of hope
for change that there was when I came into teaching in the late 1960s.”
Michelle Fine describes the issues faced by U.S. Muslim-American youth following not only 9/11 but the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Preparing high schoolers for the Regents exam while studying the War in Iraq.
Suggestions from a 5th-grade teacher on bringing the War in Iraq into the curriculum.
At a recent conference in the north of England some two or three hundred local politicians, directors of education, and a smattering of trade unionists and teachers attended a conference […]
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 […]
A high school teacher critiques the textbook treatment of the Cold War and U.S. imperialism. She describes her approach to the “curricular conundrum” that the Cold War presents because it lasted so long, and was so far-flung. “”If we are ever to create a different world, one in which the United States does not cast an outsized and militarized shadow across the globe, we need our students to understand how and why that shadow was created in the first place.”
An elementary school teacher uses his students’ T-shirts to launch a lesson about child labor, basic economics, factories, unions, and strikes. “When I was a child, I remember ‘playing pretend’ with my cousins. We could be anyone we imagined, and in that moment, we were those people. Why not use that energy and imagination as a resource? When we use our imagination to walk in another’s shoes, that’s where real learning begins.”
A teacher adapts the “Climate Change Mixer” designed for older students as a springboard for a unit on global warming and climate justice.
Recently, a Rethinking Schools editor was a chaperone on a field trip when he overheard a 2nd-grade student talking about how he wanted to “nuke the world.” Taken aback, he […]
Ninth graders explore a plan to strip-mine coal in Wyoming and Montana, send it by train to the Northwest, then ship it to Asia to be burned.
A high school teacher uses a role-play to explore the economic dimensions of the war in Iraq.
By Moé Yonamine “Don’t cry here,” an 86-year-old Okinawan grandmother I had never met before told me. She stood next to me and took my hand. I had been visiting […]
Five years in the making, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollutionÑas well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth of Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published.
At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions.
During his four years in office, President Trump pushed the United States closer toward war with Iran. After barely a month in office, President Joe Biden carried out airstrikes in […]
This comprehensive 400-page book from Rethinking Schools helps teachers raise critical issues with students in grades 4-12 about the increasing globalization of the world’s economies and infrastructures, and the many […]
