Maureen Costello, retired director of Teaching Tolerance, has been a teacher and educational leader for over 40 years. Before joining the Southern Poverty Law Center, Costello worked for Scholastic, Inc. and directed the Newsweek Education Program. She began her career as a history and economics teacher at Notre Dame Academy High School in Staten Island. Throughout her career, Costello has been committed to fostering the ideals of democracy and citizenship in young people. She is a graduate of the New School University and the New York University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. In retirement, she continues to write and speak on education issues.
Maureen
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Articles by Maureen
Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
In today’s anti-government, anti-union environment, it’s important to illustrate what happens when the powerful hold all the cards. The Triangle shirtwaist fire presents an opportunity to do just that.
Arts: The Secret to Making Schools Great?
Last week, I had a chance to preview documentary films that showed how a strong arts program—and that could range from mariachi to Shakespeare to poetry slams—could turn struggling schools into powerhouses of energy and promise. Last night, millions of viewers got a chance to see what students from a school that values the arts look like—on the Academy Awards, no less.
Taking History Out of Context
There are three questions students of history should always ask: What’s the context?What’s the context?What’s the context? Yes, I know, it’s a play on the old real estate joke (location, location, location), but the importance of understanding how a quote or an event sits in terms of what’s happening around it cannot be overstated.
The Height of Unintended Bias
The Southern Poverty Law Center held a Health Fair yesterday at which employees could get their blood pressure checked, visit with fitness experts and determine their fat-to-muscle ratio. Our screening began with a familiar ritual of childhood physicals: We each stepped onto a platform, stood much straighter than usual and had our height measured. And then something very interesting happened. Each and every person, upon hearing the result, insisted they were taller, questioned the accuracy of the device (a steel measure) and reacted as if they’d been denied a birthright.
Race Conversation Must Go Deeper
When I was in fifth grade and new to suburbia, my teacher introduced the concepts of racism, civil rights and fairness. And she began the task of helping 10-years olds—all of us white—learn how to talk about race in constructive ways. I’d moved from a gritty urban neighborhood where whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans lived together rather warily. My parents maintained a chilly silence on the issue of race, although they forbade racial epithets; on the street I heard plenty. In this place, the black kids came mostly from the projects, the Puerto Ricans lived in apartments and the better-off among the white families might have an entire house. I knew that race divided.