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Many times in my career, I have heard a colleague warn, “Watch out for that one! He’s trouble!” Students quickly gain a reputation with the teachers. In an effort to help each other, teachers may offer a warning about a challenging student. I’ve learned not to believe everything I’m told.

Protest Songs in the Classroom

Writing poetry is an excellent way for students to explore identity and find meaning and value in everyday experiences.

It’s undeniable. Technology is in the classroom in new and instructive ways. Flipped classrooms and interactive instruction videos created by teachers for use by students at home are becoming more popular. Teachers are emerging as bloggers, creating classroom websites and using other digital products. Technology offers the potential to level the playing field for students without direct access to resources available to other students in more affluent schools.

The room was quiet. In our staff development session, we had just watched a short video about the best way to instruct our students in speaking Standard English. The teacher in the video explained to her students that they would be practicing the “language of the job interview.” My school director asked, “How did people feel about that?”

For students living in instability, a safe classroom becomes a second home.

Michelle Alexander wrote The New Jim Crow to start conversations about race and mass incarceration in the United States. This toolkit develops student vocabulary about these themes and challenges them to create interview questions for another author who writes about social justice.