Volume 29, No.3

Spring 2015

This month, Rethinking Schools publishes Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice, edited by Linda Christensen and Dyan Watson. Our spring issue features three articles from this new book.

At a time when the regime of standardized testing is squeezing poetry and narrative, social studies and the arts out of the curriculum, Rhythm and Resistance presents a vision of teaching and learning with our students’ lives at the center.

Annual Subscription: $24.95

Purchase Digital Copy: $4.95

To purchase individual paper copies of the magazine email us or call customer service at 1-800-669-4192

  • Celebrating Skin Tone

    The science and poetry of skin color

    By Katharine Johnson

    An early elementary school teacher combines a science lesson and poetry to encourage children to celebrate their own skin tone and that of their classmates.

  • Other People’s Lives

    By Linda Christensen

    An introduction to persona poems, which ask students “to find that place inside themselves that connects with a moment in history, literature, life.”

  • “I Am a Feather”

    “I Am” poems based on “The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee”

    By Bob Peterson

    A 5th-grade teacher uses N. Scott Momaday’s brilliant imagery to inspire his students to write metaphoric “I Am” poems.

  • They Deserve Good Teaching, Too

    Social justice in a classroom for students with autism

    By Leanna Carollo

    A teaching assistant working with students with autism realizes the behavior modification-based teaching strategies she is told to use are robbing her students of voice and independence. She tries something else instead.

  • Ellos también merecen una buena enseñanza

    La justicia social en un salón para niños con autismo

    By Leanna Carollo

    Una asistente educativa que trabaja con estudiantes con autismo se da cuenta que la ense–anza para modificar el comportamiento que le piden que utilice les est‡ robando a sus estudiantes su voz e independencia. As’ que prueba una alternativa.

  • The Koch Brothers Sneak into School

    Right-wing billionaires buy their way into social studies classes

    By Bill Bigelow

    The Koch-funded Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home the lesson that freedom means freedom to make money.

  • A Tale of Two Districts

    By Stan Karp

    A comparison of corporate reform strategies and popular resistance in two very different districts in New Jersey—Newark and Montclair—reveals the flexibility of the privatizers and the potential of solidarity across communities.

  • Black Students’ Lives Matter

    Building the school to justice pipeline

    By The Editors of Rethinking Schools

    We’re at a tipping point. The killings of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride—and far too many other African Americans—have put to rest the myth of […]

  • Short Stuff 29.3

    Long Island Teacher Boycotts Common Core Tests Beth Dimino is an 8th-grade science teacher and president of the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association in New York. She announced in February […]

  • Remembering Harold Berlak

    By Bob Peterson

    This past January, our nation lost an outstanding fighter for educational justice. Harold Berlak died at age 83 at home in Oakland, California, of congestive heart failure. The son of […]

  • Our picks for books, videos, websites, and other social justice education resources 29.3

    By The Editors of Rethinking Schools

    Check out these valuable resources, reviewed by Rethinking Schools editors and Teaching for Change colleagues.

  • Fairy Tales Retold

    By Elizabeth Marshall

    Although many versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” exist, children’s picture book authors and illustrators most often reproduce a version of “Little Red Cap” drawn from the 19-century collections of […]