For the last few days, an “educational analyst” for Focus on the Family has been getting a lot of press. She’s been suggesting that anti-bullying efforts that draw attention to the harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students are part of a “gay agenda” to “sneak homosexuality lessons into classrooms.”
When many students think of buses and desegregation, their minds instantly go to Rosa Parks and the 1954 Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the larger civil rights fight over transportation took place seven years later with the Freedom Rides.
Last week, we posed a question to students via their teachers: What advice would you give to the new president? Their thoughtful responses blew us away.
Telling only one story of civil rights marginalizes the voices we ignore. It also prevent us from doing exactly what the story of civil rights is supposed to teach us to do―fight for justice in our own communities as those before us did.
What do you do when anti-bias teaching strategies are derailed by real, in-the-moment fears? See how one educator responded to Islamophobia in her classroom.
Twitter, Google Docs and their cousins shrink the spaces between cultures even as they expand the reach of a typical classroom. How can you use them to promote social justice?
Marvin Reed resides in the Bay Area and teaches third grade at Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Berkeley Unified School District. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a master’s degree in higher education and leadership policies, a Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential and currently is pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership from California State University, Sacramento. He was recognized in 2021 as the Computer-Using Educators (CUE) Emerging Teacher of the Year. He has served as a judge and as a leadership clinician with many prestigious marching band programs around the state