Books: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid…
Books:
It’s Still the Economy, Stupid…
Social Class
Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance
Media depictions of San Francisco show idyllic images of fog pouring under the Golden Gate Bridge or happy tourists riding cable cars, but rarely the mostly nonwhite neighborhoods of the […]
Candles in April
This story has lived in me for more than 25 years. I was in the 7th grade. This is a time when how others see you is crucial to your […]
Review: Our Dignity Can Defeat Anyone
By Julie Treick O’Neill A review of the film Maquilapolis [City of Factories]
Despair, Hope, and the Future
UCLA professor blunts anti-public school rhetoric with honest insights on education.
Kid Nation
CBS goes overboard with this painful exploitation of children.
You’re Asian, How Could You Fail Math?
Have you ever sat next to an Asian student in class and wondered how she managed to consistently get straight A’s while you struggled to maintain a B-minus average? -from Top […]
Can’t Buy Me Love
Linda Christensen gets students to write critically about clothes, class, and consumption.
Living Algebra, Living Wage
Eighth graders finally get what they ask for: an algebra lesson for the real world.”
Lies My Spanish Textbooks Tell
Latinos dance, they sing, they happily play baseball. And what great food!
Teaching About Global Warming in Truck Country
Helping kids who’ve grown up in the truck culture” examine climate change.
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Integrals and Equity
An AP calculus class at a prestigious boarding school doesn’t seem a likely venue for student reflection on privilege and wealth. But when I taught a group of academically inclined […]
Field Trip
A teacher observes social inequities during a class trip.
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.
Macaroni Social Justice
A 3rd-grade teacher uses thousands of pieces of macaroni to facilitate a lesson about fractions and to spur classroom conversations about wealth inequality.
Creating Bias Detectives, Blowing Up Stereotypes, and Writing Essays that Matter
“Part of the work of teaching students to read is teaching them to question not only the written word, but also the author,” Christensen writes in her article about teaching students how to confront writers whose stories erase the full truth and misrepresent people and places.
Why We Should Teach Reconstruction
Unfortunately, the transformative history of Reconstruction has been buried. First by a racist tale masquerading as history and now under a top-down narrative focused on white elites. It’s long overdue we unearth the groundswell of activity that brought down the slavers of the South and set a new standard for freedom we are still struggling to achieve today.
Honor Their Names
Students’ names are the first thing teachers know about the young people who enter our classrooms; they can signal country of origin, gender, language. Students’ names provide the first moment when a teacher can demonstrate their warmth and humanity, their commitment to seeing and welcoming students’ languages and cultures into the classroom.
40 Acres and a Mule
A high school teacher uses a role play so students can imagine life during Reconstruction, the possibilities of the post-Civil War era, and the difficult decisions that Black communities had to wrestle with.
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.
Teach the Fossil Fuel Industry — Our Students’ Enemy
“Climate justice” education means a lot of things. But one key aspect is that we involve students in probing the social and economic roots of the crisis.
Sharing Our Real Selves
A special education teacher talks about the importance of sharing her own stories — and complexities — with students.
“Who Made History? We Made History!”
Fred Glass reviews Eric Blanc’s Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics
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.
On Behalf of Their Name
The staff advisor for their high school’s Queer-Straight Alliance delves into the complexities of a student-led training for teachers on the importance of using students’ preferred pronouns.