Fighting for Okinawa — My Home, Not a Military Base
By Moé Yonamine My family moved to the United States from Okinawa when I was 7. But Okinawa is still home — and I’m hurt and angered at how […]
Updates
The Climate Crisis Is Real and Young People Deserve to Know
Dear supporter of climate justice, Like many of those in our global community, I was disgusted and outraged after listening to Donald Trump’s speech at the White House announcing the United […]
Rethinking Schools vs. Heartland Institute
Dear Rethinking Schools friends, Did you see that the Koch brothers-supported Heartland Institute is sending a climate denial textbook to every science teacher in the country? As the Moms Clean […]
Climate Deniers Flooding Schools with Alternative Facts — Educators Are Fighting Back
By Bob Peterson While hundreds of thousands of concerned global citizens march for science and climate justice, a massive corporate-financed disinformation campaign on climate change is flooding our nation’s schools. The […]
Arkansas’ Howard Zinn Witch-Hunt Fizzles
Why the great historian would have loved what transpired over the past few weeks By Bill Bigelow Last week nearly 700 Arkansas teachers and school librarians received copies of books […]
School Privatizer to Head US Department of Education
By Bob Peterson In this Nov. 19, 2016 file photo, President-elect Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos pose for photographs at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster, N.J. Trump […]
Trump and Our Students
Dear Rethinking Schools friends, And so it begins. At a high school in rural Oregon, south of Portland, 30 to 40 white students celebrated Trump this week in front of […]
Racisim, Xenophobia, and the Election
By the Editors of Rethinking Schools As teachers and students return to classrooms this fall, together we have to try to make sense of a tumultuous presidential campaign and a summer […]
Making Climate Change Part of the School Curriculum
By Katy Farber Originally published at momscleanairforce.org. It can be a confusing time to be a kid. People on the TV, internet, and radio say conflicting things — about climate change — with seriousness […]
Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality on the Radio!
KPFA, the San Francisco Bay Area progressive radio station, recently ran an engaging hour-long show on Rethinking Schools’ new book Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality. Kate Raphael, producer of […]
The Roots of Racist Violence in Milwaukee
Editor’s note: Milwaukee is the latest city to erupt as a result of the police shooting of a Black man. As in Ferguson and Baltimore, the outrage in Milwaukee last […]
Readying Students for the Conflagration
By Brian Gibbs and Holly Gibbs When the LA Times reported that there was negative backlash from the Portland School Board’s decision to make certain that climate change was accurately […]
Nation’s Largest Teachers Union Endorses Teaching “Climate Justice”
By Bill Bigelow In May, the Portland, Oregon school board passed the country’s first comprehensive “climate justice” resolution. The school board voted unanimously to “abandon the use of any adopted […]
A Dialogue with the Curriculum of Our Nation: A Critical Reading of Moments
Courtney Cook sent this poetic response to the murder of Philando Castile to Rethinking Schools. We wanted to share it with our readers as a source of healing and a call to action. Cook is a former high school English teacher who has been engaged in justice work and critical education in high schools, prisons, and youth-run organizations. She currently teaches Sociocultural Issues in Education at University of Texas at Austin.
Abandoning Doubt & Denial, School District Officially Embraces Climate Literacy
By Bill Bigelow In what may be a first in the nation, this week the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district […]
Why I’m voting for MORE
By Adam Sanchez This article was written by Rethinking Schools editor and New York City public school teacher Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools does not make endorsements in elections — whether for political […]
A People’s Curriculum for the Earth
By Tim Swinehart “We can’t hunt [because] the ice is receding. People are going hungry,” says one voice. “Us, too! It’s food. We can’t grow it in the desert,” says […]
Opting Out of the Education Reform Industry
High-stakes tests provide the data that is the very fuel of the corporate education reform machine. By opting out of these tests, students, parents, and teachers have the power to take away the data. With the data seized and the machine deprived of its fuel, the corporate reformers cannot produce public education for private gain. This is why opting out is so threatening to the reform industry—and it should be.
Six Reasons Why the Opt Out Movement is Good for Students and Parents of Color
By Jesse Hagopian, first published in The Progressive magazine Corporate education reformers who seek to reduce teaching and learning to a single score are beginning to realize they are losing […]
Hoodies Up! Black Lives Matter!
By Moé Yonamine “I don’t understand why people talk about him like he’s a criminal. He was a 17 year-old kid,” Kiana said. Kiana was one of more than 100 […]
Help Rethinking Schools Abolish Columbus Day
Dear Rethinking Schools friends, Christopher Columbus was the first European to send enslaved people from the Americas to Europe, as well as the first to promote the enslavement of Africans […]
“¿Qué es deportar?”: Teaching from students’ lives by Sandra L. Osorio
Image Credit: Joe Brusky (Text available in Spanish on our website.) Our class was part of a developmental bilingual program with all native Spanish speakers. I had introduced literature discussions the previous […]
Renée Watson on #StoriesForAll
Most importantly, I want books by and about women, stories by and about people of color, to be made available for all readers. Because our stories matter. Because the young people sitting in our classrooms, coming to our libraries, will soon be adult citizens who will need the life skill of empathy and the ability to understand and analyze themselves, their society, and contribute in a positive way. They will need to understand the importance of valuing many viewpoints.
Cuentos del corazón (Stories from the Heart): Fall Issue
Letter from the Editors Nothing reveals our attitudes about our students more clearly than the stance we take toward their home languages. Do we advocate for students’ right to education […]
Time to Abolish Columbus Day
By Bill Bigelow Once again this year many schools will pause to commemorate Christopher Columbus. Given everything we know about who Columbus was and what he launched in the Americas, […]