Rethinking Schools - Spring 2015

Rethinking Schools is a must-read for everyone involved in progressive education -- first-year teachers and seasoned veterans, parents and community activists. Crammed with innovative teaching ideas, compelling resources, analyses of important issues, and organizing, Rethinking Schools is an invaluable source for educators who want to enlist students in thinking deeply and critically about the world today. As education policy increasingly forces schools toward scripted curriculum, excessive testing, and punitive measures, Rethinking Schools provides an alternative vision of schooling, based on the creative commitment of teachers and grounded in students’ daily lives. A wide range of articles portrays classrooms that are academically rigorous, ant-racist, multicultural, and engaging. Rethinking Schools offers hope and inspiration by being both practical and visionary.

Spring 2015 -- Volume 29 #3

COVER THEME: RHYTHM AND RESISTANCE
Our spring issue features three articles from our new book, Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice, edited by Linda Christensen and Dyan Watson. At a time when the regime of standardized testing is squeezing poetry and narrative, social studies and the arts out of the curriculum, Rhythm and Resistance presents a vision of teaching and learning with our students’ lives at the center.

Celebrating Skin Tone • The science and poetry of skin color
By Katharine Johnson
An early elementary school teacher combines a science lesson and poetry to encourage children to celebrate their own skin tone and that of their classmates.

– PLUS –

Editorial: Black Students' Lives Matter • Building the school to justice pipeline
By the editors of Rethinking Schools

The Koch Brothers Sneak into School • Right-wing billionaires buy their way into social studies classes
By Bill Bigelow
The Koch-funded Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home the lesson that freedom means freedom to make money.

A Tale of Two Districts: The Long Reach and Deep Pockets of Corporate Reform
By Stan Karp
A comparison of corporate reform strategies and popular resistance in two very different districts in New Jersey—Newark and Montclair—reveals the flexibility of the privatizers and the potential of solidarity across communities.