A pair of news stories this week reported that students were being silenced and punished when they attempted to speak up for others. This is disappointing.
At a time when the nation’s schools are becoming more segregated, teachers and students across the country have an opportunity to show the rest of the world they’re committed to challenging these boundaries by registering for Teaching Tolerance’s Mix It Up at Lunch Day.
Readers must refer back to the central text to answer text-dependent questions and provide evidence from the reading to support their answers. Students provide accurate, relevant and complete evidence. To do this well, students will often need to re-read the text several times. This approach privileges the text over prior knowledge, personal experience and pre-reading activities.
LGBT educators enjoy more openness and acceptance than ever before. But their gains have been fragile and uneven. And many still feel it’s safest to teach from the closet.
Sarah Anderson teaches middle school humanities and interdisciplinary studies at a place-based charter school in Portland, Ore. Originally from rural Vermont, Anderson has also taught nature studies to urban middle school students in the California Redwoods, career skills to at-risk youth on an educational farm in Vermont and Civics and Global Studies at an independent school in Maryland. She earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies at Bard College and a masters in education in Integrated Learning from Antioch New England Graduate School.