Nefertari Yancie, Ph.D., teaches eighth grade social studies in Birmingham, Alabama. She received her doctorate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in education studies in diverse populations. Her research focuses on developing students’ historical empathy skills as a way of understanding the past’s connection and relevance to the present.
Lee Anne Bell, Ed.D., is the author of Storytelling for Social Justice, co-editor and author of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, and producer of 40 Years Later: Now Can We Talk?, a documentary film that focuses on the first class of Black students to desegregate a Mississippi high school, streamed at https://vimeo.com/537431634.
A simulation of an auction during a fifth-grade lesson about slavery last week is just the latest illustration of why we need better ways to teach hard history.
Equity literacy moves us beyond cultural competency, allowing educators to create and sustain equitable and just learning environments for all families and students.
An important date awaits in April, and it’s coming sooner than April 15.The Census Bureau has designated April 1 as "National Census Day," the date for mailing census forms to bureau offices. Households that don’t get their forms sent off by then will get a visit from a census taker.
U.S. public schools are not branch offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s the message the Obama administration sent out in a letter to the nation’s school districts last week.
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.
Teaching Tolerance has named 77 schools—25 more than last year—from across the country as Mix It Up Model Schools for their exemplary efforts to foster respect and understanding among their students and throughout their campuses during the 2011-12 school year.