Search

What happens when we don’t teach about the history of racism? Turn on the news.

This middle school teacher empowered his students to lift their voices in discussions about Ferguson and Eric Garner—by assigning them to tweet.

The editor of Teaching Tolerance reflects on the lessons of Sept. 11.

Earlier this month, hundreds of educators, parents and students gathered at the Educating Youth of Color Summit in Colorado Springs, Colo. That the state’s 4th Judicial District sponsored the event was no accident.

In 1964, my third-grade teacher relied mainly on an air of motherly authority to maintain control over her classroom of more than 50 8-year-olds. But when pushed, she warned darkly of deploying her spanking machine.

Policies and practices that favor incarceration over education do us all a grave injustice.

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?”

Schools have a responsibility to maintain a safe learning environment for all students—this seems on first examination a simple enough statement. It isn’t. Two words are key—“learning” and “all.” A school that is inclusive of all its students but unable to nurture learning has failed in its responsibility. An academically successful school that only supports its majority students has equally neglected its obligation.