re thinking schools FALL 2019 VOL. 34, NO.

The 2020 Presidential Election:

Educators Speak Out

Jaydra Johnson:
Classroom Poetry Trumps Hate
Bill and Rick Ayers:
The Legacy of Vivian Gussin Paley
USA/CANADA $5.95 Fred Glass:
On Eric Blanc’s Red State Revolt

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 1
Rethinking Schools is a nonproit publisher and
advocacy organization dedicated to sustaining and
strengthening public education through social justice
THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:
teaching and education activism. Our magazine, books,
and other resources promote equity and racial justice in
EDUCATORS SPEAK OUT
the classroom. We encourage grassroots eforts in our
schools and communities to enhance the learning and
well-being of our children, and to build broad democratic
7 Transform the System
movements for social and environmental justice. By Brian Jones
EDITORIAL BOARD
Wayne Au, Bill Bigelow, Ari Bloomekatz, 8 No New Charters and Legalize the Right to Strike
Linda Christensen, Grace Cornell Gonzales,
Jesse Hagopian, Stan Karp, David Levine, By Eric Blanc
Larry Miller, Bob Peterson, Adam Sanchez,
Dyan Watson, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Moé Yonamine Break the School-to-Prison Pipeline Once and for All
CURRICULUM EDITOR By Camila Arze Torres Goitia
Bill Bigelow
MANAGING EDITOR
Ari Bloomekatz
9 Defend the Early Years
By Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Denisha Jones
SUBMISSIONS EDITOR
Grace Cornell Gonzales
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
We Need the Green New Deal and a Radical Imagination
Gina Palazzari By Suzanna Kassouf
MARKETING DIRECTOR
Missy Zombor
10 Take Young People Seriously
OFFICE MANAGER
Lindsay Stevens
By homas Nikundiwe and Carla Shalaby
ART DIRECTOR
Nancy Zucker
Address the Hate Crisis in Our Schools and Teach Kindness
By Emma Teng
PROOFREADER
Lawrence Sanilippo
RETHINKING SCHOOLS (ISSN 0895-6855) is published 11 Our Students Deserve an Education That Is Liberatory
four times a year by Rethinking Schools, 6737 West
Washington Street, Suite 3249, Milwaukee, WI By Julia E. Torres
53214. Periodicals postage paid at Milwaukee, WI,
and additional mailing oices. POSTMASTER: Send Educational Equity Requires Telling the Truth About Our
change of address to Rethinking Schools, P.O. Box
2222, Williston, VT 05495-9940. Rethinking Schools is Country
published by Rethinking Schools, Ltd., a nonproit, tax- By Leigh Patel
exempt organization. It is listed in the Alternative Press
Index. Rethinking Schools is a member of Community
Shares of Greater Milwaukee, an alternative workplace-
giving federation in Milwaukee. One-year print
12 Candidates Need to Say “Enough! Basta!”
subscriptions are $17.85. Bulk order subscriptions are By Ivelis Pérez
available at substantially reduced prices.

Occasionally, Rethinking Schools makes its mailing list

A New Deal for Public Schools in Los Angeles and Across
available for educational promotions. If you do not want the Country
your name given out, contact us. Rethinking Schools
would like to acknowledge the support of Communitas By Arlene Inouye
Charitable Trust, Frederick Douglass Edhlund Fund,
Funding Exchange, Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family
Foundation, Lannan Foundation, New Visions
Foundation, Pathinder Fund, Rights and Opportunities
Foundation, Ruth and Herman Frankel Rethinking
Schools Seeds for Sowing Fund, Sheilah’s Fund, and
Tides Foundation. Rethinking Schools is printed at Royle
Printing, Sun Prairie, Wis. Newsstand circulation is
through Disticor Magazine Distribution Services
(phone 905-619-6565 or fax 905-619-2903).

RETHINKING SCHOOLS
6737 West Washington Street
Suite 3249
Milwaukee, WI 53214 USA
Phone: 414-964-9646
Editorial: ari@rethinkingschools.org
Follow @RethinkSchools
Subscriptions/orders: rts.orders@aidcvt.com

www.rethinkingschools.org
©2019 Rethinking Schools, Ltd.
FEATURES DEPARTMENTS

16 Welcome Poems Trump Hate 4 Editorial

By Jaydra Johnson The 2020 Election
A teacher creates a “welcome” poems lesson to celebrate the and the World Our
Students Deserve
diversity of students — and with students, turns those poems
into action as a way to combat hate on campus.
14 Ed Alert
Vivian Gussin Paley:
22 “Do You Have Batman Shoulders?”
An Appreciation
Middle school math students explore the
By Bill Ayers and Rick Ayers
disproportions of their favorite childhood toys
By Flannery Denny
42 Book Review
A math teacher uses Barbies and action igures to teach “Who Made History?
proportional reasoning and other skills — and to help We Made History!”
students think about society’s expectations of our shapes Red State Revolt: he
and sizes. Teachers’ Strike Wave and
Working-Class Politics
28 Walk the Line by Eric Blanc
On the ground during the historic Los Angeles Reviewed by Fred Glass
teachers’ strike
By Lauren Quinn
58 Resources
A Los Angeles teacher paints an intimate self-portrait of what Our picks for books,
it was actually like on the picket line during one of the most videos, websites, and other
important public sector strikes in recent years. social justice education
resources.
36 How Los Angeles Teachers Organized
and What They Won 61 Earth, Justice, and
Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian interviews Gillian Our Classrooms
Russom, a teacher and leader with UTLA, about how the Los Teach the Fossil Fuel
Angeles teachers’ strike was organized, what it won, and what Industry — Our Students’
it could mean for the future of the #RedForEd movement. Enemy
By Bill Bigelow
44 Why I Don’t Teach the Hero’s Journey
By Michelle Kenney ...........................
A high school English teacher deconstructs “Hero’s Journey” Got an idea for an article?
curriculum, shows its patriarchal prejudice, and talks about Got a letter for us?
teaching collective rather than only individual transformation. Contact Ari Bloomekatz:
ari@rethinkingschools.org
48 Diversity Is What Makes It Interesting
to Study Living Things
Teaching gender diversity in biology
By Sam Long
A biology teacher focuses on how rethinking classroom Cover Artist: Adrià Fruitós’ art
language around gender and reproduction can impact can be found at adriafruitos.com
inclusion.
We have taken care to trace copyright
holders for images and text in this issue.
52 Sharing Our Real Selves If we have omitted anyone, we apologize
and are happy to make corrections.
By Katy Alexander
A special education teacher talks about the importance of
sharing her own stories — and complexities — with students.

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 3
 BY THE EDITORS OF RETHINKING SCHOOLS

The 2020 Election

and the World Our Students Deserve
ADOLFO VALLE

A
bout a month ago, on an early Monday morn-
ing, Jose De la Cruz-Espinosa was parked in
front of his Milwaukee home with his wife and
three daughters, ages 14, 13, and 11. he family
was getting ready to go to school when their car
was suddenly surrounded by immigration agents and police.
he oicers didn’t have a warrant
and De la Cruz-Espinosa wouldn’t let
them into the car. But they reached
through an open window, unlocked the
door, and tore him away from his family.
Illustrator Adolfo Valle’s work can be In video of the arrest, you can hear his
found at adolfovalleillustrations.com daughters crying out for him.
“My daughters don’t understand any
of this, and it hurts me so much when I
think of them in the car screaming for
their daddy, unable to hug him goodbye,
as he was taken from our lives,” said his
wife, Kristine De la Cruz, who is a U.S.
citizen. “My daughter had a breakdown
in school yesterday. How are they sup-
posed to process the trauma of our fami-
ly being separated?”
his horror is an everyday reality
in Trump’s America — and it’s only one
of the many tentacles of his disastrous
presidency.
Trump’s racism, misogyny, and ha-
tred have fueled an extreme right-wing

4 | FALL 2019
agenda where the truth is fake news, cli-
mate change is a hoax, immigrants and
refugees are rapists and murderers, lies
and corruption are commonplace, and
deadly white nationalist violence and
rhetoric have been normalized.
It is with sadness and anger, and
without a shred of hyperbole, that we ac-
knowledge that inside and outside of our
classrooms we are ighting for our lives,
for our families, for our neighbors, and
for our futures. Defeating Trump and the
emboldened right in the 2020 election is
an essential task for social justice educa-
tors everywhere.
At the same time, we should have no
illusions about our undemocratic elec-
tions, which are, more oten than not,
carnivals of distraction and disenfran-
chisement. With rampant voter suppres-
sion, a two-party chokehold, corporate
media bias, bottomless pits of campaign
cash, extreme gerrymandering, and an
electoral college system that doesn’t even
guarantee that the person who gets the
most votes wins, our presidential elec-
tions are most oten orchestrated ratii-
cations of existing power rather than ex-
ercises in self-governance or expressions
of popular will.
But there is also hope in this mo-
ment, and we must rise together to seize
it — at the ballot box, on the picket line,
in our communities, and in the streets —
to defeat the march of fascism and white
nationalism that Trump and his support-
ing cast of sycophants, enablers, and Re-
publicans have encouraged.
hrough work in our unions, in our
community organizations, and through
social movements, we can and must in-
ject democratic and anti-racist goals into
an electoral process designed to margin-
alize and exclude those without power.
And we must contest for that power by
supporting progressive candidates ev-
erywhere — whether they are running
for school boards, state legislatures, or
seats in Congress — who build bridges
between electoral campaigns and the
social movements that give them real ca-
pacity to make meaningful change.
his presidential election arrives at
the crossroads of dramatically diferent
political futures: two roads before us that
can either take us as a country further
down the road of division and hatred, or
have us shit course radically to a hopeful
vision of the future.
he irst path is the terrifying pos-
sibility that Trump is reelected and the
far-right movement he has empowered
continues to grow.
Trump’s disastrous reign has ex-
posed the weaknesses of the “checks
and balances” and hallowed “democrat-
ic” institutions mythologized in school
textbooks. One example, among many,
is how Trump has packed the federal
judiciary with reactionary white men
who refuse to support Brown v. Board
of Education. We will struggle with the
consequences for decades. And while we
would welcome Trump’s swit removal
from oice, neither impeachment nor a
presidential campaign will repair these
fundamental weaknesses. hey remain
urgent reasons we cannot leave the sys-
tem to its own designs.
We must intervene with an over-
whelming popular mobilization that can
impose its will on institutions that have
repeatedly failed us and efectively paved
the way to Trump.
Such a popular mobilization is the
key to opening the door to the second
path in the political crossroads before
us, one where the election of progressive
leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and Rashida Tlaib connects electoral
politics to growing social movements
that have the potential to reshape the
political landscape for education and
beyond.
In the current presidential cam-
paign, that second political road is repre-
sented by the insurgent success of Eliza-
beth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the
real possibility that the next president of
the United States can herald a progres-
sive awakening. And while there are
important diferences between the two
candidates that should be discussed and
debated as the primary race continues,
they both represent a very diferent alter-
native in the Oval Oice than any other
in recent memory.
We should have no illusions that a
Sanders or Warren victory alone will
secure the changes we need to avoid
catastrophe. While we urgently want to
see Republicans sufer a crushing defeat
in 2020, the most hopeful resistance
to Trump and the wave of reaction he
represents has been and will continue
to be the central role that mass mobili-
zations, social movements, and protests
have played in building solidarity across
struggles and holding out hope that an-
other world is possible.
From the Women’s March to the air-
port protests, the Fight for $15 to Medi-
care for All, heroic eforts to expose and
reverse Trump’s war on immigrant fam-
ilies and communities of color to Black
Lives Matter and the struggle against
white supremacy, and youth-led mobi-
lizations against gun violence and for
climate justice, popular resistance under
Trump and the building of social move-
ments have kept alive the most hopeful
legacies of U.S. history.
hese social movements are also
providing the grassroots energy behind
the growing number of successful local
and congressional campaigns that rep-
resent a real shit to the let and have
laid the groundwork for the possibility
of a successful Sanders or Warren pres-
idential campaign. For the irst time in
many years, the views of millions who
have been systematically excluded from
mainstream media and political life are
inding some voice and representation in
national political debate.
he wave of teacher strikes and
protests is another critical part of these
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 5
mobilizations and the rise of a progres-
sive political alternative. Nearly 400,000
teachers and education workers walked
of the job last year and, as Eric Blanc
writes in Red State Revolt: he Teachers’
Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics,
“underscored the immense potential for
mass working-class politics.” It’s no won-
der that the occupation topping the list
of Sanders donors is teachers.
his wave of strikes and the grow-
ing resistance to school privatization by
educators and community organizations
has transformed the landscape of debate
within the Democratic Party over edu-
cation “reform.” Democratic candidates
have become so fearful of being seen as
sot on charters and privatization that
they’re rethinking their entire education
platforms and public discourse about it.
For example, Cory Booker, who at
the 2008 Democratic Party convention
in Denver, heralded the arrival of the
newly formed “Democrats for Education
Reform,” which previewed the pro-char-
ter, pro-testing, teacher-bashing policies
of the Obama/Biden administration, has
been forced to distance himself from his
own past.
During an endorsement interview
with the Working Families Party, In-
grid Walker-Henry of the Milwaukee
Teachers’ Education Association asked
Booker: “You’ve been a staunch support-
er of voucher and charter schools that’s
systematically siphoning public tax dol-
lars, funding, and resources from public
schools. You served with Betsy DeVos
on the board of the Alliance for School
Choice. . . . Will you say you’ve been
wrong? And renounce your public sup-
port for charters?”
Booker, who as the mayor of New-
ark, New Jersey, worked with Republican
Governor Chris Christie to make the city
“the charter capital of the nation,” spent
the next six minutes telling Walker-Hen-
ry how much he supports public schools
and how diferent he is from DeVos.
Teachers know more than most the
consequences of bipartisan centrist cor-
porate politics. Going back to the election
6 | FALL 2019
of George W. Bush in 2000 and the bipar-
tisan passage of the now-infamous No
Child Let Behind Act, teachers have seen
bipartisan centrist reform usher in more
than a decade of test-driven privatization
of our underfunded public schools.
NCLB was not only a tremendous
failure that did extreme damage to public
education, it also set the stage for corpo-
rate reform to make deeper inroads into
the Democratic Party. When Obama
was elected, public education advocates
hoped to see a transformation of feder-
al education policy, but his appointment
of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
and the administration’s commitment
to the test-driven privatization of Race
to the Top ended with disastrous efects
and served as an important reminder
that corporate Democrats can threaten
the survival of public education as readi-
ly as Republicans.
More than two decades of this bi-
partisan, corporate “reform” and the
massive underfunding and erosion of
public education let teachers and their
unions battered and demoralized. Such
corrupt corporate centrism is represent-
ed in this presidential campaign season
by Joe Biden, who if nominated could
pave the way for Trump’s reelection in
similar fashion to Hillary Clinton’s cor-
rupt centrism in 2016.
People — especially educators — are
hungry for real alternatives. In recent
years, teachers, parents, and students
have fought back in profound and trans-
formative ways that have the potential to
create a powerful movement to transform
our schools and build deep solidarity
across issues and movements. And a real
alternative could lead to profound chang-
es for our schools and communities.
An administration that is good for
our public schools and communities
could enact progressive policies both
speciic to education — for example, a
moratorium on federal aid for charter
schools and an end to using publicly
funded vouchers and tax credit schemes
for private schools — as well as broader
progressive measures like the legalization
of all public workers to strike, and a fed-
eral jobs program and deep investment
in national infrastructure to not only re-
pair and rebuild the nation’s crumbling
schools, but to also transform them into
green, sustainable buildings and play-
grounds and keep them in good shape.
An administration that is good for
our public schools and communities
could increase civil rights protections for
our most vulnerable students, including
transgender students and immigrants
and refugees, signiicantly raise teach-
er pay, and fully fund special educa-
tion and universal pre-K, starting with
3-year-olds. It would use federal funds to
leverage dramatic changes in inequitable
state funding systems while also moving
massive sums of resources away from the
military to human needs. It also would
renew national eforts to dismantle the
poverty and segregation that remain the
central problems in public education.
Despite all the undeniable reasons
for despair and outrage in the Trump
era, it’s also possible to see the outlines
of the path to a better future. As this
editorial is being written, the United
Auto Workers and the Chicago Teachers
Union are mounting game-changing la-
bor struggles, a youth-led climate justice
movement has injected urgency into our
biggest global challenge, powerful move-
ments for women’s and LBGTQ+ rights
are permanent ixtures of U.S. political
life, explicit challenges to the legacy of
white supremacy are contesting every-
thing from the statues in our parks to the
prison-industrial complex to our elec-
toral system. Progressive options that
were once declared of-limits now set the
terms of campaign debates.
he central tasks of the 2020 cam-
paign are to defeat Trump and to
strengthen the impact of grassroots so-
cial movements on the U.S. political
system. If we pursue these goals with
energy, hope, and passion, we will win
a chance to build the world our students
deserve. n
 2020
Earlier this fall, as the race for
the Democratic nomination for
president began heating up, we
asked a group of teachers, parents,
scholars, activists, students, and
journalists to weigh in on what
they hoped would be part of any
2020 presidential candidate’s
education platform.
THE 2020
PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTION:
EDUCATORS
SPEAK OUT
he responses we received were
as powerful as they were
illuminating of the crises facing
our nation’s public schools.
We are unfortunately unable to
print all of them here, so ater
reading through the following
responses, please log on to
www.rethinkingschools.org
to see the complete list.
Brian Jones:
Transform the System
he next president needs to tackle the roots and mechanisms
of persistent inequalities in the nation’s education system. he
president must recognize education as a human right and push
for a constitutional amendment to guarantee it.
here can be no justice in education without a mas-
sive redistribution of resources. he system of local funding
should be abolished and replaced with a
federally supported equity-based formu-
la (tax the rich, take from the military
budget). he president should aim to
double the number of K–12 teachers in
the country, from roughly 3.5 million to
7 million, immediately raising the quali-
ty of education for all children by cutting
class sizes in half. he president should
set a target for the teaching force to, at the very least, roughly
correspond to the nation’s racial and ethnic composition.
he president should set ambitious goals for the deseg-
regation of the nation’s schools and support enforcement leg-
islation. Desegregation will be meaningless without anti-rac-
ist teacher training and culturally responsive and sustaining
curricula (including Black history and ethnic studies). he
president must strengthen federal funding for schools of ed-
ucation, tied to those priorities, and with funding to support
apprenticeships and “grow your own” programs for student
teachers to gain experience and qualiications over time with
full inancial support.
he president must end all eforts to privatize the na-
tion’s school systems: end the abusive reliance on standard-
ized testing, stop supporting Teach for America, and ofer
charter schools a choice between reabsorption in the public
system or end their dependence on public subsidy.
Remove police from schools and at least double the
number of guidance counselors and other professionals who
are trained to help young people process and deal with trau-
ma in constructive ways. Parents, educators, and students
must have the opportunity to democratically contribute to
debate, discussion, and decision-making at all levels of the
education system. n
Brian Jones is an educator and activist in New York City and the
associate director of education for the Schomburg Center for Research
in Black Culture.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 7
 2020
Eric Blanc:
No New Charters and Legalize
the Right to Strike
Two planks top my 2020 wish list: a moratorium on all charter
schools and the legalization of the right to strike for all public
employees. Not too long ago, both of these demands would
have been dismissed as entirely unrealistic. But the strike up-
surge across the country has raised the
expectations of educators, parents, and
students. It’s a good time to be bold.
Faced with teacher mobilizations
and the reactionary ineptitude of U.S.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos,
even corporate Democrats are walking
back, at least rhetorically, their previous
advocacy of school privatization. Cor-
porate education reformers are now on the defensive. But the
Democratic Party establishment is remaining characteristi-
cally vague about its newfound promises to support teachers
and public education. hat’s why we need to put forward a
clear and unequivocal demand for no new charter schools.
Among the 2020 contenders, Bernie Sanders has already
taken the lead on ighting school privatization. His hurgood
Marshall plan lays out a series of important proposals, in-
cluding a moratorium on for-proit charter schools. Bernie’s
plan is a major step forward, but it does not go far enough.
Most charters are technically nonproits, and these are no less
damaging for the health of our public schools.
Winning a full charter moratorium and a massive rein-
vestment in public education means taking on some of the
most powerful billionaires and corporations in the world.
Even the most radical president can’t defeat such opponents
alone; to win, we’ll need a mass movement from below. For
that reason, there’s an urgent need to legalize public sec-
tor work stoppages, which are currently allowed only in 12
states. Educators shouldn’t have to risk getting ined or ired
to make their voices heard. Every student in this country de-
serves an excellent public education — and every teacher de-
serves the right to strike. n
Eric Blanc is author of Red State Revolt: he Teachers’ Strike
Wave and Working-Class Politics. A former high school teacher,
he writes for he Nation and he Guardian and during the Los
Angeles, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Denver, and Oakland
public education strikes, was Jacobin magazine’s on-the-ground
correspondent.
8 | FALL 2019
Camila Arze Torres Goitia:
Break the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Once and for All
here are a few students who keep me up at night.
he students who commune in hidden stairwells ater
being asked to leave their classes. hey are the students of
color who are more likely to get referrals for subjective of-
fenses like “mild deiance” or “talking too loudly.”
hey are the African American students who are three
times more likely to be suspended or expelled. hey are the
students who talk back to teachers and leave in handcufs.
Presidential promises of tuition-free college, Pell grants,
or loan reinancing seem intangible and inconsequential to
the students who aren’t even in a classroom because they
have been pushed out by a discipline system that targets them
because of the color of their skin.
It is imperative that a candidate
for president create policies targeted at
repairing historic and ongoing harm
to nonwhite students. In my view, this
begins with a complete reimagining of
how schools view discipline. It means a
reinvestment in culturally relevant and
restorative justice practices in schools.
It means fewer police oicers and more mental health spe-
cialists and school social workers. It means recruiting more
teachers of color and putting zero tolerance policies and
practices to rest.
To put it bluntly, it means making schools less like prisons.
When U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recom-
mended rescinding Obama-era guidance to reduce racial dis-
crimination by urging schools to “seriously consider partner-
ing with local law enforcement,” my students rose up. I heard
from students whose fathers, brothers, sisters, and cousins
have had negative interactions with the police — students
who have been stopped and frisked without probable cause.
I heard from students wary to interact with oicers due to
language barriers or their documentation status.
I would urge the next president to remember and val-
ue these students and to break the school-to-prison pipeline
once and for all. n
Camila Arze Torres Goitia (carzetorresgoi@pps.net) teaches at
Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon.
 2020
Nancy Carlsson-Paige
and Denisha Jones:
Defend the Early Years
he future of the United States depends on the well-being of
the nation’s children and their ability to grow up and become
citizens who can work to solve the problems of our future.
Research shows that early childhood education enhances the
life prospects of children and has a high beneit-cost ratio for
society’s investment.
he next president must commit to providing access to
high-quality afordable care from infancy that includes pre-
natal support to all families. We cannot
allow a parent’s income or ZIP code
to determine whether a child receives
high-quality or inferior early care and
education. As the next president makes
universal care and education a reality,
we insist that they listen to early child-
hood experts who understand what con-
stitutes high quality early education.
he educational policies in place
today that focus on academic standards
and testing of young children were de-
veloped without the input of early child-
hood professionals, and as a result they
are wildly out of step with the best prac-
tices of the ield and the knowledge base
that informs them. Young children learn
skills and concepts on very diferent paths and timetables; one
size does not it all with young kids. Decades of research and
theory tell us that children learn best through active, explor-
atory, creative play, and relationships with caring adults. he
overemphasis on academic standards and testing and the be-
lief that technology can substitute for face-to-face interactions
must be replaced by a more informed, developmentally ap-
propriate approach to educating young children.
In addition to positive early learning experiences, young
children who experience trauma and adverse childhood ex-
periences need mental health support to build resiliency that
can mitigate the harmful efects of traumatic childhoods.
And inally, early childhood teachers, whose work is vital to
the nation’s health and survival, must be compensated at a
level similar to other professionals. n
Denisha Jones is the director of the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah
Lawrence College. Nancy Carlsson-Paige is professor emerita at
Lesley University and co-founder of Defending the Early Years.
Suzanna Kassouf:
We Need the Green New Deal
and a Radical Imagination
he next president of the United States has an extraordinary
opportunity to completely reimagine what education is and
can be. We are living through remarkable times: he world’s
scientists are telling us that we have only 11 short years to
cut our global emissions in half if we are to have a shot at
preventing irreversible and catastrophic climate chaos. Noth-
ing short of a radical transformation of our economy and our
society could attempt to achieve this goal. he next president
must launch us into the decade of the Green New Deal.
As the myth of eternal economic growth unravels and
certain arenas of our economy are forced to contract, we are
being given an opportunity to expand the valuable low-car-
bon work of an emerging care economy.
At the center of this transformation is educators.
Mass systemic change must be accompanied by a knowl-
edgeable, supported teaching force committed to providing
students with the skills, information, and passion necessary
to achieve and thrive within a just transition.
he next president of the United States must support a
nationwide climate justice resolution in education similar to
the one passed by Portland Public Schools in 2016. Teach-
ing students the root causes of the climate crisis, as well as
empowering them to seek out and ight for radical solutions,
must become a central priority of educa-
tion. Educators, administrators, and all
school personnel must be provided ade-
quate professional development, curric-
ular materials, and any other supports
necessary to achieve this goal.
As we risk our own extinction in
the brutal, blind, and unrestrained quest
for proit, the entire paradigm of dom-
ination begins to crumble. Teaching climate justice means
teaching racial justice, Indigenous justice, disability jus-
tice, LGBTQ+ justice, food justice, healing justice. It means
radically reimagining the ways in which we live, work, get
around, and learn. It means ushering in a new world. he
next president of the United States must center this reality in
their education platform. n
Suzanna Kassouf (suzannakassouf@gmail.com) is enrolled in the
teacher education program at Lewis & Clark College in Portland,
Oregon, and is student teaching at Lincoln High School. She is an
organizer with Sunrise Movement PDX.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 9
 2020
Thomas Nikundiwe
and Carla Shalaby:
Take Young People Seriously
In the struggle for education as the practice of freedom, rev-
olutionary creativity blooms only in the soil of the margins.
he stewardship required to “grow our souls,” according to
Grace Lee Boggs, is in the interconnected tangles of the grass-
roots, so growing new forms of
education requires leadership not
from the “top” — not from con-
strained politicians, policymakers,
school administrators — but from
the creative and unruly “bottom.”
Young people themselves are
the leaders we need and the lead-
ers we already have. And an edu-
cation platform for freedom rests on one central tenet: taking
these young people seriously.
Children are solutionaries who brim with changemaking
characteristics: imagination, energy, courage, hope. Are we
intentionally leveraging their power, creating opportunities
for them to lead us in the struggle for liberatory education?
Adults get stuck and confused when working on prob-
lems impacting youth because we act on young people instead
of with them: protecting them from things they are already
surviving; iguring out things they already know; preparing
them for some future life instead of loving them through
their already complex lives. In their friendships, classrooms,
student unions — on paper, on stage, on the basketball court
— young people create and solve conlicts, devise and revise
policies that govern their relations, share and ight over re-
sources, take chances and measure consequences, learn and
teach, fall and pick each other up.
We witness their power in action: college students de-
manding ethnic studies; high schoolers getting cops out of their
schools; 2-year-olds intervening on peers wrecking ant holes;
5th graders discussing whether unfair laws should be followed.
We’ve seen kindergartners fetch each other Band-Aids, teen-
agers comfort each other ater a breakup, babies handing back
toys other babies drop. hese tender and powerful acts of lead-
ership, intended to grow our souls, heal our society, and remake
education, are the seeds of freedom. Our job is to ofer resourc-
es and skills in solidarity — our own water and sunlight — to
nurture the revolutionary work young people sow. n
homas Nikundiwe is executive director of the Education for
Liberation Network and Carla Shalaby is a researcher at the
University of Michigan.
10 | FALL 2019
Emma Teng:
Address the Hate Crisis in
Our Schools and Teach Kindness
“Would you rather your child be smart or kind?”
his question has been heard by every student and par-
ent for decades. Everyone knows the preferred answer: One
would want their child to be kind. However, what is the U.S.
school system actually doing to instill kindness above all else
in our future citizens? In a world where mass shootings and
hate crimes have become the norm, the answer seems obvi-
ous: hey’re doing very little.
his year, the Southern Poverty Law Center published a
report detailing the sudden rise of hate in U.S. schools. Like
many problems in the country, the issue seems to stem from
one ugly seed: xenophobia. he report speaks the bleak truth
that many students have already experienced xenophobia on
a daily basis.
he truth is also that xenophobia builds on top of itself.
It’s a well-known reality that young children tend to absorb
their parents’ beliefs. When these beliefs
are illed with hate and they stand un-
corrected, everything is at risk.
Here in Mississippi, and across the
country, it’s horrible and saddening to
hear about teenagers who are too terri-
ied to openly identify as anything but
heterosexual, and there are few people
in power who see this reaction to such
prevalent hate in our schools as an emergency or critical
problem with our systems of education.
But when that hate rots into an anger that causes a shoot-
ing that kills young people and rocks the country to its very
core, a national crisis is at hand — at least for a short while.
Without the conscious efort to prevent the further exacer-
bation of hate at a young age, heightened security and metal
detectors are meaningless.
With gun control, immigration, climate change, and
abortion all on the table, presidential candidates cannot and
must not forget about what is perhaps best described as the
hate crisis.
Without addressing this, the country will rot from the
inside out. n
Emma Teng is a junior at Oxford High School in Oxford, Mississippi.
She is an enthusiastic member of the debate team, an Envirothon co-
captain, an avid reader, and an artist with a love of cats.
 2020
Julia E. Torres:
Our Students Deserve an Education
That Is Liberatory
Our students deserve an education that is inclusive, respon-
sive, and liberatory.
Our current system does not encourage intellectual curi-
osity or freedom and instead creates conditions that produce
an uninformed populace — accustomed to performative
scholarship and task-based expenditures of time. It would
be radical and revolutionary for a presidential candidate to
explore policy changes that can free educators and students
from the banking model of education: one that centers adults,
rather than empowers children, and perpetuates the school-
to-prison pipeline, among other oppressive structures.
One way to do this would be to explore the repercus-
sions of Brown v. Board of Education for the population of ed-
ucators of color. he ield of education is
not as ethnically or racially diverse as it
should be, and this directly impacts the
types of education students in some of
our most underserved and minoritized
populations receive.
Another consideration must be the
fact that our current funding models
create situations where those who have
greater inancial means still have the option to take their
money from the public school system to create academic and
cultural silos where their children receive disproportionate
economic and social advantages. his polarizes our society in
ways that afect every facet of adult life for the children who
are both directly and indirectly impacted.
he truth is that many of our students are more likely to
see themselves building careers as video gamers and profes-
sional YouTubers than scientists, writers, or mathematicians,
and both we — and our presidential candidates — need to
have honest discussions about why.
When we begin to have honest conversations about the
fact that our educational system has not changed drastically
despite the inlux of “tech money” and the overabundance of
people preaching innovative education solutions for proit,
we may be able to start brainstorming solutions for a brighter
future. n
Julia E. Torres is a veteran language arts teacher serving as a
librarian for ive schools in the far northeast region of Denver
Public Schools.
Leigh Patel:
Educational Equity Requires Telling
the Truth About Our Country
I return to a sentence I have been repeating since the 2016
election: he atrocities that we are witnessing and experienc-
ing are both precedented and next-level.
he history of politicians, particularly those in the high-
est oice in the U.S. government, has never been about free-
dom and liberation for all, but that does not mean that we
should ever settle for anything less.
Central is the need for integrity and truth-telling. Any
2020 candidate for president should address plainly and
clearly the truth that this is not a nation built by immigrants,
as is oten quipped. Rather, this nation came into its wealth
through the attempted erasure of Indigeneity to claim stolen
land, coupled with the proit from stolen labor by enslaved
peoples, who were claimed as property. Immigrants have
been a crucial part of the nation’s rise in wealth, but that his-
tory is much more about wage thet and revocable humanity
than the worn and threadbare story of individual grit and
bootstrap resiliency.
Second is educational equity, again requiring truth.
Black, Indigenous, people of color, and queer children and
their families do not need ixing or slop-
py psychometrics propping up nonstop
testing. People are entitled to a society
that minimally stops killing their bod-
ies, minds, and souls through legal and
extra-legal actions in and outside of
schools. We deserve a candidate whose
platform recognizes that if we are to
dream a new world into existence, we
must stop falling for the hustle of school-based achievement
measured against white norms. Learning and education are
crucial tools for liberation, but these lessons are more readi-
ly available by studying the histories of freedom struggles by
marginalized peoples.
Lastly and perhaps most fundamentally, a person bold
enough to seek this position should have the morality to dis-
allow the selective enclosure, disposal, and exploitation of hu-
mans and living entities, including the planet itself. n
Leigh Patel is a professor and the inaugural Associate Dean for Equity
and Justice at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 11
 2020
Ivelis Pérez:
Candidates Need to Say
“Enough! Basta!”tes Need to Say “Enough!
Basta!”
Presidential candidates need an education platform that puts
children irst and commits to fully funding public schools.
Schools are the heart of our communities and all schools
should have the support systems and adequate resources for
teachers, students, and families to thrive.
he current educational system is failing to meet the
needs of diverse learners and students
of color. As I relect on my own edu-
cational journey as a young Puerto Ri-
can girl moving to the United States, I
recall experiencing the same struggles
many of my own students face today.
Our students continue to need cul-
turally responsive educators who are
committed to teaching all learners. Our
students need welcoming and safe facilities, small class sizes,
high-quality instruction, and learning experiences that will
prepare them for college and careers in the future.
For far too long, our children and schools have sufered
the consequences of educational policies that have tried to
dismantle the premises of public education in our country.
It’s time for political candidates to stand up and say “Enough!
Basta!” to the educational inequalities replicated across
school districts in the United States! “Enough! Basta!” to the
overcrowded classrooms, rundown buildings, privatization,
and underfunding of our public schools!
Political candidates need to truly value the teaching pro-
fession and support pathways to recruit and retain culturally
diverse teachers. hey need to commit to fully funding spe-
cial education and bilingual education programs. Multilin-
gualism and multiculturalism should be at the forefront of
education by ensuring students have access to learning mul-
tiple languages and programs that embrace diversity. Most
importantly, presidential candidates need to promise educa-
tional equity and stand irm against racial and discrimina-
tory practices that directly impact traditionally marginalized
student populations and their families.
We need candidates to be education champions and
stand alongside educators as we educate the future leaders of
our country. It’s time for political candidates to do the right
thing for our students and say “Enough! Basta!” n
Ivelis Pérez is a bilingual early childhood education teacher in
Milwaukee Public Schools and is past president of the Wisconsin
Association for Bilingual Education.
12 | FALL 2019
Arlene Inouye:
A New Deal for Public Schools in Los
Angeles and Across the Country
Over the past 30 years I have been involved in bringing a pro-
gressive agenda to education through diferent roles. For me,
nothing compares to the 2019 United Teachers Los Angeles
(UTLA) historic strike that made our platform around the
Schools LA Students Deserve a reality.
Our strike was the largest public sector strike in a single
city of the United States in years. It shited the national nar-
rative around public education and privatization. Our union
was strengthened by the upsurge in new grassroots leader-
ship and the unity forged on the picket lines.
his new school year UTLA is amplifying the power
of our strike by vigorously enforcing the new contract and
pushing a broad and bold platform — Our New Deal for
Public Schools — to reclaim the promise of public education.
It leans us further into the values that we believe in, and is
not just a pledge. It is an organizing strategy to empower our
school communities; it drives us in making our contract wins
real through enforcement; it frames our
reopener and health care bargaining
campaigns as community issues; it is a
mobilizing strategy to get out the vote
and win four school board seats; it drives
the essential work to pass the Schools
and Communities First Initiative to
close the corporate loopholes in Propo-
sition 13. We hope that this organizing
will shape the narrative for the U.S. presidential elections and
commitment to increase IDEA and Title 1 funding for public
education.
Our New Deal for Public Education are the principles
that drive our work and call for a charter moratorium and
end to the unregulated expansion of the charter industry. he
ive pillars of Our New Deal for Public Schools are Nurture
the Whole Child, Respect Educators, Respect Students and
Parents, Fully Fund Public Schools, and Stop Privatization.
We have shown that when we organize — with each oth-
er, with parents, and with students — we can win. We made
history in 2018–19. We are ready to make history in 2019–20
with Our New Deal for Public Schools — and we need pres-
idential candidates who will make a New Deal for Public
Schools at the federal level too. n
Arlene Inouye is the secretary for United Teachers Los Angeles and
led the UTLA bargaining team through the 2019 strike and contract
ight.
NEW FROM TC PRESS
SAME AS IT NEVER WAS
Notes on a Teacher’s Return to the Classroom LETTING GO
OF LITERARY
Gregory Michie / Foreword by Gloria J. Ladson-Billings WHITENESS
“Teachers, and anyone who care about the future of our Antiracist Literature
democracy, will love this beautiful book.” Instruction for
White Students
—Sonia Nieto
Carlin Borsheim-
This follow-up to the bestselling Holler If You Hear Me Black and Sophia
chronicles an award-winning teacher’s return to the Tatiana Sarigianides
classroom and his efforts to navigate the new realities of Foreword by
public schooling. Michie’s intimate memoir examines current Timothy J. Lensmire
issues that include anti-racist/culturally relevant teaching,
standardized testing, and the political nature of teaching.

TEACHING HOPE RACE, JUSTICE, WHEN GETTING

AND RESILIENCE AND ACTIVISM ALONG IS NOT
FOR STUDENTS IN LITERACY ENOUGH
EXPERIENCING INSTRUCTION Reconstructing Race
TRAUMA in Our Lives and
Creating Safe Edited by Relationships
and Nurturing Valerie Kinloch,
Tanja Burkhard, Maureen Walker
Classrooms for
Learning and Carlotta Penn
Foreword by
Douglas Fisher, Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Nancy Frey, and
Rachelle S. Savitz

TEACHING THE CREATIVE IMMIGRANT-

HISTORY, CLASSROOM ORIGIN STUDENTS
LEARNING Innovative Teaching for IN COMMUNITY
CITIZENSHIP 21st-Century Learners COLLEGE
Tools for Civic Keith Sawyer Navigating Risk and
Engagement Foreword by Reward in Higher
Tony Wagner Education
Jeffery D. Nokes
Foreword by Edited by Carola
Laura Wakefield Suárez-Orozco and
Olivia Osei-Twumasi

THE READING COMMUNITY- AN EDUCATION

TURN-AROUND BASED ART CRISIS IS A
WITH EMERGENT EDUCATION TERRIBLE THING
BILINGUALS ACROSS THE TO WASTE
A Five-Part LIFESPAN How Radical Changes
Framework for Finding Common Can Spark Student
Powerful Teaching Ground Excitement and
and Learning Success
(Grades K–6) Pamela Harris
Lawton, Yong Zhao,
Amanda Claudia Margaret A. Walker, Trina E. Emler,
Wager, Lane W. and Melissa Green Anthony Snethen,
Clarke, and Foreword by Olivia Gude and Danqing Yin
Grace Enriquez
Foreword by
Ofelia García

ORDER TODAY!
800.575.6566 • TCPRESS.COM

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 13
ED ALERT
Vivian Gussin Paley
An Appreciation
V
ivian Paley was a lifelong, everyday teacher who
documented the world of her classroom in a se-
ries of reports: 13 funny, complex, insightful, and
dazzling books that made the experiences and
thoughts of young children vivid and visible.
Her books illuminate the big issues
BY BILL AYERS of our times — white supremacy, sexism,
AND RICK AYERS justice, and peace — through the keenly
observed details of a group of youngsters
Bill Ayers is a distinguished professor learning to live together. Teachers at ev-
of education and senior scholar at the ery level should read her manifesto on
University of Illinois-Chicago. Rick justice, You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, and
Ayers teaches at the University of San her subtle exploration of race in he Girl
Francisco and taught at Berkeley High with the Brown Crayon. Vivian herself
School for 11 years. was illed with wonder — the impres-
sion she gave was one of an all-consum-
ing, undisguised curiosity rarely seen in
an adult — and her awe and admiration
spill onto every page.
14 | FALL 2019
She was most at home in the com-
pany of little ones, exploring and ques-
tioning, checking things out, conducting
everyday experiments arm-in-arm and
shoulder-to-shoulder with the young.
Children recognized her as a fellow trav-
eler, took to her naturally, and invited her
to join them on their endless searches and
excursions. She never refused them, and
willingly followed along — their magical,
luminescent teacher.
On July 26, 2019, the light went out,
and Vivian Gussin Paley passed away.
Paley’s empathy and curiosity found
her in the block corner, the playground,
the sandbox — it was there that she in-
vestigated and uncovered the interests
and purposes, questions and needs, ca-
pabilities and intentions of the children
she taught. She observed and took note,
seeing each child as an unruly spark of

meaning-making energy, a creature of
incalculable value on a journey of discov-
ery and surprise. Each was both the one-
of-one, and simultaneously one of the
many, a unique part of the community.
Paley taught for 40 years at the Uni-
versity of Chicago Laboratory Schools,
founded by John Dewey more than 100
years before and, like Dewey, she prac-
ticed teaching as an intensely relational
activity. She realized that she could never
build a relationship with someone she
didn’t know, someone invisible to her, or
someone perceived exclusively through
the distorted lenses of stereotype and cli-
ché, and this led her to listening and ob-
serving as her central teaching posture.
Seeing children as “targets of in-
struction,” ofering shiny rewards or
chilling punishments, testing or ranking
them on some putatively objective mea-
sure was ofensive to her teaching soul.
So was delivering prefabricated lessons
to passive, seemingly obedient students
— this not only denied kids the fullest
range of intelligences and opportunities
they might access, but also because it cut
her of from a multitude of occasions
to see children as whole and propulsive
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY
learners. Teaching was for her a cause
for ininite delight and even celebra-
tion — gathered before her, ater all, was
humanity itself in all of its wild diversi-
ty and magniicent glory, immense and
mysterious, capable of everything and
immune to nothing.
No standardized test, no linear sta-
tistical printout could ever capture the
complexity and the beauty of young hu-
man beings exploring their world with
agency and conidence. In her own bot-
tom-up way, she made a devastating cri-
tique of white teaching and white knowl-
edge claims. In her groundbreaking 1979
book White Teacher, she shited the focus
from the “problem of the Black kids” to
an exploration of the contradictions and
limitations of whiteness in schools and
classrooms. Here she relects self-crit-
ically on the many ways white teachers
— notably herself — are unable to think
clearly and honestly about race. his was
an early and important contribution to
anti-racist educational pedagogy.
Students learned in her classroom
how to grapple — both in the present
and in the future — with a question cen-
tral to the spirit and heart of democracy,
a question both simple and profound,
straightforward and twisty: What’s your
story? How will you tell it fully and fairly?
Paley said that storytelling was im-
mediately and intuitively understood
and desired by every child over the age
of 2.
Vivian Paley’s teaching was prac-
ticed in preschool classrooms, and yet
the lessons she learned there inspire and
guide teachers today at every level, kin-
dergarten through graduate school. Lis-
tening to students, building relationships
and community, and pursuing questions
worthy of deep exploration are the hall-
marks of all good teaching. Indeed, her
student-centered approach echoes Pau-
lo Freire’s admonition that our students
should be encouraged to read the world
as they learn to read the word.
Who are you in the world? How is
your story like or unlike other stories?
What’s next? In telling their stories stu-
dents relied on Vivian Paley — their
smart and sensitive teacher — to ac-
knowledge and appreciate their minds
and their spirits, their perspectives and
their lived experiences. n
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 15
 “Gender-neutral bathroom at progressive
Portland high school tagged with death threat”

“Racist slurs written on Lake Oswego

High School bathroom walls”

“Fed up with anti-Latino sentiment,

hundreds of Portland high schoolers leave class”

Welcome Poems Trump Hate

H
eadlines like these illed page ater page of search
results, making my quest for articles about hate
speech in local schools disturbingly, though not
surprisingly, easy. Earlier that week, a group of us
teachers called a meeting with our principal, push-
ing for a schoolwide response when nooses, white supremacist
propaganda, and “It’s alright to be white” posters were found

BY JAYDRA JOHNSON
Jaydra Johnson (jaydranicole@gmail.
com) taught in Portland, Oregon,
when she wrote this article. She now
teaches English language arts at Origins
High School in Brooklyn, New York.
Her article, “Howling at the Ocean:
Surviving My First Year Teaching,”
appeared in the summer 2018 issue of
Rethinking Schools and in the third
edition of he New Teacher Book.
Illustrator Boris Séméniako’s work can
be seen at borissemeniako.fr
around our high school’s campus where
about 75 percent of students are white.
I irst heard about it during a lunchtime
Black Student Union meeting. Naima
spoke up irst: “I was down by the bus
stop and I saw another ‘It’s OK to be
white’ sign.” “Yeah,” Braden added, “I
saw one of those, too. It’s some, like, in-
ternet thing.” I immediately grabbed my
phone and started Googling. I found out
that the slogan and campaign started
on 4chan (an online alt-right message
board) and became a national white su-
premacist oline trolling campaign.
Ater talking to more students and
staf and uncovering a rash of other post-
ers, graiti, and even more nooses violat-
ing our spaces, a group of teachers called
an ater-school meeting with administra-
tors to demand public acknowledgment,
better methods to report hate speech,
and lessons for every classroom. More
than 20 of us showed up, and we won our
demands. Many teachers then developed
their own lessons or used a staf-created
schoolwide climate lesson about iden-
tifying and stopping hate crimes. his
activist poetry lesson is part of my class-
room-level efort to talk back to hate
speech in our schools.
I irst introduced this lesson to stu-
dents early in an immigration unit. We
did this lesson while reading he Book of
Unknown Americans, a novel by Cristina
Henriquez that weaves together tales of a
diverse group of Latinx and South Amer-
ican immigrants as they seek safety, edu-
cation, political freedom, love, economic
security, and hope.
To kick of the lesson, I asked stu-
dents to visualize a place where they felt
at home, somewhere safe and welcoming.
“Close your eyes or let them rest sotly on
your desk,” I said, and the class fell quiet
faster than I expected. “Now go to a place
where you feel at home. In your mind’s

16 | FALL 2019
BORIS SÉMÉNIAKO

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 17
eye, look around this place. What do you
see?” his guided visualization helped
them think about the comforting and
positive imagery that they would later
use in their own poems. It also reminded
them of the value of having somewhere
they can be accepted and loved for who
they are. I asked students to share out
where they went and why it feels like
home.
“My happy place is the soccer ield,”
Jonas said. “We are like one big family
and I love being outside.”
“I imagined the family parties we
have at my grandma’s house,” said Es-
merelda. “My family and I are all together
and everyone is talking and laughing. We
just eat and hang out with all the cousins
and everybody.”
“All right, keep these places in your
mind and heart today while we read
and write some poems about the idea of
home and places we feel safe. Some peo-
ple might not have a safe place or a home
right now, and it’s important that we hear
from them. he poet Warsan Shire is go-
ing to start us of,” I said.
Next, I distributed copies of Shire’s
“Home” and asked students to listen to
a YouTube video of the poet reading her
work while they followed along on the
page. In “Home,” the speaker is a refu-
gee chased from their home country by
violence, making a laborious journey “in
the belly of a truck” and across danger-
ous waters, only to be threatened and
scorned in the place they inally arrive to
seek asylum.
he class fell silent as Shire read:
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
You only run for the border
when
you see the whole city running
as well
Your neighbors running faster
than you
breath bloody in their throats.
hey shivered when she recalled a
childhood crush “holding a gun bigger
18 | FALL 2019
than his body,” and when her voice
cracked as she reminded us that “No one
wants to be beaten, wants to be pitied.
No one chooses refugee camps.” he
mood in the room was noticeably sol-
emn by the poem’s end as Shire’s words
stirred their hearts:
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the
shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home
is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying
leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here.
In the quiet, I then asked students to
read a second time on their own, marking
powerful lines and poetic devices before
sharing with a partner.
“What stood out to you?” I asked,
and hands loated up.
“When the poet talked about putting
her children in a boat, I saw how this was
really out of her control,” Abby said. “She
didn’t want to leave.”
“he list of insults that she hears are
horrible,” said Malcolm, calling us to the
litany of racist, vitriolic comments an im-
migrant might hear in a receiving coun-
try, each line a punch to the gut. Students
also noticed Shire’s personiication and
powerful imagery.
his poem helped advance the dis-
cussion about the complex relationship
between immigrants and home while
also addressing the xenophobia and rac-
ism that hurt many of our students and
community members, not just those in
the ictionalized world of the book we
had been reading.
“So today we are thinking and writ-
ing about the idea of being welcome and
safe,” I said to students. “We’ve heard
from the characters in our book and now
from Shire, but I want to bring this is-
sue home. You are now going to read a
local news article about instances of hate
speech in our community.”
Students moved out to jigsaw three
local news articles that described instanc-
es of hate speech and hate crimes in our
local schools. I asked them to note who
was targeted, what perpetrators did to
exclude them, and what people did, if
anything, to ight back against the injus-
tice. his helped get them thinking about
who might feel unsafe or unwelcome in
schools if they had not themselves been
targeted. It also helped us uncover what
needs to be addressed through our own
poetry and actions.
“Do you think things like this hap-
pen at our school?” I asked.
he irst to speak up resisted the idea.
“I don’t really think so,” said Chad.
“his is a pretty friendly school and
mostly people leave each other alone.”
“I actually don’t feel comfortable
speaking for others,” Margot added. “As a
white girl, I don’t get targeted, but maybe
other people do.”
Cue Alton, a member of the Gender
and Sexuality Alliance, who said, “I have
a lot of friends who are trans who can’t
even use the gender-neutral bathrooms
here because of all the vandalism and
disrespect. It’s humiliating for them that
they can’t even get the same rights as ev-
erybody else.”
I wanted the discussion to help move
students who think “his doesn’t happen
here.” It was also an opportunity for me
to tell students about incidents from our
school that they may not have known
about. Ater a few more students spoke, I
told them, “In the past few weeks, teachers
and students have reported nooses and
white supremacist propaganda around
our campus. his is deeply troubling and
makes many of us feel unwelcome and
unsafe.”
Ater debrieing more as a whole
class, I asked students to make lists of
times they personally felt unwelcome at
school, plus other groups who might feel
unwelcome or unsafe in our schools, us-
ing what we had just discussed and exam-
ples from he Book of Unknown Ameri-
cans. For the irst part of the list I told
the story of being the new kid and asked
students to write down ideas for two min-
utes. For the second part of the list, we
drew from “Home,” the news articles, and
our class novel. hey shared their lists in
small groups to continue brainstorming.
We made a class list ater.
“I bet the students with disabilities
who work the cofee shop downstairs
sometimes feel excluded. hey are so iso-
lated down there,” ofered Jane.
“Yes,” I said, “and probably many
students who have any type of learning
or physical disability could feel let out or
weird at school. Let’s add that, too.”
Trent added, “I think sometimes peo-
ple make fun of the kids that play Magic:
he Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons.”
“A lot of kids of color feel unwelcome
here or just not represented because this
is a really white school,” said Samiah.
I added their thoughts to a list on the
board as they called on each other to keep
the ideas lowing.
“Kids who maybe don’t have the
coolest shoes and stuf, like who come
from a poor family,” said Junior. I wrote
down students living on low incomes and
took a couple more hands. When we had
a good exhaustive list, I handed out the
example poems.
Next we examined models written
by me and my colleague Jessica Loomis,
who developed this lesson with me. My
own poem calls in women to an imagined
school that is all about woman wonder. I
performed it for students:
Welcome girls, femmes,
transwomen,
Young women, old women,
And stars in all places
On the feminine constellation,
Sprinkling your stardust
On us all.
Let this school be a poem in
your ear
Pulsing — Welcome . . .
Teachers giving space
To let your thoughts
Trace hot arcs across the
Galaxies of our classrooms.
Where histories feature women
as more than just
Best Supporting Actress,
And our literature shines
With women of all kinds . . .
Ater looking at our models, I asked
students what they noticed and what we
lited from Shire to make our poems sing.
I pointed out any powerful images they
missed that gave the poems a message of
praise and togetherness. At this point, I
let students know they will be writing a
Welcome Poem to a group of their choice,
and that we will hang them in the halls
as a collective response to the hate we re-
cently saw in our community.
Like any good lesson, this one elic-
ited pushback from students, helping me
see where I need to give them more sup-
port or more freedom. When I made the
explicit connection between this project
and the instances of hate speech at our
school, Eric said, “hese poems aren’t go-
ing to make a diference! People are just
doing this for attention, and this isn’t go-
ing to change their minds.”
“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “People just
want to be shocking. his kid in my 8th-
grade class drew swastikas all over every-
thing just to get a rise out of the teacher.”
Many students agreed with this, nodding
and murmuring, citing teenagers’ drive
for rebellion as a potential cause for the
nooses and hate speech.
“OK, I hear that, but does that mean
we should just ignore them?” I asked.
“What do you all think? Will ignoring the
problem make them stop? How do you
think the targets feel if everyone pretends
it is not happening?”
In one class, Soia shared that “I
think we can see from what we are learn-
ing about in U.S. history that not talking
about a problem doesn’t make it better.
Ignoring racist acts doesn’t make them
stop. People have to work together and
stand up like Black Lives Matter is doing.”
“I think that if we pretend it isn’t
happening, the targets might think no
one cares,” ofered Jamison, “and that’s
messed up.”
In another class, Jenna said, “his
isn’t a welcoming place!” She was worried
that these poems were just another shal-
low showing of faux-support for students,
another inefectual adult response to stu-
dent pain, and, ultimately, a farce. Where
I hoped we were doing activist art, she
saw the poems as a kind of denial of what
really happens and continues to happen
to students.
“I’ve never felt unwelcome at school,”
another student shared. “How am I sup-
posed to write this?” To that, Antonia
said, “Yeah, but we can’t just sit back and
do nothing. We can at least try to write
something that would make someone
else feel like they belong.”
Comments like these encouraged
rich discussions in each class through
which we grappled with what power we
did and didn’t have as individuals and
as a community. We talked about where
schools go wrong, critiquing some of the
lessons students are made to do that feel
forced and decontextualized. Classes also
surfaced the teenage brain, the impact
of media and our current presidential
administration on the frequency of hate
crimes, peer pressure, and the diiculty
of standing up in the moment, particu-
larly when a friend is telling an ofensive
joke.
Ater this discussion, some students
decided to write their poem as more of a
talkback to an unwelcoming situation at
school, highlighting the problem more
than envisioning a new space. he rest
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 19
then chose a group to welcome in their
poem and make a list of things that would
make that group feel welcome.
Students sometimes get stuck
here, staring down at blank paper with
squished faces, so I ind it helpful to tell
the story of drating my poem, telling
them how “I wanted to address grai-
ti, dress codes, school curriculum, and
athletics — speciic things I’d seen and
heard that made me feel unwelcome
as a woman at school. So, I asked my-
self, ‘What would young women need
to see and hear to feel more welcome?’
hat helped me come up with things
like books that include women and girls
getting more space to share their ideas
in class. What about your group? What
kinds of things would they see and hear
to make them feel more welcome in our
school?”
“We could have lags on the walls for
diferent countries and groups. Mr. Nos-
trand has a pride lag and Ms. Potter has
lags from a lot of countries students em-
igrate from,” ofered Braden.
Alton chimed back in: “Like I said
earlier, trans students could have private
bathrooms in every hallway just like ev-
eryone else.” Conversation like this helps
move them forward with speciic nouns,
verbs, and images to add to their own
work.
Ater a few minutes of listing, we
went back to the lines, images, and de-
vices from the model poems that they
could use as jumping-of points. I asked
them to write the irst drat of their wel-
come poem. hey drated for about 20
minutes in class, sharing with a partner,
and the best stanzas were read aloud to
the whole class at the end of the writing
period. Hassan wrote a poem welcoming
religious students to our halls:
Hello, my fellow Jesus-Lovers
Jews, Christians, Muslims,
Buddhists,
And everything in between,
Whose Bibles and Torahs are
camoulaged as chemistry
textbooks.
20 | FALL 2019
Let this school be your mosque,
Holy, safe.
Where quotes from Gandhi,
Confucius’ words of wisdom,
And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John’s stories low like water
down the Ganges . . .
Let this school tell a story of a
thousand years,
Of hope and worship,
Spreading like wildire across
this world that was created
in a thousand diferent ways.
Where you can believe in
anything,
A place where you can lay down
your rug and close your eyes,
Where an ant can carry an
elephant,
And a dodo can ride a horse.
Where anything really can be
anything,
And nothing is how it seems.
Kate borrowed a popular hook from
the world of slam poetry when she wrote:
Dear young lgbt+ people:
You are valid.
No one can put you down or tell
you you deserve to burn.
You are a blossoming lower
Not a growing weed.
Dear young lgbt+ people:
hese halls may seem scary
A mysterious and intimidating
forest where anything could
happen
But there is a clearing
A grassy ield of acceptance
Where you can feel safe . . .
We returned the next day to revise,
share again, and submit our poems.
To extend this into further activism,
students could have mined their own
poems for other meaningful actions to
take and begin working on them as class
projects. For instance, in my own poem,
I mention the lack of strong female-iden-
tifying characters in humanities courses.
My project could be to lobby for new
novel sets in the district multimedia li-
brary or to develop a lesson or unit for
my 10th-grade American Studies class
that features wild and wise women.
Students might ind they need a new
club, a prayer room, a meeting with dis-
trict oicials, or a restorative justice cir-
cle to address what’s leaving them feeling
unwelcome and unheard. Another thing
students can and should do is take part in
hanging their poems around the school
or in a display outside the classroom so
that the writing can bless passersby with
a bit of praise. his was the idea I had
pitched to my students at the outset of
this assignment.
On the irst Monday ater spring
break, I made the snap decision to print
of the poems — without names — and
see if students would be willing to hang
them around the school at the start of
irst period, even without administrative
approval. here are times to get approval,
but it felt right to consider making this a
demonstration of students taking com-
munity healing and action into their own
hands, just like the perpetrators of the
hate crimes had done in the weeks prior.
I also was concerned that administration
would say no, further stalling a healing,
constructive response and perpetuating a
systemic legacy of inaction in the face of
hate speech and hateful vandalism.
I opened class by letting students
know I had read and fallen in love with
their poems over the weekend. “I got kind
of a wild idea this morning,” I said. “I
know we intended all along to post these
around school. Do you think that we
should just do it now? Like, to welcome
everyone back from break? Maybe some
students aren’t feeling so excited to come
back here ater everything that’s been go-
ing on and this could help them. What
do you think?” With plenty of head nods,
some “Yeah, Ms. J’s,” and a few “Whatev-
ers,” the class agreed that my plan seemed
like a good one. Many were energized by
the fact that this was technically against
the rules, something akin to a lash mob
that would hopefully generate some buzz
among students and staf, potentially
leading to further dialogue and action
around the hate incidents.
Before they let to hang their poem,
we talked about whether the action was
meaningless if the poems were torn
down (no) and creative hiding places for
the poems (many). I also asked them to
imagine someone’s day being made just
a tiny bit brighter on seeing a positive
poem about them in the hall at school.
I asked students where mine might it
well, and they shouted “Girls’ bathroom!”
“Locker room!” and “History class!”
I hoped students might take my sug-
gestion to read the poems while search-
ing for the perfect place to put them, us-
ing the content to place them just where
they would be needed, savoring lines like
this one from Lars’ “Ode to Loners”:
To those who choke on their
tears,
Of loneliness before they sleep,
With recollections of wandering
aimlessly at lunch,
Sitting in the back without a
friendly face in sight.
I wondered what Hamad’s poem
about being an exchange student from
Pakistan would spark in a student when
they read:
I came here to share my culture,
I wanted to break the
stereotypes,
I tried to spread love and peace,
But I was bullied by strangers,
Called a relative of Osama bin
Laden,
Presented as a terrorist person.
I want to tell them that
Not all ive ingers are
[the same],
Not all Pakistanis are terrorists.
I am proud to be Pakistani,
I am proud to be a Muslim,
I am proud to be here . . .
I armed students with blue tape and
a random poem from another student,
sending them out to ind the perfect place
to hang it.
I felt justiied in bringing this idea
to students because it was clear from our
staf-level and classroom conversations
that students wanted to take some kind
of action, but weren’t sure exactly what.
Many students expressed frustrations
with adults failing to bring ideas and fail-
ing to act. In the future, I will take time to
engage them even more in the question
of what to do with the poems, but in this
case it felt appropriate to lead them a bit
more.
By the end of the day, building ad-
ministrators had taken down most of the
poems because they lacked the stamp of
approval from the front oice. Others
were torn down by students. But a few
teachers kept them on the outsides of the
doors or in their classrooms where they
still hang almost a year later. Some hid for
weeks on the inside doors of bathroom
stalls or camoulaged in clusters of other
signs. Teachers in my hallway dropped in
for a ist bump, a thank you, or a ques-
tion about the poems for weeks ater
the action. Despite the ones that were
torn down, I still think this was a valu-
able experience, and later, administrators
ofered to make a permanent space for
a display of selected poems, a project I
turned over to students who were excited
about the idea. Knowing this poetry les-
son will be in my pocket for some time, I
also look forward to seeing how this proj-
ect evolves with student input about how
and where our poems should be shared
with the community and what else we
can do when hatred and violence bubble
up again.
As a teacher, I cannot stay silent
when harm is done in my school. Do-
ing so sends the dangerous message that
I either don’t notice or don’t care when
our kids experience injustice, when they
are the targets of the very systems I am
teaching them to struggle against. In my
own classroom, I ask students to question
the status quo, learn from past activists,
talk back, and ind hope. I want students
to know that with our words and actions,
we can reject silence and instead shout
out our true values: inclusion, allyship,
respect, and justice.
he power of poetry to name prob-
lems, to praise beauty, and to open hearts
is undeniable, but we cannot stop there.
We need to continue this work outside
of our classrooms as well, including all
those who rely on our schools for safety,
sustenance, and hope. We also need to
listen to students whose experiences of
schools are hurtful and negative, seeking
ever-more meaningful ways to make our
schools truly welcoming. n
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 21
 T
hirteen-year-olds dart around the math room trying to de-
cide which doll or action igure to play with as I instruct them
to sit no more than three to a table. We are in the middle of
a unit on proportional reasoning, and although they are ad-
monishing each other not to remind me that we’re supposed
to be learning math, they’ll soon be working together to igure out how
(little) these iconic characters compare to real live humans.

“Do You Have Batman Shoulders?”

Middle school math students explore
the disproportions of their favorite childhood toys
BY FLANNERY DENNY

Flannery Denny (follow @mathtrailmaker and

contact lannery.denny@gmail.com) wrote
“Solar Power Comes to Math Class,” which
was published in the summer 2019 issue of
Rethinking Schools. She formerly taught
middle school math in New York and now
lives in Carencro, Louisiana, where she leads
workshops for teachers on place-based and
social justice math education and writes math
trails for museums and other public spaces.
Illustrator Christiane Grauert’s work can be
found at christiane-grauert.com

22 | FALL 2019
 he idea for this investigation start-
ed percolating when a colleague gited
me a copy of Rethinking Mathematics
that she found at a conference book fair.
One curricular piece that immediately
captured my attention described stu-
dents using proportional reasoning to
create life-sized comparative overlays
of Barbie’s body and tracings of a real
girl’s body on butcher paper. It was a
compelling idea to use math to lay bare
the extreme distortions we internalize
about what bodies should look like . . .
and it made me uncomfortable. My head
echoed with hurtful comments students
might make about each other’s bodies
and I wondered how I could engage my
students in the thinking without risking
them getting hurt.
I talked the activity over with friends
and family, seeking advice on how to
make it safe for girls in my class to have
their bodies traced. Someone suggest-
ed that maybe I could split my class by
gender and have the boys compare their
outlines to those of action igures. he
action igure suggestion was interesting,
but, having thought a lot about how to
support transgender and non-binary stu-
dents, splitting my class by gender is not
something I would ever consider. I also
quickly realized that it wasn’t the boys’
presence that made the activity feel un-
safe; I was actually most nervous about
CHRISTIANE GRAUERT
what the girls might say in their own
heads by virtue of comparison.
Years passed and the Barbie lesson
continued to surface in my mind, un-
resolved. In 2013, I read a posting for a
Philadelphia social justice math inqui-
ry-to-action group. he idea of being
in a room with other math educators to
talk about connecting curriculum and
social justice was exciting. I decided to
host a similar weekly group in New York
City that February and March, drawing
a small rotating cast of inspiring educa-
tors from Harlem to Brooklyn. Talking
out the dilemma I’d been facing around
the Barbie lesson with other math teach-
ers helped me to articulate where I was
stuck. he original lesson compared
three-dimensional dolls and people in
a two-dimensional plane. here aren’t
any geometric formulas with which to
convert average waist size and chest
size measurements into dimensions that
would land on a lat outline of a igure, so
working in two dimensions required the
activity to focus on comparing the body
of someone we could actually trace with
the printed outline of the doll. A teacher
at the table asked me why I was attached
to the idea of using two-dimensional rep-
resentations and it catapulted my think-
ing over the wall of the box I’d been stuck
in. I realized that if I could get a set of
dolls and action igures, I could engage
my students with the characters in three
dimensions instead and compare them
to any person whose measurements
we could procure (a teacher’s shoulder
width, a celebrity’s height, average head
size for American men, etc.).
I drated an email to my communi-
ty and posted a lyer: “Support our math
program — donate your old Barbie dolls
& action igures!” Individual characters
began to show up in my mailbox. Most
of the characters were more dispropor-
tionate than I could have imagined, and,
initially, all of the characters were white.
When we started working with the ig-
ures, I apologized to my students that
my donated collection didn’t relect the
diversity of our classroom and stated that
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 23
I would love to have a more diverse as-
semblage. As a result of that explicit con-
versation, several Black and Brown dolls
joined the group.
For each igure, I developed a pair
of questions, asking students to scale a
disproportionate body part to the size it
would be if the doll were human height
and also asking them to calculate the
height of the doll if that body part were
“average” American size. Because math
is already a subject that causes many
students anxiety, and because so many
middle school students are uncomfort-
able with bodies (their own, each other’s,
everyone’s), I made a point of not writ-
ing questions about particularly sensitive
body parts like busts, butts, and waists.
“You will be working with the peo-
ple at your table to answer the questions
at your station. he dolls and action ig-
ures are meant to be played with, but
please be gentle with them so that future
classes will also be able to use them. Each
table should have measuring tapes, cal-
culators, dolls, and a set of questions. Is
anyone missing anything? Great. Let’s get
started.”
Lani and Samia are working with
Barbie. he irst question reads: “Size 8 is
one of the top-selling women’s shoe siz-
es. If Barbie’s feet were that big, how tall
would she be?”
Samia reaches for her measuring
tape to measure the height of the Barbie
doll. She calls me over to ask, “Should I
measure in inches or centimeters?”
“You get to decide!”
She consults with Lani and they de-
cide to work with inches. While Samia
measures the doll, Lani looks at the shoe
size chart provided. he table contains
much more information than the basic
two-column tables most math textbooks
focus on; it compares foot length mea-
surements in centimeters and inches to
U.K., European, U.S. women’s, and U.S.
men’s shoe sizes. Many of my students
will be able to look at the chart and parse
which columns to focus on, but for some
of them this is a big cognitive leap and
Lani wants support.
24 | FALL 2019
“What information do you need
from the table?” I ask.
“I need to know how big size 8 feet
are.”
“Can you ind size 8 in the column
titled U.S. women’s shoe size?”
“Found it.”
“Which column do you want to
compare it to?”
“Inches . . . oh, I get it! Women’s size
8 feet are 9.65 inches long!”
he girls use the numbers they’ve
collected to set up a proportion, using a
word fraction to guide them.
foot length 1.3 9.65
__________ : ______ = ____
height 11.5 x
I know that Barbie’s feet are less than
an inch long, so I ask Samia to show me
how she got 1.3. She pulls out the tape
and counts the tick marks to 13.
“13 tenths,” she says.
“Is that mark more or less than a
whole inch, Samia?”
“Less . . . I guess 1.3 doesn’t make
sense.”
“Centimeters are divided into 10
parts, but how many increments are
there in an inch?”
She counts 15 little tick marks.
“To get to the end of the inch you’ll
have to count that last segment . . .”
“So Barbie’s foot is 13/16 of an inch
long?”
“Yes. How could you write that as a
decimal?”
She reaches for her calculator . . .
13÷16 = .8125
he girls ix the number in their
proportion.
foot length .8125 9.65
__________ : ______ = ____
height 11.5 x
Samia cross-multiplies to solve
while Lani looks for the scale factor be-
tween .8125 and 9.65. Both girls ind that
to the nearest inch x = 137.
“Barbie would be 137 inches tall,”
Lani reports.
“How many feet would that be?” I ask.
“here are 12 inches in a foot . . .”
Lani reaches for her calculator:
137 ÷12 = 11.4
“11 feet 4 inches?! hat doesn’t make
sense!”
But Samia’s calculator also reads
11.38.
“Seems Barbie’s feet are pretty dis-
proportionate to her height. I know lots
of people with size 8 feet, but I don’t
know anyone more than 11 feet tall! Also
. . . 11.4 feet isn’t the same as 11 feet and 4
inches. Remember how the inch isn’t di-
vided into 10 parts? Neither is the foot.”
“We should have used centimeters!”
“Lots of people prefer them. . . . If
you took out 11 feet from 137 inches,
how many inches would be let over?”
“11×12 is 132 . . . which means . . .
there are 5 inches let over? So, she’d ac-
tually be 11 feet 5 inches?”
“Yes. And, for perspective, our class-
room is only about 9 feet tall.”
“Whoa!”
hey turn to the next problem: What
size shoe would Barbie wear if she were
5’4” tall, the average height for women in
the United States?
hey already have Barbie’s measure-
ments, but they’ll need to convert 5’4”
to inches and think through how to set
up the proportion. Once they complete
their calculations, Lani calls me back to
their table.
“Flannery . . . what if the foot length
isn’t on the table?”
“Well, where would it it?” I ask.
“It would have to be smaller than
size 3.”
“Do you know anyone your age with
shoes smaller than size 3?”
“No!”
“hat’s why they decided not to put
it on the table. Remember how Barbie
was really tall when she had size 8 shoes?
Her feet would have to be really small if
she were average height. You can write
down that it’s smaller than size 3 or that
Barbie’s shoes would be so small that
they’re of the charts.”
 At the other tables, students are en-
gaged in similar work with Buzz Light-
year, Bratz dolls, G.I. Joe, Batman, Robin,
Ant-Man, Aquaman, Ariel. I interrupt
them: “Great work today. I heard a lot
of good questions and witnessed people
helping each other. We’re going to con-
tinue our work with the igures tomor-
row. I posted some articles about dolls
on the homework website to give our
work some context. Your homework is to
choose one article to read. We’ll discuss
them at the beginning of class tomorrow.”
I didn’t think to give this assignment
the irst year I taught this lesson, but I
noticed that most of my students weren’t
thinking about why the disproportional-
ity of the dolls mattered. his homework
assignment helped to connect the activ-
ity to other conversations they’ve had
about body image and the media.
Here’s what I shared with my
students:
• “Barbie’s not the skinniest doll
on the block” from Slate.com in
February 2014, which compares
Barbie’s height, bust, and waist
measurements to those of other
popular dolls, multiplying them
all by the playscale of six to get
their human-size dimensions.
Despite the article’s title, and
the inding that Barbie may not
be the most disproportionate
doll on the market, the article
concludes that, precisely be-
cause other dolls have obviously
disproportioned heads and Bar-
bie looks so human, she still
may be sending a more negative
message to girls who play with
her than other dolls do.
• “Where’s Ken? he abandon-
ment of men in body positiv-
ity” from Newsweek in Febru-
ary 2016, which discusses the
advances that have been made
to make dolls for girls more
realistic, as the action igures
boys play with have become
more exaggeratedly skinny and
muscular.
“What stood out to you from the
pieces you read last night?” I ask the next
morning.
Alex: “I read the article about Ken
and it said people talk so much about
the messages girls get that they came out
with new Barbies that look more like real
people, but that there isn’t as much talk
about boys and the toys they play with —
and nothing has changed about Ken . . .”
Carl: “But action igures aren’t sup-
posed to look real. I’m not sure that it
really makes a diference. I mean, I don’t
feel like I have to look like Captain Amer-
ica just because I’ve played with him.”
“What do the rest of you think about
that?” I ask.
Rehana: “he article about Ken said
that part of the problem is that he makes
girls think that men should look like him
and then boys get messages from girls
and women about what they’re supposed
to look like.”
Ariella: “And just because it doesn’t
hurt you, Carl, doesn’t mean it doesn’t
hurt other people. here are lots of peo-
ple who struggle with body image. And
even if girls don’t actually think that we
have to look exactly like Barbie, she’s one
of many ways that girls are pressured to
be skinny and have big breasts. We’re get-
ting sold unrealistic images of what bod-
ies should look like all the time. hink
about that clip we watched in advisement
class about how they make commercials
with real live models and then airbrush
and photoshop them to make girls skin-
nier and curvier, make men have more
pronounced six packs and jawlines —
they even changed people’s skin color . . .”
“hanks for making those connec-
tions, Ariella and Rehana. Does anyone
have anything else to add?”
Maeve: “Well, I know that one of the
articles said that Barbie’s body is more
realistic now than she used to be, but that
doesn’t mean she’s sending healthy mes-
sages to girls. I wondered what Barbie’s
waist size would be if she were my height
and, according to my calculations, if she
were 5’4” tall, her waist would only be 19
inches. I’m not sure if stores sell pants
with a waist size that small, but it’s dei-
nitely not a size that most grown women
my height should aspire to be.”
“A 19-inch waist!” I exclaim. “hat
would look about like this,” I say, form-
ing my hands into an oval. “here’s dei-
nitely nobody in this room with a waist
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 25
that small and you’re right that it would
be pretty unhealthy for women to be that
size. hanks for doing those calculations,
Maeve! I think it’s important to know
that people have been talking about and
pushing back on these disproportionate
icons for a long time. . . . As you read in
some of the articles, public outcry has led
to some changes, but many people think
that there’s more work to be done. Lots of
studies have shown that large numbers of
elementary school children are unhappy
26 | FALL 2019
with their bodies and want to be thinner.
hat’s really unhealthy and kids didn’t al-
ways feel that pressure. Unrealistic imag-
es are clearly part of the problem.”
As we get back to our proportional
reasoning work, I hear more students
share the results of their calculations
with each other, exclaiming things like
“Whoa! . . .” and “Can you believe . . . ?”
On day two they also set up their pro-
portions more conidently and are better
equipped to support each other, so I get
to spend more of my time pushing stu-
dents to record their thinking and dig
deeper.
In two class periods with the igures,
some students have engaged with lots of
dolls and action igures while others have
worked with only two. It’s OK that they
haven’t answered the same number of
questions. hey have practiced applying
their understanding of proportional rea-
soning and measurement in a non-rou-
tine context. Developing proportional
reasoning is one of the most important
math learning goals we have for middle
school students. As grown-ups we might
not always write proportions in order to
organize our thinking, but we employ
this branch of reasoning all the time. It’s
how anesthesiologists determine dosag-
es, cooks scale recipes to feed a crowd,
and farmers plan seed orders for the
crops they want to grow.
To develop our visual storytelling
skills and amplify the impact of our work
together, we’ll devote the third day of our
mini-unit to making posters designed to
generate conversations in the hallways
about how disproportionate these iconic
bodies are. I pull the class back togeth-
er to prepare them for that work. “You
probably remember seeing some posters
about these characters at last year’s data
fair. We’ll be making ours tomorrow.
Your homework for tonight is to decide
on a question, complete the calculations
in your notebook, and think about what
kinds of images you might need to col-
lect to help the viewer understand what
you’ve igured out. Please give it some
thought. It will be a lot more fun to work
on if you pick something that you’re ac-
tually interested in.”
he hit of last year’s annual Social
Justice Data Fair was 33-inch Batman
shoulders, against which everyone from
6-year-olds to the head of school tested
out how their shoulders compared. Jes-
se had investigated how wide Batman’s
shoulders would be if he were as tall as
our English teacher. Once he’d cut the
shoulders out of two pieces of red poster
board, written his calculations on them,
and igured out how big the head should
be, I helped him to print an image of Bat-
man’s head to scale.
his year, without any nudging from
me, students talked about how they could
make their projects interactive for the
younger kids who would be visiting the
fair. One of my students decided to make
a life-size felt version of Roller-Skating
Barbie’s skirt for people to hold against
themselves so that they could see just
how tiny it would be. Another student
made a life-size version of Barbie’s tube
top and photographed a 5’4” friend hold-
ing it against himself.
During the poster-making stage,
most of my students choose to compare
the igures to their siblings, teachers, and
other role models. hey explore what
stands out to them about the characters.
In the questions I wrote, I was careful
not to ask them to measure their own
bodies and I avoided body parts that stu-
dents might feel awkward (or delighted)
about measuring, like Barbie’s breasts.
Ater all of the thinking I’d done to avoid
my students having to make their bod-
ies vulnerable, I was surprised, when, in
the very irst year of the project, one of
my students chose to make a poster ti-
tled “OMG! Barbie ur waist is so skinny!”
that included a photograph of herself
with her waist measurement alongside a
photo she’d taken of Barbie with the waist
size that she’d calculated Barbie would
have if she were the same height. Once
I got over the surprise, I was excited to
realize that I’d created space for her to
choose to go there without my having
asked anyone to do so. Kalani’s post-
er, much like the initial project I’d read
about in Rethinking Mathematics, high-
lighted the potential for images to com-
municate mathematical reasoning and
deepen students’ understanding of their
calculations. By leaving the assignment
open-ended, students get to work within
their own comfort zones and surprise me
with their creativity.
his project is just one of many op-
portunities my students will have to ex-
plore and question the way society puts
pressure on young people to look a cer-
tain way. Creating another space for that
conversation is what motivated me to
develop the project. As ought to be the
case with good social justice curriculum
and pedagogy, it turns out that the math-
ematical thinking my students engage in
through the project is also much richer
than the proportional reasoning work
that was happening at my school before
this project came to be. And by sharing
their work at our data fair, students have
an opportunity to teach the communi-
ty both about proportional reasoning
and about the unhealthy messages we
Bring News
receive about what our bodies ought to
look like. n to Life
in Your Classroom
Use Democracy Now!’s daily news
reports and over 23 years of archived
Requirements for historical interviews to stimulate
critical thinking in students of
making the poster all ages—for FREE!
• Title: A question or statement
that should read like a newspa-
per headline. Examples from
students:
– Barbie would be a negative
size!
– Looks like Barbie is . . . out Hosted by award-winning journalists
of shape! Amy Goodman and Juan González,
– If Batman’s shoulders were Democracy Now! reports on war and
as wide as Tom’s he would peace, human rights, immigration,
health care, climate change and the
only be 37” tall!
world’s most pressing issues.
• he work you did to ind the Visit
answer, labeled so that the DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG
viewer can follow it.
Write to teach@democracynow.org
to:
• A visual that helps the viewer • Receive lesson plans based on
understand the importance news reports
of your indings. I encourage • Schedule a class visit to our live
comparisons between “average” broadcast in NYC
• Schedule a video chat with our
or “real” measurements and
education team
scaled indings.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 27
ADRIÀ FRUITÓS

28 | FALL 2019
T
here comes this moment when you’re standing in
the piss-pouring rain, huddled under the 4 inch-
es of overhang you can it beneath without your
feet edging onto school property, when you feel
yourself failing.
he morning light is gray and asthmatic through the thick
rain clouds. he spokes on your drugstore umbrella have
bent. Your jeans are wet and clinging to the long johns un-
derneath. Your sneakers are soaked through for the fourth
day in a row, because you live in Los Angeles and have never
owned a pair of rain boots.

Walk the Line

On the ground during the historic Los Angeles teachers’ strike

You’ve been up since 5:30 a.m.,
marching and chanting and trying to
rally everyone. But this morning, your
heart’s not in it.
hat’s when one of your co-workers
turns to you, face peeking out from her
parka, and says, “We need a pep talk.”
All the other heads nod.
And you see that it’s not just you
who’s struggling this morning — every-
one is tired, aching, beaten down. As
union chapter chair of your school, it’s
your job to pep them up, remind them
why they’re out here, say something that
will reinvigorate and inspire them.
But when you open your mouth,
nothing comes out.
It’s then, on the fourth day of the Los
Angeles teacher strike that’s being billed
as historic, monumental, game-changing,
that you feel wholly inadequate for the task
at hand.
* * *
It started eight months ago.
Really, it started 41 years ago, before
you were born — when California passed BY LAUREN QUINN
Proposition 13 and slowly started to
bleed its public schools of funding, strip- his article was originally published
ping support staf like nurses, counsel- on Hazlitt. Lauren Quinn is a writer
ors, librarians; slashing arts and enrich- and teacher based in Los Angeles.
ment programs; and raising class sizes to Illustrator Adrià Fruitós’ work can
some of the largest in the country. be seen adriafruitos.com
But for you, it started in May. Your
union, United Teachers Los Angeles, had
been in contract negotiations with the
Los Angeles Uniied School District for
a year. Your school didn’t have a union
representative, so you heard about the
UTLA rally through an email blast. You
grew up in a union family, your mom
a teacher, your dad a ireighter. Stop-
ping downtown for an hour ater school
seemed the least you could do.
When you arrived at Grand Park, a
sea of red-clad teachers swarmed in the
shadow of City Hall. hey were hold-
ing handmade signs, chanting, playing
drums, dancing. A palpable energy radiat-
ed of the crowd of 12,000. It was strength
and unity, yes, but also a collective power
bigger than the sum of its parts.
I wanted in.

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 29
 * * *
Ater the presidential election, I was de-
spondent. I wanted to do something, but
I didn’t know what or how. I kept hearing
that people had to ind their place, their
cause, their group — and act.
So I tried. I went to local political and
community organization meetings that
ran the gamut, but nothing quite jibed.
When I became my school’s chapter
chair and attended the UTLA leadership
conference that July, I felt like I’d inally
found my tribe. People of all stripes illed
the conference rooms, a rarity in a city as
diverse but deeply segregated as Los An-
geles (and a quality distinct to LAUSD,
where teaching staf more closely resem-
ble their students than most cities). You
had old Brown Berets sitting next to wide-
eyed 20-somethings fresh out of their cre-
dentialing program. You had white ladies
translating the Spanish-language presen-
tations to dudes with dreads in “Danger:
Educated Black Man” shirts. he diversity
wasn’t labored or self-congratulatory; it
was luid, unpretentious, and united by
the stone-hard conviction that our public
schools were worth ighting for.
his unity of vision didn’t mean we
always agreed, or that subsequent meet-
ings were always enjoyable. When the
school year began, I attended area meet-
ings in the cold cafeteria of Roosevelt
High School and the reality of union
work sank in. People argued, hogged the
mic, asked endless rounds of repetitive
questions. Ater a full day of teaching,
A Free, Educational “Board” Game
Racism and white privilege are addressed through critical thinking, social analysis, and team-based discussion.
Ages 13+ • Free Curriculum • For Classrooms, Staff Trainings, Community Groups, Family Game Nights
DOWNLOAD at www.roadtoracialjustice.org • Created by Kesa Kivel
30 | FALL 2019
the meetings could feel downright te-
dious. Sometimes I’d zone out while I
nibbled on Costco pizza and counted the
minutes until I could go home.
hrough the course of these meet-
ings, I learned the context for the current
negotiations. he ight was about more
than a raise, more than even class sizes
and support staf and over-testing and
charter co-location. It was about saving
the soul of public education.
Perhaps that sounds grandiose, but
the stakes were that high. Our pro-char-
ter school board had appointed as our
new superintendent Austin Beutner, an
investment banker with no prior educa-
tion experience (think DeVos 2.0) who
ran with a pro-privatization LA billion-
aire crew, fronted by Eli Broad. Beut-
ner had brought on as his chief of staf
Rebecca Kockler, the woman respon-
sible for dismantling public schools in
New Orleans — a city where, as of this
school year, there are no remaining pub-
lic schools. (Kockler has since resigned.)
Beutner was toying with restructuring
LAUSD using the portfolio model that
has decimated other public school dis-
tricts. In short, Beutner wanted to break
LAUSD and break the union.
he plan was ambitious, UTLA lead-
ership told us, but not impossible. School
districts in smaller cities — Newark, De-
troit, New Orleans — had been driven
to near extinction by the same contin-
gent of pro-charter reformers. Now they
wanted to try their hand in the nation’s
second-largest school district.
in the air
caused by racism.
Move back 2 spaces.
We couldn’t just be on the defensive,
UTLA oicers told us. We had to have a
plan that was as equally ambitious and
visionary.
You want to get a room full of teach-
ers ired up? Ask them to imagine schools
with full-time nurses and librarians; where
counselors and psychologist social work-
ers have time to actually meet with stu-
dents; where teachers don’t have to waste
days of instruction showing movies while
they administer one-on-one standardized
tests in the back of the classroom; where
instead of random stop-and-frisk search-
es, restorative justice practices guide
school discipline. Ask them to imagine
fully funded schools where teachers can
actually meet their students’ needs.
A strange feeling rises when asked
to imagine something so far from reali-
ty. As teachers, we spend so much time
in the trenches that we sometimes forget
just how bad things are. Class sizes of 40
start to seem normal. Taking home six
hours of grading over the weekend does
too. here aren’t funds to build a class-
room library, so we spend hours creating
a DonorsChoose project. We stock our
own supplies of granola bars for the kids
we know are always hungry. A student
starts coming to class high and stops en-
gaging with the work. We try home calls
and one-on-ones and restorative conver-
sations, but the student needs more than
that. We can hear the cry for help, but
there’s no help to be given.
When one stops and really thinks
about it all, the feeling that comes isn’t
one of sadness or hopelessness or even
rage. It’s the feeling that comes ater that,
the feeling of we’ve had enough.
Some folks might just throw up
their hands and go home, or else change
careers. And a lot of teachers do that.
he ones who stay, though, are a special
breed, possessed of a mix of dedication
and grit. You can say a lot of things about
schoolteachers — we’re unpolished, un-
sophisticated, exhausted — but one thing
you can’t do is mess with us. If the system
doesn’t break us — if the years of crush-
ing workloads and the heartbreaking in-
ability to meet our students’ needs don’t
turn us cynical and hard — nothing will.
Certainly not the threat of weeks of
no pay.
Certainly not hand-wringing over
inlated budget deicits.
Certainly not an investment banker
and his billionaire cronies.
Certainly not, it would turn out, the
biggest rainstorm of the season.
In every area meeting, there’d be at
least one moment when that feeling of
ight was palpable. Some salty old teach-
er would go on a tirade about students
sitting on stools in classrooms crammed
past capacity, and people would nod and
mmm-hmm.
“Strike,” someone would start chant-
ing. “Strike, strike.” People would stand,
pound tables, clap their hands, stomp
their feet. “Strike, strike, strike.”
he room would be electric. Our
voices would vibrate of the walls. We’d
sound bigger than a room of educa-
tors, bigger than all the bullshit and bil-
lionaires. We’d sound like a force, like
thunder.
his superintendent doesn’t know
who he’s messing with, I’d think.
* * *
he lead-up to the strike lasted months.
here were lunch meetings, ater-school
meetings, student meetings, be-
fore-school lealeting, strike authori-
zation voting, phone banking, email
writing, question ielding, planning and
organizing and logisticizing. All of this
was unpaid, in addition to a regular
workday. It was good work, important
work, but it was deinitely work. Just as
I had come to learn that most of teach-
ing isn’t revelatory moments of enlight-
enment but rather the mundanity of
unjamming copy machines and conis-
cating cell phones, I came to realize that
a lot of striking isn’t rallying hearts and
souls, but staple-gunning signs to pick-
et sticks, and trying to secure a reliable
restroom.
In a lot of ways, I’m a strange choice
for a chapter chair, but no one else at my
school wanted to step up. Located in East
LA, we’re a small pilot school, an LAUSD
model in which schools receive addition-
al funding and autonomy in exchange for
added work hours and responsibilities
for teachers. he additional work meant
folks were already stretched past capaci-
ty; no one was jumping at the chance to
go to more ater-school meetings.
So we were stuck with me. I’m good
at the parts of union work that involve
organization. I can write one hell of a
bulleted and subheaded email, but I’m
not a rile-you-up kind of person. I feel
uncomfortable being the center of at-
tention. I don’t possess natural leader-
ship abilities, like anticipating people’s
needs and giving inspirational speech-
es. I’m the same way in the classroom: I
can write a good curriculum and blaze
through a stack of essays, but I’m not the
teacher you go talk about your problems
with. As in teaching as in union work as
in life, it’s the people part I struggle with.
As far as being a chapter chair, I
was lucky — my school’s administration
was supportive, and all the teachers and
counselors were committed to striking.
Because we receive extra funding, our
school already has the resources oth-
er LAUSD schools lack, resources that
were key demands of the contract — a
full-time nurse and librarian, English
language arts class sizes as low as 24, and
two full-time counselors and a psychol-
ogist social worker for a student body of
400. (In contrast, 80 percent of LAUSD
schools lack a full-time nurse; class siz-
es are as large as 48 on some secondary
campuses; and the counselor-to-student
ratio is 1 to 945.) Because our school
has those extra resources, our teachers
understand irsthand their importance.
“We’re ighting so that all LAUSD stu-
dents can have what you guys have here,”
I told students in our pre-strike lunch
meetings.
he school year crept on, the strike
looming like a rainstorm on the hori-
zon. he backseat of my car overlowed
with lyers and signs as the district pulled
one tricky maneuver ater another, stall-
ing the fact-inding process and iling
last-minute court injunctions.
“hey’re trying to break our mo-
mentum,” UTLA leadership told us.
At times, it seemed like it was work-
ing. “Can we just get this over with?” my
co-workers would ask. We had to follow
every step of the bargaining process in
order for the strike to be legal, but we
were all frustrated.
Originally scheduled for early Octo-
ber, the strike was pushed back to Jan. 10,
then at the last minute, Jan. 14.
hat rainstorm on the horizon — it
was inally here. Figuratively and literally.
* * *
he night before the irst strike day, I slept
four hours. I kept waking up from night-
mares in which no one showed up, or I
lost all our supplies, or my phone died.
My stomach crunched and my mind
raced as I drove to school in the pre-
dawn dark, rain coming down in sheets.
Amidst all the preparation, I’d forgotten
that I was actually in charge of the picket
line. I wasn’t just taking notes and send-
ing emails anymore.
Puddles pooled on sidewalks and gut-
ters overlowed as my co-workers started
arriving. I ran through my checklist: take
attendance, distribute signs, make sure all
the gates and entrances were covered. I
kept trying to text the chapter chairs from
the other schools on our shared campus,
but no one was replying.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 31
 We must have been a sorry sight,
marching in a slow circle in the pouring
rain. We should start chanting, I knew,
but I was too awkward and stressed to
get a word out. he irst few cars honked
as they passed, almost pityingly.
Finally F raised his voice: “When our
schools are under attack, what do we do?”
And we answered, “Stand up, ight
back!”
He kept us chanting, even as our signs
soaked through and turned to mush in our
hands. Students and teaching assistants
(who aren’t part of our union) joined us.
he more rain came down, the more cars
honked, a little blast of validation each
time. We cheered, jumped, raised our ists.
Ater morning picketing, we headed
downtown for the irst-day march, where
teachers from across the 700-square-
mile district gathered in front of City
Hall. A sea of red umbrellas and ponchos
illed the four-block length of the park —
red for UTLA, but also #RedForEd, the
oicial color of educator resistance since
32 | FALL 2019
the wave of wildcat strikes in 2018. he
color was a symbol — we were now part
of that bigger ight.
I’d never seen so many Angelenos in
the rain. “We don’t do this here,” I kept
saying, wondering if people in other
parts of the country would grasp the sig-
niicance. Teachers beat drums, banged
tambourines, blew whistles and horns.
Helicopters pulsed in the air above us;
news vans surrounded us. We were on
the national stage, and we knew it.
In every pocket of people, a chant
bellowed. A voice would start: “Every-
where we go, people want to know.”
And other voices would answer “Who
we are, so we tell them.” Every face you
saw looked familiar, even if you didn’t
know the person. “We are the teachers,
the mighty, mighty teachers.” It was a
face that was lit up with conviction and
ready to ight. “Fighting for justice, and
for education.” It was a face you knew,
it was your face, and you were part of
that ight.
I had no sense of how large the crowd
was. I just knew I felt like an ant in a huge
swarming line. Umbrellas bumped and
snagged as we moved painstakingly slow,
so crowded we had to stop every couple
of steps.
“Wow, seeing the pictures on the
news, impressive!” a friend texted. But
all I could see were the shoulders in front
of me.
When we came to the Second Street
tunnel, we put our umbrellas down for
the irst time that day. I craned my neck
around, inally able to see the crowd. We
were massive. We illed the tunnel from
side to side and as far forward and back
as I could see.
Our voices boomed and echoed
against the concrete walls. One person
shouted into a megaphone “UT,” and we
all answered “LA!” We chanted it again
and again, the name of our union, but
also something else, something bigger
and more powerful. Our voices grew
stronger with every chant.
 Suddenly I didn’t feel like an ant
anymore. I didn’t even really feel like me.
I felt like a part of a movement.
When the rally ended, we had a cou-
ple hours to rest before aternoon picket-
ing. I stopped at my apartment, changed
my wet socks, put on a dry sweater. I laid
on my bed and felt the pangs in my legs
from walking, and rested just enough to
be able to return to school for another
round picketing.
By the end of the day, I’d walked 10
miles. My shoes were soaked and my
feet ached. My voice was hoarse from
chanting. I was more tired than I could
remember being.
But I’d done it. We’d done it. We had
held a picket line for a day.
* * *
No one warns you how a strike will take
over your life.
Seven a.m. picketing, mid-morning
rallies, a short rest, then more picketing
until 4 p.m. By the time you’re done, your
body’s toast. Your brain is fried. Your
voice is shot. It’s all you can do to crawl
home, peel of your wet layers, and scroll
through the union emails and texts that
need replies.
he scenes that remain from those
irst days are a blur of drudgery and ex-
altation: a fellow teacher blasting salsa
from a massive speaker and barking into
a microphone like a street hawker, “Viva
la huelga! We are East LA! We are ight-
ing for our schools, we are ighting for
our community!”; doing the have-to-
pee dance while waiting to use the Jack
in the Box bathroom; eating pan dulce
that had gone soggy from the rain; line
dancing in the crosswalks during red
lights, while the marching band played
under a tarp, instruments wrapped in
trash bags; the blast of horns from gar-
bage trucks and public buses and deliv-
ery vans and sherif patrols and damn
near every sedan that passed; the thick
deep sleep I’d fall into during my ater-
noon power naps; the throb in my lower
back the day my period came; the tide of
red lowing from the Little Tokyo met-
ro stop and into the street like a blood
trail, all the cars honking around us;
the East Area rally turning into a block
party where people danced under their
umbrellas to “Jump Around” and “Kill-
ing in the Name Of ” and every other
song on the soundtrack of 1990s middle
school dances.
As chapter chair, I kept my head
down and focused on what needed to
get done. I organized donations and
bought supplies. I sent texts and emails
to keep people updated. I picked up
supplies at 6 a.m. and delivered them
to nearby campuses. he only thing
keeping me together was the aternoon
break, in which I could go home and
dry of for an hour.
Luckily, other folks stepped up. F
stood in the rain with no umbrella and
led chants until his voice went hoarse.
hen M would take over. P danced in
the crosswalks until all the cars honked.
R showed up even though he’d had sur-
gery the week before. On the picket line,
you got to see a diferent side of your
co-workers, who for most of the work-
day stay hidden behind their classroom
doors. You got to see who rolled hard,
who the ride-or-dies were, and you got
to do it together.
As the rain hammered on, the com-
munity rose up around us. A restaurant
brought hot soup one morning. Local
unions brought cofee and doughnuts.
Parents brought tamales and pupusas,
and the teaching assistants who weren’t
striking brought breakfast burritos. he
neighbors carried over an outdoor heat-
er. he raspados shop across the street
gave us free cofee and let us use their
bathroom. A neighborhood dude un-
loaded a truck bed full of bottled water.
Even our students brought us food, of
the endearingly teenage variety: boxes of
Jack in the Box french fries.
You always hear about how people
love teachers, but when you actually see
them show up and demonstrate that love,
especially when you’re soaking wet and
bone tired, it’s enough to make you cry.
* * *
At the end of every day, I’d lay my wet
clothes on my furnace to dry, crawl
into my bed, and scroll through the
news coverage. Before the strike, even
progressive outlets like the Los Angeles
Times and KCRW focused their cover-
age on pay. Now their reporters were on
the line, talking to teachers. Stories led
with interviews and personal anecdotes
from classrooms, followed by descrip-
tions of lively picket lines and powerful
rallies. Finally, news coverage focused
on the reality of our teaching conditions,
which were our students’ learning con-
ditions, which is what we were ighting
to improve.
hey said we were making history,
but I was too close and too tired to have
much perspective on the impact of what
we were doing. I’d scroll through imag-
es of teachers in red ponchos and aerial
shots of huge crowds, and hardly believe
that I was a part of it all. It felt like being
a dot in an impressionist painting.
“Do you think this is what it was like
in the Civil Rights Movement?” some-
one asked while we were Lyting back to
campus. I wondered the same thing —
whether the people making history ever
know they’re making history, or if they’re
just a bunch of tired, ist-raising bodies
in a crowd, with a vague sense of society’s
gears changing around them?
Other people relected back to me
the immensity of what we were doing.
Friends from all over the country mes-
saged and texted. Teachers across the
United States posted solidarity photos. A
public school from New York City “ad-
opted” my school and donated funds for
food and transportation. “We’re ighting
similar forces out here,” they wrote.
Restaurants all over LA were provid-
ing free or discounted meals to striking
teachers, but I was too tired to take ad-
vantage of any of them. Ater a day on
the picket line, I was too shot to do much
of anything. All I could do was ladle out
some soup, answer emails, and then turn
of the light by 9 p.m.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 33
 * * *
When the alarm went of at 5:30 a.m.
hursday morning, I didn’t want to get
out of bed. he night was black outside,
and I could hear rain thundering down.
But I couldn’t bail — I was in charge. I
sighed, tugged on my still-damp layers
and laced up my still-soggy sneakers. I
didn’t bother to put on makeup or ix my
bedhead — there was no point.
It was the fourth day of the strike and
the worst rain yet. All of our signs were
beaten and wrinkled. No one chanted.
No one marched. Hardly anyone spoke.
We wanted to be back in our classrooms,
warm and dry and with our kids — ist
bumps at the door, learning objectives
on the projector, pair-shares and turn
and talks and stacks of do nows and exit
slips piled in trays near the classroom
entrance.
“We’re tired,” G said. “We need a pep
talk.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing
came out. I was beaten too.
“Some of us live too far to go home
in the middle of the day,” S added. “We’ve
been out here all week, without any place
to rest up and get dry.”
I looked at their wet, exhausted fac-
es, and realized I’d been so wrapped up in
organizing the logistics of the picket line
that I’d forgotten about the most import-
ant part: the people. I’d been going home
every day to nap, and it was the only
thing keeping me together. How could I
have overlooked the fact that not every-
one had that?
I hadn’t felt so inadequate since my
irst year teaching, another high-stakes,
high-emotion situation when you strug-
gle to keep your head above water. You
do your best, but you feel yourself screw-
ing up all the time, and feel the weight of
all the people you’re letting down in the
process.
What could I do in that moment?
Stutter a “Shit, sorry” and kick myself for
my lack of care and thought. But the right
words still wouldn’t come. hey needed
inspiration, and I couldn’t give it to them.
34 | FALL 2019
Just then, a station wagon plastered
in the logo for local radio station 97.9 La
Raza pulled up, music blasting from in-
side. A mustachioed DJ in a windbreak-
er jumped out. “You guys hungry?” he
asked, his arms outstretched.
Before we could answer, he opened
the hatchback. he entire back of the car
was illed with taco ixings. “We support
you! 97.9 La Raza supports you!” he ex-
claimed as we gathered around. he tacos
were still warm and the bowls of guaca-
mole plentiful. he DJ took pictures with
us. It was the edible pep talk we needed.
When the rain let up later that ater-
noon, I gathered all of us together.
What did you say, you want to know.
I wish I could tell you, but I was too tired
and nervous to have any idea, let alone
remember. I might have acknowledged
how rough the day had been and how
whipped we all were. I might have said
that the district was waiting for this mo-
ment, to see if we’d break — if we’d roll
hard for three days, then get tired and
give up. Whether we’d give up on our
kids.
I like to think I said that this mo-
ment was when it counted, when we
had to show the district, the community,
the country, and our kids that we real-
ly meant it. “We’ve come this far,” I like
to think I said. “We’ve showed up every
single day, like fucking soldiers, and we
can’t stop now. Everyone is looking to us.
We’ve become something bigger than a
single school or strike, bigger than an ‘I’
and ‘you.’ We’ve truly become a ‘we,’ and
I’ve never felt more a part of something
important than right now, right here,
with you guys.”
Maybe I said that. But probably I
stood there red-faced and mumbled
something about sticking together and
staying strong, then let us all to go home.
* * *
he next week, on the sixth day of the
strike, we sat in a nearby park eating
chile relleno burritos. We’d had so many
donations from our adopted school and
from individuals that our lunch was paid
for. he rain had inally broken, and it
was back to a typical 65-degree LA win-
ter day.
We were relieved but anxious.
UTLA had just announced victory — a
tentative agreement with the district. It
seemed the ight was almost over. “Let’s
wait until we see the agreement,” R said.
So we did. We hunched over our
phones while we ate, reading aloud the
summary and trying to make sense of
the 47-page document we were to vote
on in a couple of hours.
he summary sounded good.
LAUSD had inally agreed to drop a
contentious article in our contract that
allowed for unequivocal raising of class
sizes. Within two years’ time, every
school would have a full-time nurse and
librarian. he counselor-to-student ratio
would be reduced to 1 to 500.
“1 to 500?!” M asked. “hat’s still too
high.”
“It’s the state average,” I answered.
“he district probably wouldn’t ofer bet-
ter than that.”
“We’re the biggest school district in
the state,” M replied. “We should lead-
ing the way. I mean, what have we been
striking for?”
he more we dug through the con-
tract, the more thorns appeared. Class
size reductions in most content areas
would occur at a rate of one student per
year for three years, leaving most teach-
ers with only slightly less painful class
sizes. Meanwhile, special education and
TK–3rd grade didn’t see any reductions.
While we’d gained counselors, there was
no additional funding for mental health
services, such as psychologist social
workers. “hey’re the single most im-
portant thing in keeping students from
dropping out,” F said.
I looked around at people’s fac-
es. hey were disappointed. “We can
do better than this,” some said. “his is
crumbs,” others said.
I tried to remind them who we were
dealing with — a pro-charter board and a
billionaire superintendent who had been
hired to decimate our school district.
Previous contract ofers included raises
contingent on additional work hours and
health care cuts to new employees, and
no ofers of our other demands. he fact
that we’d gotten this much was huge.
“his isn’t what we stood out in the
rain for,” F said.
he more we talked, the more I un-
derstood their perspective. We’d come
out more uniied and forceful than even
the union predicted. We were a move-
ment. UTLA had been stoking the lames
of a smoldering ire, the burn for some-
thing better that existed in all of us. Now
that it had been unleashed, people didn’t
want to concede. hey didn’t want to set-
tle for the status quo. hey wanted that
vision of fully funded schools. Or at least
class sizes below 30.
“I’m voting no,” M said, her face set
in stone.
“It’s gonna look so bad if we vote it
down,” I said. he agreement had already
been announced to the media as a vic-
tory. Would parents stand behind us if
we voted it down? Would teachers start
crossing the line? If that happened, the
district would likely come back with a
worse ofer.
We felt like our hands were tied.
We had to vote in four hours. I wrote
down people’s questions as I headed to
a last-minute meeting, but when I re-
turned to campus to administer the vote,
I only had an answer to one. People were
pissed, and as the chapter chair, I was the
one receiving the piss.
“We’re being forced to vote on a doc-
ument we’ve barely read,” F said. It felt
like the tax reform bill.
“his isn’t good enough,” M said as
she illed in the bubble for “no.”
I wished I could disagree.
* * *
he agreement did pass. UTLA an-
nounced it that night on Facebook Live.
I watched the storm of angry-face re-
actions loat up the screen and felt my
heart sink. We’d been so united, and now
we were breaking apart.
I was relieved the agreement passed,
but only because I thought the scenario
of it not passing was worse. I wasn’t ex-
cited about the agreement, and in all my
messaging that evening, I hadn’t talked
to a single person who was.
But I couldn’t dwell for too long. Ater
all, I had to lesson plan. I had to be back in
my classroom in less than 12 hours.
* * *
I wish I could say our staf rode back
into school the next day in red shirts,
on a wave of victory chants, high-iving
students in the hallways and basking in
pride over what we’d achieved.
As it was, we mostly kept our doors
closed. We nodded at each other in the
halls, greeted our students, said hello to
the oice staf. But the disappointment
was thick.
“What happens when the revolution
fails you?” someone asked in a Facebook
post.
But had we been a revolution? We
were a union in contract negotiations.
We were going to have to compromise.
We weren’t going to change public edu-
cation in six days.
But, watching the footage and read-
ing the coverage, I began to zoom out of
my individual perspective. In a single
week, we’d shited the narrative around
education. We’d opened the public’s eyes
to the real conditions of our schools.
We’d taken the focus of teacher pay and
onto school resources; we’d connected
the issue to funding and taxes at the state
level; we’d demonstrated the power of or-
ganized labor; we’d inspired teachers in
other cities who were experiencing the
same conditions. We’d stood in the rain,
danced on the picket lines, and illed the
streets. Maybe we were something close
to a revolution.
I think the real victory of the LA
teacher strike will be the shit it has in-
spired. Already, coverage of the Den-
ver, Oakland, and Virginia strikes is
diferent. here’s less talk about “greedy
teachers,” and more explicitly connect-
ing school conditions to corporate tax
breaks and charter growth. Even in Den-
ver, where the main dispute is over pay,
coverage is contextualized and includes
teacher interviews. LA teachers created
momentum for a broader movement to
reinvestment in public education.
I wish that were enough for my
co-workers, and I wish it were enough
for our kids. he fact is, most of our stu-
dents returned on Jan. 23 to the same
conditions they’d let on Jan. 11.
So what do you do when you’ve
envisioned something transformative,
then been asked to settle? When you’ve
felt a movement growing, only to have it
yanked from your ingers? When you’ve
marched 49 miles in a week and messed
up and let people down and kept show-
ing up anyway?
You do what you always do.
You get up, keep teaching, and keep
ighting. n
Transform Your THINKING
Transform Your TEACHING
Travel with
N BIS
wor ld
Educator Programming
Immerse yourself in another culture.
Learn how to teach about
social justice & global citizenship
through service-learning.
Nobis World Think Tank – Trinidad
“Re-envisioning Ethical Global Travel”
July 2020
Nobis World – Savannah, Ga.
“Race, Power and Preservation of
African-American History
& Gullah-Geechee Culture”
July 2020
Student Programs to launch in 2020
Contact us for more information
Visit www.nobisworld.org
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 35
 Jesse Hagopian talks with Gillian Russom
How Los Angeles Teachers
Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest
school district, was rocked by a six-day
strike in January 2019 of more than
34,000 educators who galvanized popular
support and won major victories for pub-
lic education. Rethinking Schools editor
Jesse Hagopian, who teaches at Seattle’s
Garield High School and is co-editor of
the book Teaching for Black Lives, inter-
viewed Gillian Russom, a history teacher
at Roosevelt High School and member of
the United Teachers Los Angeles board
of directors, about how the strike was or-
ganized, the signiicant gains it made for
students, and implications for the ongoing
uprising of teachers around the country.
his interview has been lightly edited for
clarity and a slightly diferent version was
irst published in he Progressive.
JESSE HAGOPIAN: I want to begin by
asking you about the groundwork that
made the strike possible. You have been
working for years to strengthen the
union. Talk about the Union Power cau-
cus you are a part of, and the vision you
all had that culminated in this six-day
victorious strike.
GILLIAN RUSSOM: here’s been a long
history around the country of progres-
sive caucuses ighting for unions to
be more active, and to have a broader
vision and a broader set of alliances in
our struggles. he Chicago 2012 strike
and the work of CORE — Caucus of
Rank and File Educators — leading up
to that strike really helped to educate
so many of us around the country
and clariied our direction. I’ve been
a teacher and union activist in Los
Angeles for 18 years and I studied what
worked in Chicago and joined together
with others in the Union Power caucus
36 | FALL 2019
to help bring those lessons here to LA.
In 2013, we pushed for a refer-
endum within our union calling for a
campaign for the “Schools LA Students
Deserve.” his was modeled of of the
Chicago teachers who based their strike
around their own “schools our students
deserve,” aiming to draw in parents,
students, and the community.
Our agenda for union transfor-
mation was to move the union from a
top-down service model to an organiz-
ing model, and to put social justice at the
forefront. We were crating our agenda
of union demands in conversation with
community allies so that it would draw
the active participation of people beyond
our own union membership. Also, up
until 2014, we still had a model of one
union rep for every school, including
massive high schools of like 100 teachers.
HAGOPIAN: Only one per school?
RUSSOM: Yes, but then we took the
model of Chicago’s Contract Action
Teams, where you have leadership that
can actually have one-on-one conversa-
tions with every single member in the
course of a few days. So at my school for
example, we have about 115 teachers,
and we now had a team of 12 people
that would meet once a week, talk about
the issues, and then go out and have
conversations with folks. And obviously
that’s just going to create a completely
diferent level of engagement with the
union and the issues that impact our
members.
But I think what’s important is not
just the structure by itself but the actual
conversations that were being had with
the membership. And I think a refresh-
ing thing about Union Power was that
we said, “We need to talk to members
Organized and What They Won

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 37JOE BRUSKY


JOE BRUSKY
about everything — from the speciic
building issues to the whole corporate
education reform agenda, including the
big picture of the privatization of our
schools.” So when billionaire education
reformer Eli Broad’s plan was leaked
saying that they wanted half of Los An-
geles students in charter schools within
eight years, we were able to immediately
go out and talk to members on a deep
level about the existential threat that
plan was to our schools. So you can see
how that conversation, which happened
years ago, actually framed the big-pic-
ture thinking that was so critical to our
ability to wage a successful strike.
HAGOPIAN: No doubt! And that leads
me to my next question about how you
were able to overcome billionaires like
Eli Broad and the Los Angeles Times edi-
torializing against you all, how you were
able to win over public support, and
especially within communities of color.
RUSSOM: here are a lot of elements
to that. One was the strategic decision
to ight around a really broad set of
demands for the schools our students
deserve. And so, we put issues in the
forefront such as staing and class size
that connected with what parents were
demanding. Parents talk all the time
about “Why doesn’t my school have
a full-time nurse? Why is our library
staying closed because we don’t have a
librarian at our school?”
We also took to heart the approach
to negotiating called “bargaining for the
38 | FALL 2019
common good,” which is a strategy de-
signed to actually address a whole range
of attacks that the communities where
we work are facing.
One of the irst issues we incor-
porated was the ight against random
searches, because students of color
had been speaking out about being
criminalized, being pulled out of class
and searched with a metal detector
wand. Students pointed out that the
schools with the most Black students
and schools with Muslim students were
experiencing the most searches.
HAGOPIAN: Yes, I saw a video that
Students Deserve made about that issue.
RUSSOM: Yes. So we incorporated
ending random searches as one of our
demands as a racial justice issue. We de-
cided as a union to do an action the day
before Trump’s inauguration where we
stood in front of every school with signs
that said “Shield against racism. Shield
against Islamophobia.”
HAGOPIAN: Such a powerful image!
RUSSOM: It wasn’t easy. I will tell
you there were some — a minority, but
still vocal — who said, “We have mem-
bers who voted for Trump. Why are we
doing this? It’s going to be divisive.” But
we made a choice to stand with Eastside
Padres Contra La Privatización, our
communities of color, and our immi-
grant communities, many of whom
were in tremendous fear of increased
deportations. We reached out to form a
new community alliance with “Reclaim
Our Schools LA.”
And most importantly, we began
to train our school site union chapters
to engage in parent outreach and expect
that it was a part of their union work. So
we asked every chapter to have a parent
liaison, and to begin compiling lists of
parent allies to explain to them the issues.
And then we have these incredible
grassroots parent leaders, particularly
who’ve come out of the ight against
charter co-location. We began to hold
joint meetings with them and support
their leadership in the bigger ight
against privatization. hose parents
became their own proactive organizers
to get other parents on board.
* * *
HAGOPIAN: I got to go to the last big rally
you all had on Friday, Feb. 18, and it’s
hard to put into words. here were some
60,000 people in a sea of red, chanting
for education justice, and it just blew me
away. Can you describe your experience
with the teachers on the picket lines and
at the rallies, and also how the people
who participated in the strike were
changed by that experience?
RUSSOM: It’s really hard to overstate
the incredible feeling of empowerment,
solidarity, and joy that you saw in school
site picket lines and at the massive rallies
that we held every single day.
he very irst day on my school’s
picket line, before we could even set up,
we had three tables overlowing with do-
nations. On that irst day I was the only
one on my picket line who wanted to
lead chants. And every single day, more
people started leading chants. People
came up with their own creative chants.
We started learning sign language so we
could do the American Sign Language
chant. People made up their own hip-
hop chants.
And the chants are not just about
“Hey, let’s get a raise,” the chants were
about freedom and justice. At my picket
line, my co-workers started singing “We
Shall Not Be Moved.”
On the second day, Ozomatli
performed, and people felt like “Wow,
all these folks are supporting us. We’re
on a mission here. And a lot of people
are watching.” his was reinforced when
the “Tacos for Teachers” was launched
— and it raised more than $40,000 and
fed thousands of hungry teachers on the
picket lines!
HAGOPIAN: Wasn’t there a poll that
showed 80 percent of LA supported the
strike?
RUSSOM: Yes! Loyola Marymount
University did a poll of households
that have kids in public school, and 82

percent were supportive of us.
here was a regional rally I thought
was going to be small because it was
pouring down rain, but we had so many
teachers that we just spontaneously took
over the street, a huge thoroughfare. he
DJ started playing “Fight the Power” and
my co-worker turned to me and said,
“his feels like freedom.”
HAGOPIAN: hat’s truly beautiful.
RUSSOM: What I realized that day
was that for the irst time in our adult
lives we were truly working for each
other, for ourselves, and our commu-
nities. It was tiring and exhausting, but
also an exhilarating feeling of being in a
collective struggle where we were mak-
ing our own future and inally standing
up for ourselves.
I’ll just say one more thing about
it. Teachers put up with so much, and
teachers sacriice so much for the kids.
But if you give teachers the ability to
stand up for students in a diferent kind
of way, you will see that same incredible
dedication channeled into struggle.
HAGOPIAN: I know exactly what you
mean from our strike here in Seattle in
2015. Our strike had that same dynamic.
We sacriice for our kids every day, but
now we actually had a way to ight for
them collectively and it was amazing to
see the outpouring of energy educators
had when given the opportunity.
RUSSOM: here you go. hat’s exactly
what I was trying to say.
HAGOPIAN: So what did you win in
the strike? And what’s let to ight for?
RUSSOM: Probably at the top of the
list — and the thing that was the hardest
to get — was that we inally got rid of
the clause in our contract that gives the
district leeway to change class size when
they see it.
Because of that clause, no matter
what numbers we fought for in the past,
there was no way to enforce them. Now
we have the ability to actually enforce
class size and force the district to hire
more teachers for the irst time in our
JOE BRUSKY
union’s history. We did get class size re-
duction in most grade levels, and it looks
like it’s going to force the district to hire
about 2,000 new teachers next year.
But keep in mind we’re starting
from terrible numbers. So we’re going
to reduce English and math class size
in high schools by seven kids next year.
But what that looks like is going from
46 to 39. So when you ask what there
still is to ight for, we now have the
ability to enforce class size, but we have
to go get a bunch of money from the
state to bring our class sizes anywhere
near what’s reasonable and what our
kids deserve.
We also won a full-time nurse in
every school! he district is going to
hire 300 more nurses in the next two
years. And that was one of the most
high-proile demands and something
that parents care about a lot. We also
forced the district to hire 82 librarians
so that there will now be a full-time li-
brarian at every middle and high school.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 39
 rethinking schools
NEW MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM
COMMITMENT COUNTS

rethinking schools

$5 PER MONTH
Magazine subscription (print and PDF)

$15 PER MONTH

We remain committed to equity
and to the vision that public
education is central to the
creation of a humane, caring,
multiracial democracy.
Magazine subscription
+ 25% of all of our books
+ a pin 25%
OFF BOOKS
$35 PER MONTH
Magazine subscription
+ 25% of all of our books
+ a pin + RS cofee mug

$50 PER MONTH

Be active in sustaining our work Magazine subscription
with your monthly contribution. + 25% of all of our books
+ a pin + RS cofee mug
+ free shipping on all book orders

Take action now at RethinkingSchools.org/Member

40 | FALL 2019
And to bring down the student-to-coun-
selor ratio to 500:1. Now, again, that’s
still an outrageous number, but before
the strike it was 700:1.
here were also a bunch of areas
of our contract where the district did
not legally have to negotiate with us.
However, because of the overwhelming
solidarity we received we won some
major victories. his includes forcing
the district to hire a dedicated attorney
and create a hotline for our immigrant
families to get legal support ighting
deportation. We did not eliminate all
random searches, but we increased up to
28 the number of schools that are going
to be in a pilot program in which there
are no random searches at those schools.
And that’s going to improve the lives of
a lot of kids of color.
(Note: In June, the school board, in-
cluding newly elected members endorsed
by the union, voted to end random
searches in all LAUSD schools by 2020.)
We also won a task force between
the union and the district that has to
come up with a plan in the next year to
cut standardized testing by 50 percent in
our district. Current Economic Issues
HAGOPIAN: It’s so great that you are Edited by James Cypher, Rob Larson, Chris Sturr,
and the Dollars & Sense collective.
showing the country how to stop the
Date of publication: December 2018
extreme over-testing of our students. ISBN: 978-1-939402-38-7 | Pages: 225 | Price: $34.95
hat’s an issue that I have been ighting Purchase at dollarsandsense.org/current.
around for some time.
Teachers: Order free examination copies at
RUSSOM: We also got the Board of dollarsandsense.org/examcopies.
Education, including members who
For a list of our other textbook titles, visit
don’t usually support the union, to ofer dollarsandsense.org/bookstore.
a resolution calling on the state to cap
Discount rates for bulk subscriptions to Dollars & Sense are
charter schools. Nothing will happen also available. Inquire by email at dollars@dollarsandsense.org.
overnight, but it’s going to increase
political pressure on the state.
One of the most important lessons T he economy has been dominating the headlines lately, but the mainstream media
rarely explain the real-world economics behind the slogans and ideology. The 22nd
edition of Current Economic Issues ofers progressive perspectives on the major issues of
of this strike for the rest of the labor the day, while debunking myths promoted by mainstream economics.
movement is that they will make all
This thoroughly revised edition covers key controversies—the state of the macroeconomy,
kinds of excuses as to why you cannot iscal policy and taxation, banking and inance, the social-welfare state, environmental
bargain for the common good, but if you protection, labor and unions, economic inequality, corporations, migration, and the
changing global economy. This new edition includes thorough coverage of the Trump
build enough power, you can win those economy, including articles on Trump’s tarifs, the NAFTA replacement, the new tax law,
demands, even if they’re totally outside and evaluations of the U.S. and global economies ten years after the inancial crisis.

the scope of bargaining. And that sends
a powerful message to our community
allies that we weren’t just talking the talk.
We actually were willing to ight. n
The well-researched, clearly written articles in Current Economic Issues are drawn from Dollars
& Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics. With shorter and particularly
accessible articles, this textbook is well suited for use in high-school classrooms.

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 41
 “Who Made History?
We Made History!”
E
ric Blanc’s new book is a concise
compendium of insights into the
United States’ biggest strike wave
in decades. Its 200-plus pages comprise a
must-read for education unionists look-
ing for the path toward the collective
power required to build “the schools our
students deserve.”
Red State Revolt melds an overview
of the mass strikes unfolding across
the country’s public education land-
scape for the past year and a half with
on-the-ground eyewitness journalism.
In recounting the story of these strikes
and the people who made them happen,
Blanc places the movement into histori-
cal context; provides the speciic details
and chronologies that distinguish each
state’s story (West Virginia, Oklahoma,
Arizona); shows what makes them sim-
ilar to and diferent from the others; and
opens a window into some of the larger
social questions at stake, such as school
funding, tax policies, right-wing propa-
ganda strategies, and neoliberal gover-
nance assumptions.
42 | FALL 2019
He also makes a strong case for the
powerful credit owed to what he terms
“the militant minority,” who through
their impassioned organizing created the
momentum and made key contributions
at crucial moments to see these illegal
strikes through to varying degrees of
success. He identiies the mostly young
teachers of the militant minority as
democratic socialists inspired by Bernie
Sanders’ 2016 primary campaign, many
of whom joined Democratic Socialists
of America ater Trump’s election, and
non-socialist educators from families
with strong union roots.
Red State Revolt conirms a key les-
son of labor history: that participants in
successful movements against oppression
generally do not win by paying over-
ly scrupulous attention to legal systems
stacked against them. As West Virgin-
ia teacher-activist Emily Comer lucidly
notes, “It doesn’t matter if an action is il-
legal if you have enough people doing it.”
he appropriateness of that per-
spective becomes clear as Blanc lays out
the backstory in these states, where gov-
ernments captured by Republicans have
driven the public education systems —
along with other public services — into
the dirt through years of austerity, tax
cuts for the rich and corporations, roll-
backs of worker rights, and relentless
propaganda against the public sphere.
Under such conditions the willingness of
large numbers of otherwise law-abiding
people to ultimately engage together in
illegal acts of resistance should not sur-
prise (although, as Blanc carefully notes,
this is far from automatic).
Red State Revolt provides a welcome
corrective to the generally supericial
REVIEW BY FRED GLASS
Red State Revolt:
he Teachers’ Strike Wave
and Working-Class Politics
By Eric Blanc
(Verso, 2019) | 214 pp.
mainstream media reporting on these
strikes. No, Blanc explains, these were
not just spontaneous rank and ile up-
surges, although widespread anger at de-
teriorating conditions born of education
funding cuts and the wrecking of person-
al career plans in education boiled the
collective pot. No, it was not just social
media created by younger teachers that,
in the absence of strong unions, orga-
nized and spread the rebellion, although
they certainly played an important role.
In fact, Blanc insists, the red state
unions, although weaker than their
counterparts in collective bargaining
states, were necessary elements in build-
ing education worker power; and some
of their leaders, while vacillating and
mostly inexperienced in mass movement
dynamics, at times played positive roles,
alongside their better-known attempts
to put on the brakes as the movements
picked up speed.
In diving into the details of these
movements, the book serves as a primer
on tactics and strategies for educators to
build their workplace and political power.
Especially useful is the many-sided dis-
cussion of obstacles, pathways, and the
hard work required to achieving the uni-
ty, within a far-lung diverse workforce,
necessary to run a mass statewide strike
and win.
Early in the book Blanc explains
that, like many teachers, he went back to
school to earn an advanced degree. he
strikes broke out while he was working
on his doctorate in sociology at NYU.
he socialist quarterly journal Jacobin
sent him to cover the action in West Vir-
ginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
Blanc embedded himself within
each state’s movement, and due to his
clear sympathies, he won the trust of ac-
tivists and leaders in a way inaccessible
to most mainstream media reporters,
especially in an era of steep staing de-
cline for legacy journalism newsrooms.
he words and insights of the teachers
themselves — rank and ile and leaders
alike — leaven the narrative throughout.
And not just teachers. Blanc un-
derscores the importance of factoring
in the relationship between certiicated
and classiied employees in determining
how successful each strike was. Without
the solidarity of classiied staf — the
mostly working-class positions in public
schools like secretary, paraprofessional,
groundskeeper, school bus driver, custo-
dian, etc., as opposed to positions requir-
ing postgraduate degrees — things might
have turned out diferently, for instance,
in West Virginia, and he points to the
failure to establish such a relationship in
Oklahoma as a serious drawback limit-
ing the gains in that state.
Another problem in Oklahoma: he
fact that the state’s two most active Face-
book support pages were run by teach-
ers who weren’t union members meant
serious disconnects between grassroots
activists and union leadership; and de-
cision-making around key questions
and events — like what day to strike,
what revenue solutions to call for — de-
volved to self-proclaimed leaders, rather
than being submitted to the discipline of
union democracy, which, as members
participate, helps them to mature as ac-
tivists, and the movement to debate and
solidify its demands. Blanc observes that
Facebook can assist in quickly scaling up
a mass movement, but it can also outrun
the basic organizing work necessary to
ensure its success.
Running like a red thread through-
out is the question of how to pay for the
“schools that students deserve” (the slo-
gan of the seminal 2012 Chicago Teach-
ers Union strike adopted by the “Red for
Ed” movements). Progressive tax policy
— the principle of asking those who can
best aford to pay for public services to
pay the highest tax rates — is never far
from the events described in Red State
Revolt. Blanc properly criticizes the un-
clear revenue demands of union lead-
ership in West Virginia and Oklahoma.
But unlike the strong message he deliv-
ers about the crucial importance of on-
the-ground organizing prior to a strike
— highlighting the CTU’s prep work in
Chicago as the go-to model, and citing
chapter and verse in the “Red for Ed”
struggles — he fails to note the equally
sustained work it takes to achieve pro-
gressive tax policy.
Blanc makes no mention, for in-
stance, of the years-long organizing it took
in California before successfully passing
a ballot measure to tax the rich to raise
school revenues, also in 2012. He misses
the obvious parallel to his own much-re-
peated and illustrated lesson about Chica-
go — that strikes don’t fall from the sky;
they take serious organization over sui-
cient periods of time to build capacity, co-
alitions, and momentum — to speculate
whether throwing progressive tax ideas
into the mix at late stages of these strikes
might have succeeded.
It’s possible that within the heat-
ed momentum of a mass public worker
strike, a progressive tax demand might
have a chance, simply by ofering a clear
answer to the question of where to ind
the funding. But the fate of the Hail
Mary ballot measure in Arizona to up
taxes on the wealthy — struck down by
a reactionary state court ater passage by
voters — demonstrates that the best road
to adequate tax revenues arises from sus-
tained organizing for that goal.
he narrative becomes somewhat
bumpy in the sprawling, 100-page
chapter “he Militant Minority.” With
its three detailed state chronologies and
a myriad of names loating by, this sec-
tion demands keen reader attention to
stay with the blizzard of events and per-
sonalities. It’s held together by a robust
class analysis of how mass movements
function, which turns out to apply as in-
cisively to uprisings in public education
as earlier versions of this perspective
did for industrial workers.
Which is not to say that Red State
Revolt’s method is mechanistic or reduc-
tionist. here is room enough in Blanc’s
framework to fold in and appreciate the
little moments of human creativity and
solidarity that, in their accumulation,
put the “rise” in an uprising, moments
like when young Arizona teacher Noah
Karvelis responded to red-baiting by
Governor Doug Ducey, who called him a
“political operative.” Said Karvelis, “he
idea that I’m a political operative is ab-
surd. I’m a K–8 music teacher — I liter-
ally spend all day singing with a puppet
on my hand.” Or Blanc’s understandably
proud aside describing how his mother,
Lita Blanc, then-president of United Ed-
ucators of San Francisco, initiated “the
tradition” of pizza donations from afar
to West Virginia strikers occupying the
capitol (although one might argue that
the author should have indicated here
the background inluence of the Wiscon-
sin Uprising and Occupy Movement of
2011, which contributed, among other
tactics, massive pizza donations as soli-
darity to demonstrators).
A close reading of Red State Revolt
will be rewarded. Its laws are minor
deiciencies within a largely successful,
and remarkably timely (thank you Verso
Press!) efort.
In recording and theorizing this
moment in education and labor history,
Blanc has provided an essential git to
teacher union activists and their allies. If
disseminated as widely as it deserves to
be, Red State Revolt will play an invalu-
able role in pushing the #Red4Ed move-
ment forward. n
Fred Glass was the communications director
for the California Federation of Teachers
from 1988 to 2017. His 10-part documentary
video on the history of the California labor
movement, Golden Lands, Working Hands
(1999), aired on PBS stations in California;
every public high school in the state has a
copy. He is the author of From Mission to
Microchip: A History of the California
Labor Movement (University of California
Press, 2016).
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 43
 W
hen I was in 9th grade, Ms. Kleeg taught us
he Odyssey, a timeless story about a boat-
ful of guys who got lost in the Mediterra-
nean for 20 years. I hated it. I remember the
queasy feeling in my stomach as we took
turns reading Homer’s epic poem of Ulysses’ long journey
home and all of the wicked women who tried to bring him
down. We learned about Circe, the femme fatale-style god-
dess who turned men into animals, the cruel sirens who lured
good men to their deaths, and the worst in my view, the mealy-
mouthed Penelope, too weak to say no to her suitors and too
passive to do anything but sit in her bedroom weaving and
unweaving all day.

Why I Don’t Teach

the Hero’s Journey
BY MICHELLE KENNEY
Michelle Kenney (mkenney45@gmail.com)
also wrote “he Politics of the Paragraph,”
which was published in the summer 2016
issue of Rethinking Schools.
Illustrator Sawsan Chalabi’s work can be
seen at schalabi.com
Even though I probably couldn’t
have articulated this thought at that age,
deep down I knew that none of those fe-
males presented good options for me or
modeled the adult I hoped to become.
Worse still, the story of the sailors
forced to pass between the sea monster
Scylla and the sucking whirlpool Cha-
rybdis was too dangerously close to my
daily experience navigating the hallways
of middle school in the late ’70s, trying to
avoid the twin dangers of boys who made
grabbing motions toward my breasts and
the ones who called me a “dog” for wear-
ing glasses. In class, it was the same boys
who enjoyed the exploits of the brave Ul-
ysses the most. When it was my turn to
read, I would numbly recite my passage
and go back to reading a copy of Pride
and Prejudice hidden in my lap.
By the time my son lugged home a
copy of he Odyssey in middle school,
many teachers were framing it as a “hero’s
journey.”
Based on the work of theologian
Joseph Campbell, the hero’s journey cur-
riculum highlights a common structural
pattern present across narrative stories,
myths, dramas, and religious rites. In a
hero’s journey curriculum, students ap-
ply these patterns to literature in order
to unmask the commonality or “mono-
myth” in all epic storytelling. According
to Campbell, “A hero ventures forth from
the world of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are
there encountered and a decisive victory
is won: he hero comes back from this
mysterious adventure with the power to
bestow boons on his fellow man.”

44 | FALL 2019
SAWSAN CHALABI

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 45
An essential guide for the
revitalization of Ethnic Studies
Rethinking
Ethnic Studies
Built around core themes of indigeneity,
colonization, anti-racism, and activism,
Rethinking Ethnic Studies ofers vital resources
for educators committed to the ongoing
struggle for racial justice in our schools.
“This book is food for
the movement. It is
sustenance for every
educator committed
to understanding and
enacting Ethnic Studies.
We take this gift as a
guide for the needed
work ahead.”
—Django Paris
James A. & Cherry A. Banks
Professor of Multicultural
Education, University of
Washington
Order your copy at
rethinkingschools.org/res
Only $24.95
PAPERBACK • 368 PAGES • 978-0-942961-02-7
he hero’s journey consists of 17
steps as the protagonist (always male
in Campbell’s view) leaves the ordinary
“feminine” world and ventures into the
special world to re-emerge, transformed,
back home. In Campbell’s view, the hero’s
cycle and the character archetypes within
it (the mentor, the villain, the trickster)
supposedly exist deep in the human mind
and evoke a profound response from the
reader.
he hero’s journey has become a
popular theory English teachers use to
frame units around many novels, poems,
and ilms. From he Odyssey to the irst
installment of the Star Wars series, stu-
dents across the country identify and
track the developmental stages of — face
it — an almost always male protagonist
as he navigates the stages of his hero’s
journey.
I suppose I’m lucky to teach in a dis-
trict that up until now hasn’t mandated
teaching the hero’s journey, an approach
that has always rubbed me the wrong
way. I want all my students to not only
recognize themselves in their reading,
but also to learn about the world beyond,
acknowledge their responsibilities to each
other, and learn how to come together to
shape the world that they live in. Because
of its singular focus on the development
of the individual, the hero’s journey does
nothing to help our students progress to-
ward the goal of becoming well-educated
critical thinkers and thoughtful citizens
of a democracy.
Events in the past few years make
me wonder if it isn’t time for teachers
to learn a few things from their stu-
dents. All around the country, young
people are coming together to organize
for change. he student survivors of
Parkland re-energized the national de-
bate over gun control, the Black Lives
Matter movement linked young people
across the country together in the quest
for racial justice, and others, like the
11th-grade students at Madison High
School in Portland, where I taught for
six years, came together en masse two
years ago for an all-day sit-in to protest
the sexual harassment of female stu-
dents on campus. hese young people
understand the value of their collective
eforts in standing up to the sexism of
the status quo, a remarkable and ironic
achievement given the relentless focus
on the importance of the individual in
so many of their English classes. heir
success makes me question even more
the extent to which our curricula —
those sacred cows of the canon — help
or hinder our students’ progress to-
ward becoming well-educated critical
thinkers and thoughtful citizens of a
democracy.
In my classroom, I introduce read-
ings that focus on the transformative
efect of communities rather than indi-
viduals. In Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba
Pattillo Beals’ memoir of the integra-
tion of Little Rock Central High School,
I use activities that focus on the ability
of groups to bring about signiicant so-
cial change. Before we even begin read-
ing the book, I use Rethinking Schools
editor Linda Christensen’s role play to
re-enact the Little Rock school board’s
decision to integrate the high schools.
In this activity, students take on the
role of community stakeholders debat-
ing the surprisingly nuanced pros and
cons of school integration. hroughout
the reading I focus students’ attention
on the strength the Little Rock Nine
drew every day from each other and
the NAACP as they faced down racist
hostility and violence both in and out
of school.
I also teach Renée Watson’s his
Side of Home, a novel about the collective
eforts of a school community coming to
grips with change. he African Amer-
ican protagonists, Maya and Nikki, live
in a gentrifying neighborhood in North
Portland. heir high school, previously
a bastion of Black culture and history,
replaces a Black history assembly with
a watered-down “multicultural festival”
that a diverse group of students orga-
nize against. Maya and Nikki’s individual
goals and concerns are important and
relatable to any teenager, but it is their
eforts as part of a collective that bring
maturity and growth in both their per- Two Inspirational
sonalities and communities. Educational
Young people need to know that 2020 Calendars
meaningful social change comes about
ANN ALTMAN / SCW
through social movements rather than
the actions of the lone “heroic” individ-
ual they may learn about in traditional
history classes. It was only through the
work of committed groups that women
in the United States gained the right to
vote, and African Americans the right to
equal employment opportunities, edu- Peace Calendar
cation, and housing — struggles that are Over 200 People’s History Dates
L20CW | $15.95 | 14 x11
still ongoing.
Although some of the students I
teach have an instinctive grasp of this,
young people still rely on their educators
to frame curriculum in a way that ac-
knowledges the power of the collective,
instead of falling back on familiar ap-
proaches like the hero’s journey — a reac-
tionary model that forces students to treat
the (usually white, male) individual as the
prime mover of life, the only one worthy
Women's Suffrage
of growth and change. his framework
Centennial Calendar
banishes other voices and other points of Over 200 Suffrage and
view to obscurity, and minimizes the im- women’s rights dates
portance of organizing for political and W20CW | $15.95 | 12 x12
social justice.
ELLEN BLALOCK / SCW – NOVEMBER ART IN HEAR US ROAR 2020
In department meetings and other
venues, teachers need to engage in critical
conversations about the values imparted
in curriculum if we really want to teach
for equity and social justice and help our
students become agents for change. n
Women’s Suffrage Poster
P803CW | $15 | 18 x 24
15% Discount on teacher orders $100+.
Printed with soy-based inks
on 30% PCW paper by union labor
in Auburn, NY.
SyracuseCulturalWorkers.com
scw@syracuseculturalworkers.com
(800) 949-5139 x 8
MC/VISA/DISCOVER
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 47
 Diversity Is What Makes It
Interesting to Study Living Things
Teaching gender diversity in biology
I was raised the child of scientists. Science had always been an
ally and a comfort, and science was never used against me —
not until my junior year of high school.
BY SAM LONG It was fall 2007 and I had just come
out as a transgender boy. In my newly
Sam Long (he/him) teaches high school shorn hair and baggy jeans, I sat down
science in Westminster, Colorado, and with my school’s assistant principal to
trains teachers across the country on discuss the logistics of my transition.
developing gender-inclusive biology Could I use the boys bathroom?
curriculum. You can learn more about “No, you’re not biologically a boy.”
Sam’s work at sam-long.weebly.com.
Could I use the girls bathroom?
Illustrator Bec Young’s work can be “No, your appearance may scare the oth-
found at justseeds.org/artist/becyoung er girls.”
Could I use the single-stall bath-
room near the main oice? “No, that’s
only for staf.”
he message was clear: Biological
or anatomical traits outweigh personal
conviction in deciding whether someone
is male or female. People who transgress
the gender binary are scary, and they
don’t deserve access to the same educa-
tion as others.
hese days, more than a decade later,
people who transgress gender norms are
still marginalized, and the excuse is oten
the same, oversimpliied appeal to “biol-
ogy.” Trans people are told to stay out of
public restrooms, a restriction that oten
amounts to avoiding public life altogeth-
er, all for the supposed comfort and safety
of “biological” women and men. Intersex
and trans female athletes are barred from
competition amid unfounded concerns
that their “male” physiology provides an
unfair advantage. A total of 17 states re-
quire a trans person to undergo surgery
before amending the gender marker on
their birth certiicate. hree states outright
48 | FALL 2019
refuse to amend an M to an F or vice versa.
hese practices all treat gender, in a
scientiic sense, as a rigid and immutable
binary.
But I am now a high school biology
teacher and I know that true, complete
biology is incredibly diverse.
he biology classroom has more
than enough room to include and cel-
ebrate all genders. Like most teachers, I
feel the pressure to get through my cur-
riculum and prepare for standardized
tests. But when I teach about the com-
plexities of gender, I generate authentic
student engagement that drives learning
throughout the year.
Language Matters
When we talk about gender in our class-
rooms, the words that we use can shape
the ideas that students take away. It is
useful for the class to discuss key terms
and agree upon explicit deinitions in
advance of using the language in an ac-
ademic context.
As I planned out my genetics unit
for the winter quarter, I knew that gen-
dered language would come up in almost
every lesson. So I frontloaded some of
those conversations. On the irst day of
the unit, I wrote a statement on the board:
“I got half my DNA from my mom and
half from my dad.” For most of my 9th
graders, this was either a review of mid-
dle school science, or it was knowledge so
common they couldn’t remember where
they’d irst heard it. I asked the class, “Is
this statement inclusive? Is it true for ev-
ery person, or are some people excluded?”
“Of course it’s true for everyone,”
Jasmine blurted out.
BEC YOUNG
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 49
 I asked, “Really? It’s true for every
single person?”
Ater some wait time, Manuel
raised a cautious hand. “Well, some
kids are adopted so they didn’t get any
DNA from their parents.”
Now students could see where this
was going. I asked for more examples
of people who are excluded. I got peo-
ple with step-parents, same-gender
parents, and with a little prompting,
50 | FALL 2019
transgender parents. I said to the class,
“So not everybody has two people in
their family called mom and dad, who are
the ones that gave them their DNA. And
that’s all totally normal and common —
the world has all kinds of families.”
Although my students had been
speaking in third-person, I knew that a
lot them lived with blended families and
step-parents. I ofered up my own expe-
rience. “My dad, who raised me and my
sister since we were 3 years old, is a step-
dad. We’re not related by blood, but he’s
my dad — he’s my real dad.”
I told the class that when we talk
about the two people who provide the
genetic material to make a new person,
we call them the “biological parents.”
Each person gets their DNA from their
“biological parents.” his word choice
has its own connotations, and you may
choose to use something diferent in
your classroom. My colleague and friend
Lewis Maday-Travis opts to have his
students decide collectively on a term,
such as “gene giver” or “egg contributor/
sperm contributor.”
I took my class through a similar dis-
cussion on the statement, “Men produce
sperm cells and women produce egg cells.”
“Is it true for everyone, or are some
groups excluded?”
Without diiculty, students thought
of people who are infertile, people who
have reached an age where they stopped
making egg or sperm, and transgender
people.
I asked the class, “Are transgender
women not women just because they don’t
make eggs? Are infertile men not men
just because they don’t make sperm?” he
class came to an agreement that produc-
ing reproductive cells is not what makes
somebody a man or a woman.
I said, “hen we will have to be pre-
cise with our language. We’ll say that
‘people with ovaries,’ or maybe even ‘peo-
ple with functioning ovaries’ produce
egg cells, instead of ‘women’ produce egg
cells. hat way, all of human experience
is included in our language.”
his was not a challenging concept
for my students. Later in the same les-
son, to check for understanding, I asked
Joel, “And where do these chromosomes
come from?”
“From the egg and the sperm,” Joel
responded without pause. Not “From the
mom and the dad.” He had internalized a
language for genetics that was both inclu-
sive and rigorous.
From Pathology to Pride
All through our genetics unit, I thought
about how our language directs what we
think of as normal or abnormal. When a
student brought up mutations, which we
hadn’t oicially covered yet, I described
a mutation as a “mistake” in the DNA
sequence. But why should we talk about
mutations, including the ones causing red
hair or blue eyes, as if they’re abnormal or
undesirable? When the lesson on muta-
tion came around, I made sure to deine it
as a “change” in the DNA sequence.
For years, students in my school
have done a research project on “genetic
diseases.” hey choose from a list of dis-
eases caused by single-gene mutations,
then report on how the mutation leads
to the physiological and social efects of
the disease. I push students to read blogs,
watch YouTube videos, and look through
Reddit forums as ways to understand the
personal experiences of afected individ-
uals rather than only learning from medi-
cal websites. I remind them oten that not
all online content is information and that
all content has an author with their own
perspective that must be interrogated be-
fore being considered a reliable source.
his year, in response to high curios-
ity from students, I expanded the research
topic list to include some intersex traits.
hese occur when genetic mutations lead
to the development of reproductive anat-
omy that doesn’t seem to it the typical
deinitions of male and female.
Halfway through the project, the
implications of our language occurred to
me. Why call intersex a “disease” when
many intersex people understand it as
a natural variation in human bodies?
Indeed, the combined prevalence of all
intersex traits is about as common as red
hair. For the next year, I changed all the
project documents to say “genetic trait”
rather than “genetic disease.”
I feel this language better encom-
passes the diverse ways in which people
experience their own DNA. Some mu-
tations, like the BRCA alleles associated
with breast cancer, are generally viewed
as pathologies to be treated. Others,
like the mutations causing some forms
of dwarism and intersex traits, become
core components of identity and sources
of pride for many individuals.
Diversity Is Never Boring
My students show me that they are
coming to think of genetic variation as
a ubiquitous fact of life, and a source of
endless fascination. hey ask me ques-
tions about whether certain variations
could exist, from variations that they’ve
dreamt up, to powers they’ve seen in a
superhero movie. My students are more
engaged in learning about the complex-
ity of sex determination — the events
during cell division that can lead to in-
dividuals with XO or XXY sex chromo-
somes — than they are in the typical XX/
XY sex chromosomes.
When a student asked about how
twins are made, we sketched out the em-
bryonic development of fraternal versus
identical twins. For fraternal twins, the
diagram shows two large, circular egg
cells each being fertilized by a diferent
long-tailed sperm cell. his creates two
siblings who share 50 percent of their
DNA on average. For identical twins, the
diagram shows just one egg joining with
one sperm, creating a zygote that divides
into two cells, then four, eight, 16, and
so on. When the ball of cells physically
splits, we get two siblings who share 100
percent of their DNA.
With this sketch in mind, I asked the
class to reason out whether genetically
identical twins could be boy-girl twins.
he answer ends up being yes, with gen-
der transition making it all possible. Ac-
tress Laverne Cox is a trans woman with
a cis male identical twin who once played
Laverne’s character in a pre-transition
lashback on television. I myself am a
trans man with an identical twin sister,
and when I share this fact, not a single
student is bored. hey want to know:
“When did you know that you were trans
and she wasn’t?” “Is there a gene that
makes you trans?” “Did you and your
sister do the same things as kids? Can we
see a photo?”
Diversity is what makes it inter-
esting to study living things. By talking
about gender diversity in our classrooms,
we can engage minds, de-pathologize
diference, cultivate empathy, and sup-
port academic rigor for all. n
RESOURCES FOR GENDER-INCLUSIVE
BIOLOGY EDUCATION
Barash, David P. 2012. “he Evolutionary Mystery
of Homosexuality.” he Chronicle of Higher
Education. Nov. 19. bit.ly/BarashArticle
Kremer, William. 2014. “he evolutionary puzzle
of homosexuality.” BBC News. Feb. 18. bit.ly/
KremerArticle
Maday-Travis, Lewis. “6 Ways I Make My Science
Class LGBTQ-Inclusive as a Trans Teacher.”
GLSEN. bit.ly/Maday-TravisArticle
Voice of Social Justice Educators
for Over 30 Years
Subscribe today
Use code RSBK19 to get 10% of your 1, 2, or 3 year subscription.
rethinkingschools.org/subscribe
800-669-4192 (US & Canada) | 802-862-0095 ext. 565 (International)
Dzurick, Alex. 2018. “A Culture of Acceptance.”
he Science Teacher. April 1. bit.ly/30Rh92l
Freeman, Jon. 2018. “LGBTQ scientists are still
let out.” Nature. July 3. https://media.hhmi.org/
biointeractive/click/testing-athletes/
Yoder, Jeremy B. and Allison Mattheis. 2015.
“Queer in STEM: Workplace Experiences
Reported in a National Survey of LGBTQA
Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics Careers.” Journal of
Homosexuality. Aug. 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0
0918369.2015.1078632
Project Biodiversify: projectbiodiversify.org —
A site with tools for promoting diversity and
inclusivity in biology classrooms.
HHMI Sex Veriication Interactive:
https://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/click/
testing-athletes/introduction.html — A site where
students and teachers can learn about the history
of sex veriication of athletes.
World Health Organization: Gender and Genetics:
bit.ly/2oRytqP — Learn about ethical, legal, and
social implications of gender and genetics.
Matt Gilbert’s Sex Chromosome Meiosis Game:
mattgilbert.net/biologygames/meiosis/index.html
— Use this site to explore origins of some intersex
traits.
interACT-Chromosome Letter:
bit.ly/ChromosomeLetter — A powerful letter
from advocates for intersex youth to educational
providers.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 51
52 | FALL 2019 ADRIANA VAWDREY
I
always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up because
they were the adults in my life who most looked like they
had their shit together.
hey showed up at school each day, alert, well slept,
with their cofee breath, neat clothes, prepared. I spent a
lot of time as a kid imagining their lives outside of school. I
imagined them waking up in clean, neat, cozy homes, waking
up healthily early, drinking cofee, reading the paper, coming
to school ready to teach.

Sharing Our Real Selves

How diferent that was from my
own life, where adults slept all day in
dark bedrooms or were gone. Waking
up in a cold dirty house trying to ind
clean clothes to wear, amidst piles of gar-
bage because the trash service had been
cut of, sour milk in the fridge, hoping
the neighbor was able to jump-start our
car, my father screaming the whole way
to school so that the irst place I always
had to go, before the attendance oice to
check in late, was the bathroom, where
I’d wash of the mascara from my cheeks
and run cold water over folded paper
towels to make a compress for my red
and swollen crying eyes. I could go check
in once it looked like I hadn’t been crying
anymore.
One of my favorite teachers in high
school was my English teacher, Sam.
He was iery and a little weird and held
high expectations for us. Sometimes he
could be harsh but he was always real. I
looked up to him not just as a teacher,
but as a human being as well. I imagined
his life was impossibly neat and tidy, bike
rides on the weekend with his wife, clean
house, reading books.
I don’t remember how it came up
but one day he was telling us about his
father. He told us his father was a raging
alcoholic and years ago, when he was a
young adult, he told his father he would
talk to him again when he stopped drink-
ing. He said it had been years and he still
loved his father but he still drank so Sam BY KATY ALEXANDER
still didn’t have a relationship with him. I
was shocked. I had never heard a teach- Katy Alexander (katy.m.alexander@
er talk about something like this before. gmail.com) is a special education teacher
his wasn’t a neat and tidy life. I realized in Portland, Oregon.
I knew nothing really about the lives of Illustrator Adriana Vawdrey’s work can
my teachers, these adults who looked be seen at adrianavawdrey.com
like they had their shit together.
I also realized this person with this
mess in their life had made a life for him-
self on his terms. He cut of communica-
tion from his father so that he could keep
himself healthy. I didn’t know people
could do that. I had thought I’d be tied
to my family forever. I learned a lot from
Sam about reading critically, speaking up
even when your opinion is unpopular,
and writing a great essay, but the most
important thing he taught me was that I
could make a life on my own terms. hat
wasn’t part of any state standards, text-
book, or written curriculum. I wonder
what made him share that with us that
day, and if he had any idea of the impact
it had.
My irst year student teaching I
wondered about how much of my own
life to share with students, trying to ig-
ure out what those boundaries are. Ev-
erything I was learning in my graduate
program was telling me that to be profes-
sional meant to keep one’s personal life
out of the classroom — not to bring in
our opinions or politics or problems.
One day at lunch I was talking to a

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 53
girl, Taylor, who lived with a foster fam-
ily just down the street from me, with
wonderful parents. She was crying.
“I’m so worried about my mom. Not
my foster mom, my other mom. No one
knows where she is. She’s using drugs
again and she’s homeless, and no one
knows where she is.”
I felt something inside me crack. My
own mother had been evicted from her
subsidized housing a year before. She
NEW FROM CITY LIGHTS PUBLISHERS
“Rustin’s story could encourage
young people to ight for
change.” —School Library
Journal Starred Review
moved two states away and had been in
various forms of homelessness — living
in tents and RVs, shelters, the streets. She
was using drugs again and always lost
the phones we sent her. We’d go months
without hearing from her and I’d dread
a phone call telling me she was hurt or
dead. I hesitated. I knew what it felt like
to feel so alone, to feel like no one else
had problems like this, that no one else
could relate. I didn’t want Taylor to feel
alone, but I also didn’t want to jeopardize
my relationship with her as her teacher.
I decided to risk it, and decided to share
enough so that Taylor would know what
we had in common, but not so much that
it would become about my experience
and not her experience.
“I know how hard that is. My mom
is homeless and I don’t know where she is
either. I know,” I said. Taylor and I shared
that moment. I couldn’t make her life
easier, I couldn’t take the burden of her
shoulders, I couldn’t go ind her other
mom, get her safe somewhere, and make
her life neat and tidy. But I could be with
her in that moment, and show Taylor
that she wasn’t alone.
Teachers aren’t responsible for only
teaching reading, writing, and math.
Whether we mean to or not, we’re also
showing them ways of being grown-up
human beings. Many kids get a lot of
good models for that at home. And some
kids, like Taylor, like the kid I was, don’t.
hose kids need us to show them what
it’s like to make a life amidst the messy
parts. hey need us to show enough of
ourselves so that they know they’re not
alone.
I’m thoughtful about what and how
much I do choose to share with my stu-
dents. Ultimately I am their teacher, and
whatever I’m sharing with them must
have teaching behind it. It’s not teaching
something in the state standards, but it’s
also not sharing for the sake of sharing.
It’s certainly not sharing for my sake, or
for my understanding or my healing.
I had a professor once in college
who managed to bring everything back
to his recent, painful divorce. I didn’t
learn a lot about philosophy from him,
but I learned a lot about the bitterness in
a man’s broken heart, and I don’t want to
be that kind of teacher.

“his book contains great

explanations of complicated
terms/movements/ideologies,
numerous graphics, and some
basic discussion questions to
use in classroom teaching.”
—Social Justice Books,
Community Shares partners with corporations
A Teaching for Change Project
that want to offer their employees social
justice, women’s, and environmental-oriented
*TEACHERS! Now Available: charities as giving options in their annual
Discussion Guide & Common workplace campaign.
Core Standards Guide
Community Shares of Greater Milwaukee
Contact Stacey Lewis at builds capacity to strengthen local Wisconsin
stacey@citylights.com nonprofits working for social justice, animal
citylights.com welfare, and a healthy environment.
ISBN (Paperback)
9780872867659 Visit us at www.CommunitySharesMKE.org
eISBN 9780872867987
$13.95 | 172 pages

54 | FALL 2019
 When I was in school, I didn’t know
THIRD EDITION • FULLY REVISED
what kind of place there was for me in
the world, and I needed people, like my
English teacher Sam, to show me what a
possible future might look like for my-
The New Teacher Book
Edited by Linda Christensen, Stan Karp, Bob Peterson, and Moé Yonamine
self. I needed people to normalize the
kinds of challenges I was experiencing
in my own life. hat’s what I try to think Finding purpose, balance, and hope during
about when I think about when and how
and what to share about myself with my your irst years in the classroom
students. Who isn’t being seen? Who
doesn’t see a place for themselves, or a
future for themselves?
Sometimes it’s big and sometimes
it’s the little, mundane details of life that
my students need to hear. For the kids “The New Teacher Book
who live in apartments and feel out of covers the questions
place at the aluent school I teach at, I that confound and
make sure that everyone knows I rent an dilemmas that
apartment. On my irst-day-of-school paralyze new teachers
slideshow where I share generally about from a holistic,
myself, I make sure to include pictures of anti-racist, student-
some friends of mine who are a married centered perspective.
lesbian couple. Around Mother’s Day, It strikes the perfect
when one of my co-workers reminds our balance of pieces that
students to do something nice for their comfort and pieces
moms, I chime in to say that not every- that challenge.”
one has a great relationship with their
ROSE PETERSON
mom, or some people’s moms are dead,
High School English Teacher,
and there are so many other people in Milwaukee, WI
our lives who “mom” us. I let them know
that some years I called my aunt or a
friend on Mother’s Day.
Having your shit together doesn’t
mean perfect, doesn’t mean impossibly
neat and tidy, doesn’t mean it’s without
complications, complexities, or stigmas,
Teaching is a lifelong challenge, but the irst few years
because having a healthy life isn’t about
avoiding the messes — it’s about how in the classroom are the hardest. This expanded third
we deal with them. Our students need edition of The New Teacher Book ofers practical guidance
models of adults having messy lives, on how to lourish in schools and classrooms and connect
complicated lives, lives that don’t look
in meaningful ways with students and families from all
like the stock photos that come inside
picture frames. hey need moments of cultures and backgrounds.
communion as they work through their
own adversities, and need to know that
there is a possible future for them where
Visit rethinkingschools.org/NTB
things aren’t perfect, aren’t impossibly
neat and tidy, but a future on their own to order your copy
terms, where they know they can handle
Paperback • 352 pages • 978-0-942961-03-4
what comes their way. n
Only $24.95
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 55
 rethinking schools
is a quarterly anti-racist and social justice education
magazine written by people who understand the daily
realities of our schools — and what needs to change.

Subscriptions include access to the online archives and

PDF version of magazine!
3 Years $46.41 (BIGGEST SAVINGS) | 2 Years $33.31  | 1 Year $17.85

Order now at www.rethinkingschools.org

The New Teacher Book THIRD EDITION Rethinking Ethnic Studies

Finding purpose, balance, and hope during
Edited by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Miguel Zavala,
your first years in the classroom Christine Sleeter, and Wayne Au
Edited by Linda Christensen, Stan Karp,
Bob Peterson, and Moé Yonamine Built around core themes of indigeneity, colonization,
anti-racism, and
Teaching is a lifelong challenge, but the irst activism, Rethinking
few years in the classroom are the hardest. This Ethnic Studies ofers
expanded third edition of The New Teacher Book vital resources for
grew out of Rethinking Schools workshops with educators committed
early-career teachers. It ofers practical guidance to the ongoing
on how to lourish in schools and classrooms struggle for racial
and connect with students and families from all justice in our schools.
cultures and backgrounds. As education scholar
Paperback • 368 pages
Michelle Fine wrote, “This book is a timely and
ISBN: 978-0-942961-02-7
multi-voiced volume braiding critique and radical
possibility. This may be the very text that young Only $24.95*
educators need to press beyond those trying
irst years, to teach fully and creatively, and to inspire freedom dreams in
their classrooms.”

Paperback • 352 pages • ISBN: 978-0-942961-03-4

Only $24.95* Teaching for Black Lives

Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au

Teaching for Black

Lives grows out of the
Teaching a People’s History of
movement for Black
Abolition and the Civil War lives. We recognize
Edited by Adam Sanchez
that anti-Black racism
constructs Black
Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and
people, and Blackness,
the Civil War is a collection of 10 classroom-
as not counting as
tested lessons on one of the most transformative
human life. This book
periods in U.S. history. These lessons encourage
provides resources
students to take a critical look at the popular
and demonstrates how
narrative that centers Abraham Lincoln as the
teachers can connect
Great Emancipator and ignores the resistance of
curriculum to young
abolitionists and enslaved people. The collection
people’s lives and root
aims to help students understand how ordinary
their concerns and
citizens can challenge unjust laws, take action
daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms
together, pressure politicians to act, and fundamentally change society.
are set up. We also highlight the hope and beauty of
Paperback • 181 pages • ISBN: 978-0-942961-05-8 student activism and collective action.
Only $19.95* Paperback • 368 pages • ISBN: 978-0-942961-04-1

Only $29.95*

56 | FALL 2019
A People’s Curriculum for the Earth
Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis
Edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart
Engaging environmental teaching
activities from Rethinking Schools
magazine alongside classroom-
friendly readings on climate
change, energy, water, food,
pollution — and the people who are
working to make things better.
Paperback • 433 pages
ISBN: 978-0-942961-57-7
Only $24.95*
Reading, Writing,
and Rising Up
SECOND EDITION
Teaching About Social Justice
and the Power of the Written
Word
By Linda Christensen
For almost two decades, teachers
have looked to Reading, Writing,
and Rising Up as a trusted text to
integrate social justice teaching
in language arts classrooms. Now,
Linda Christensen is back with a fully revised, updated version.
Ofering essays, teaching models, and a remarkable collection
of student writing, Christensen builds on her catalog of social
justice scholarship with a breathtaking set of tools and wisdom for
teachers.
Paperback • 320 pages • ISBN: 978-0-942961-69-0
Only $24.95*
Rethinking Multicultural Education
Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice
Edited by Wayne Au
SECOND EDITION
This important book collects the
best Rethinking Schools articles
dealing with race and culture
in the classroom. A powerful
vision of anti-racist, social justice
education.
Paperback • 418 pages
ISBN: 978-0-942961-53-9
Only $24.95*
Rethinking Sexism,
Gender, and
Sexuality
Edited by Annika Butler-Wall,
Kim Cosier, Rachel L. S. Harper,
Jef Sapp, Jody Sokolower,
and Melissa Bollow Tempel
Rethinking Sexism, Gender,
and Sexuality is a collection of
inspiring stories about how to
integrate feminist and LGBTQ
content into curriculum. Here
is a vision of classrooms and
schools that nurtures all children and their families.
Paperback • 476 pages • ISBN: 978-0-942961-59-1
Only $24.95*
Rethinking Bilingual Education
Welcoming Home Languages in Our Classrooms
Edited by Elizabeth Barbian,
Grace Cornell Gonzales, and
Pilar Mejía
In this collection, teachers bring
students’ home languages
into their classrooms — from
powerful bilingual social justice
curriculum to strategies that
honor students’ languages
in schools that do not have
bilingual programs. Bilingual
educators and advocates share
how they keep equity at the
center and build solidarity
between diverse communities.
Teachers and students speak to the tragedy of language
loss, but also about inspiring work to defend and expand
bilingual programs.
Paperback • 343 pages • ISBN: 978-1-937730-73-4
Only $24.95*
Full catalog at www.rethinkingschools.org/catalog
Use code RSMAG34 FOR 10% of book orders.
Four easy ways to order
1 CALL TOLL-FREE: 800-669-4192 (8 a.m. – 9 p.m. EST, M–F)
2 SECURE ONLINE ORDERING: www.rethinkingschools.org
3 FAX: 802-864-7626
4 MAIL: Rethinking Schools, P.O. Box 2222, Williston, VT 05495
MasterCard, Visa, Discover, American Express and purchase orders accepted.
*Plus shipping and handling. U.S. shipping and handling is 15% of the total
(minimum charge of $4.50). Canadian shipping and handling is 25% of the
total (minimum charge of $5.50). Subscriptions already include shipping
costs. Please make payment in U.S. dollars.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 57
Resources
Novel
Some Places More Than Others
By Renée Watson
(Bloomsbury Press, 2019)
192 pp.
In her newest book, Some Places More
Than Others, Renée Watson adds another
piece of brilliance to her growing body of
award-winning adolescent fiction. Watson
breaks all kinds of conventions for the
young adult genre. Like Toni Morrison, she
removes her characters from the “white
gaze.” In this coming-of-age story, featur-
ing an all-Black cast, Amara is a 12-year-
old girl who is curious about her family
and the world. She is not worried about a
relationship or clothes or fitting in.
Amara lives in a suburb of Portland.
She struggles with her mother’s attempts
to woo her into the fashion designs she
has created for her store, named Amara’s
Closet. Instead, Amara loves the sneakers
her father, a Nike executive, gives her.
During a birthday trip to Harlem with
her father, Amara explores family history
for her class’s “suitcase project” and
uncovers her father’s secrets. Through the
novel, Amara expresses herself through
poetic breaks. But she also revels in the
history of Harlem, taking the reader to
the Schomburg Center, to murals and
statues and bodegas that illustrate Black
history and culture. Some Places More
Than Others is filled with imperfect char-
acters who make mistakes, who forgive,
who readers will want to sit with long
after they finish the book.
58 | FALL 2019
Policy/Activism
Strike Back: Rediscovering Militant Tactics
to Fight the Attacks on Public Employee
Unions
Joe Burns
(Ig Publishing, 2019)
224 pp.
With decades of experience as a union
bargainer and labor lawyer, Joe Burns
delivers a class-conscious, energizing
analysis of public sector unionism that
pinpoints the source of unions’ strength.
With free market ideology infecting every
level of our education system, this book
is an essential read for educators who
hope to harness union power to win the
schools our students deserve. Peppered
with lesser-known stirring episodes of
labor history, excerpts would make useful
additions to union organizing trainings
or history classes. Equal parts strategy,
history, and inspiration, Burns’ new book
will leave activists ready to “strike back.”
Picture Books
Freedom Soup
By Tami Charles
Illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara
(Candlewick, 2019)
32 pp.
In Freedom Soup, Belle, a young girl,
helps her elder, Ti Gran, make soup for
their family’s Haitian liberation and New
Year’s celebration. As the pair go through
the recipe over the course of a snowy
day, Ti Gran tells Belle the story of how
their ancestors overthrew the French en-
slavers and claimed freedom. Beautifully
illustrated, Freedom Soup is a story about
heritage and inheritance. People of all
ages can delight
in its depictions
of joyful dancing,
warm embraces,
and a fragrant
apartment, while
absorbing a
history lesson of
the Haitian Revolution. The book’s end
pages include an author’s note about the
history and the people who inspired it, as
well as the original Freedom Soup recipe.
Todos Iguales:
Un Corrido de Lemon Grove |
All Equal: A Ballad of Lemon Grove
By Christy Hale
(Lee & Low Books, 2019)
40 pp.
Todos Iguales/All Equal is a bilingual,
picture book history of an early school
desegregation case: Roberto Álvarez v.
the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove
School District, argued in the Superior
Court of California in 1931. Author and
illustrator Christy Hale describes how
the Lemon Grove School Board attempt-
ed to push Mexican American students
into subpar schoolhouses and how the
community organized to challenge the
school board in court. Young Roberto
Álvarez, the chosen defendant, narrates
the story. The final pages describe the im-
pact of the Lemon Grove ruling on future
court decisions (like Brown v. Board), and
describe the form and function of the
corrido, a Mexican ballad.
Curriculum K–12 teachers and teacher educators and
focused on bringing Palestine into our
Troublemaker for Justice classrooms and schools.” It’s a wel-
By Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, come resource. The site ofers curricula,
and Michael G. Long recommended videos, and teaching
(City Lights, 2019) articles describing classroom approaches
168 pp. to Palestine — a number of which irst
appeared in Rethinking Schools.
Troublemaker for Justice illuminates the
life and legacy of Bayard Rustin. Black, Teaching Issues
gay, nonviolent activist Rustin was a key
1963 March on Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues:
Washington or- Education for the Liberation of Black
ganizer — among and Brown Girls
other accom- By Monique W. Morris
plishments — but (The New Press, 2019)
passed over for 224 pp.
the spotlight in
the Civil Rights Monique Morris’ new book is a power-
Movement be- ful call to action for educators, parents,
cause of his sexu- administrators, and policymakers to
ality, Communist reimagine
Party associa- what schools
tions, and history could look
as a conscientious like when
objector during World War II. Authors Black and
Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, Brown girls
and Michael G. Long provide middle and are placed at
high school students with a biography of the center of
Rustin that illustrates how the personal is conversation.
political. Rustin saw the nation’s prob- Morris uses
lems clearly and in a way that connected the analogy
diferent forms of oppression. Young of the blues
readers will take away valuable lessons to carefully
about identity, civics, and 20th-century describe
history. the knowledge that Black and Brown
girls possess and how important it is that
Teach Palestine educators use participatory practices in
teachpalestine.org schools as a method of healing. She says,
“They [blues women] know what they
The Israeli and U.S. war against Palestin- know, and they know that they know
ians continues. And so does the curricular it.” The book moves through “tracks” or
silence — until now. Sponsored by the chapters, in the name of blues women,
Middle East Children’s Alliance, Teach that weave together personal anecdotes,
Palestine is a new website “by and for jarring research and statistics, vignettes
from educators and community organiz-
ers, and examples of efective practices
from around the world. Through critically
examining topics such as restorative
practices, policing and school discipline,
social-emotional learning, and culturally
airming pedagogy and practices, Morris
makes a strong case for building rela-
tionships inside and outside of schools
that recognize and celebrate the beauty
and humanity of Black and Brown girls’
experiences.
Anti-Islamophobic Curriculums
By Rahat Zaidi
(Peter Lang Publishing, 2017)
134 pp.
This short book examines the history of
multicultural policy and teaching in Cana-
dian schools in the context of the global
rise of Islamophobia. As Zaidi points out,
Islamophobia refers both to being against
Muslims — the people — and against
Islam — the religion. Zaidi summarizes
and critiques “culturally relevant, respon-
sive, and
sustaining”
approaches
to multi-
culturalism
and argues
that given
the dramatic
global rise in
Islamophobia
since 2001,
it’s essential
for educators
to consciously weave anti-Islamophobic
lessons into our curriculum.
Zaidi insists that this must start with
5-year-olds and be present in the ele-
mentary school curriculum. She provides
brief examples of lessons, including a
fascinating comparison between the Qa-
nat System of irrigation used in Iran and
“modern” irrigation systems in tropical
areas that have been ecological disasters.
Her work has been incorporated into the
provincial social studies curriculum in
Alberta, Canada. Educators in the United
States can learn a lot from this Canadian
scholar.
Reviewed by Bill Bigelow, Linda
Christensen, Missy Zombor, Bob Peterson,
Katie Orr, Cierra Kaler-Jones, and Conner
Suddick.
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 59
 Teaching a People’s History
of Abolition and the Civil War
EDITED BY ADAM SANCHEZ

“Coming at a moment Teaching a People’s History of

of activism by modern
descendants of the
struggle for freedom,
the book could not be
more timely.”
—Eric Foner
D
itt Clinton Professor
Emeritus of History,
Columbia University
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln
and American Slavery
Abolition and the Civil War is
a collection of 10 classroom-
tested lessons on one of the
most transformative periods in
U.S. history. The collection aims
to help students understand
how ordinary citizens — with
ideas that seem radical and
idealistic — can challenge unjust
laws, take action together,
pressure politicians to act, and
fundamentally change society.

Order your copy at rethinkingschools.org

2019 • PAPERBACK • 181 PAGES • ISBN: 978-0-942961-05-8

$19.95

CONNECT WITH US
BEST SELECTION
of social justice books rethinkingschools.org
zinnedproject.org
for the classroom
Visit SocialJusticeBooks.org facebook.com/rethinkingschools
@RethinkSchools
rethinkingschoolsblog.com

60 | FALL 2019
 A
while back, I was invited to lead a
workshop on teaching the climate
crisis at a teacher education program
at a Portland, Oregon-area college. I
chose an activity I wrote called “he
Mystery of the hree Scary Numbers” — includ-
ed in the Rethinking Schools book A People’s Cur-
riculum for the Earth and at the Zinn Education
Project’s Teach Climate Justice site. It’s based on
a famous Bill McKibben article in Rolling Stone,
“Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” he
terrifying math that McKibben lays out is sim-
ple: In order to keep the climate from warming

TEACH THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

— OUR STUDENTS’ ENEMY
MARK AGNOR | SHUTTERSTOCK

more than two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperatures, the

world’s “carbon budget” is 565 gigatons — carbon of all sources that,
collectively, the world can emit and have a reasonable hope of stay-
ing under two degrees. he terrifying number is how much carbon is
stored in the known reserves of fossil fuel companies and countries that
act like fossil fuel companies, like Saudi Arabia: 2,795 gigatons — ive
BY BILL BIGELOW times the amount of the world’s carbon budget. Yes, I know, there are
lots of problems with this formulation. For example, two degrees is a
Bill Bigelow (bill@ horribly inadequate target, one that will condemn much of the world
rethinkingschools.org) to climate catastrophe. And the 2,795 number grows every day, as prof-
is curriculum editor of it-driven fossil fuel companies — and the governments they purchase
Rethinking Schools — drill and dig and scrape the Earth for still more fossil fuels. But the
magazine, and co-edited core lesson remains: We cannot burn a substantial portion of known
A People’s Curriculum fossil fuel reserves and hope to survive.
for the Earth: Teaching
Climate Change and the
Environmental Crisis.

RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 61
 In the activity, students receive short
clues on strips of paper about diferent
aspects of the three scary numbers —
565 gigatons, 2,795 gigatons, 2 degrees
Celsius — and circulate in the classroom,
inding people with other clues that con-
nect with theirs. Following the activity,
students write on the three numbers,
what makes them scary, and the implica-
tions: What should we do?
he future teachers had lots of
thoughts on this, but one was especially
passionate: “We have to convince the fos-
sil fuel companies to keep all these fossil
fuels in the ground — it’s crazy to con-
tinue to explore for more and more when
we already have too much.”
his was a well-meaning comment.
But think about this for a moment. he
climate crisis puts at risk the future of
life on Earth. It is lunacy that humanity
and nature should be held hostage by the
fossil fuel industry, that we should have
to — or even could — plead with them
to exercise restraint. hese corporations
cannot be reasoned with; they cannot be
talked into committing suicide as fossil
fuel producers. An article in the Aug.
9, 2019, edition of the New York Times
(“With Saudi Aramco Set to Disclose
Earnings, Could an I.P.O. Be Next?”) un-
derscored what’s at stake for these com-
panies. Aramco, the world’s largest oil
producer, had 2018 proits of $111 bil-
lion, making it by far the most proitable
corporation in the world. Said another
way: he more this industry ignores the
climate crisis, the richer it gets.
And yet, the threat the fossil fuel
industry poses to the future of life on
Earth makes almost no appearance in
mainstream curriculum. Here in Oregon,
where I taught social studies for almost 30
years, the state K–12 social studies stan-
dards, approved in May of 2018, include
not a single mention of “fossil fuels,” “oil,”
“coal,” or “gas” in the standards’ 27 pages.
he Next Generation Science Stan-
dards acknowledge that “Human activ-
ities, such as the release of greenhouse
gases from burning fossil fuels, are major
62 | FALL 2019
factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean
surface temperature (global warming).”
But the standards fail to acknowledge
the fundamental contradiction between
continued fossil fuel use and planetary
survival. Instead, a middle school NGSS
standard ofers this meek (and convo-
luted) suggestion: “Reducing the level of
climate change and reducing human vul-
nerability to whatever climate changes
do occur depend on the understanding
of climate science, engineering capabili-
ties, and other kinds of knowledge, such
as understanding human behavior and
on applying that knowledge wisely in de-
cisions and activities.”
No doubt, teachers can use this stan-
dard to teach critically, but this obfuscat-
ing language fails to acknowledge the
obvious: We are in a climate emergency;
our house is burning down and it’s ur-
gent that we stop those people who are
pouring fuel on the ire.
We need a curricular conversation
about how we can teach about fossil fuels
from the earliest grades through teacher
education, and in multiple disciplines. At
the Zinn Education Project, we feature
simulations and role plays that can help
students recognize how the fossil fuel in-
dustry jeopardizes life everywhere:
August 2019 the Nebraska Su-
• “he Climate Crisis Trial: A preme Court gave a green light
Role Play on the Roots of Glob- to the route through that state.
al Warming” puts oil and coal • And to underscore the relentless
companies on trial, along with greed of the fossil fuel industry
an assortment of other social next door in North Dakota,
groups — like U.S. consumers, “Standing with Standing Rock:
and even the system of glob- A Role Play on the Dakota Ac-
al capitalism — for “putting cess Pipeline” asks students to
at risk the lives of countless look at the winners and losers
millions of people around the of this pipeline, and especially
world.” to examine the impact on the
• In “Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Indigenous peoples of the area,
Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands whose supply of clean water
and the Keystone XL Pipeline,” this project jeopardizes.
multiple groups wrestle with the • “Coal, Chocolate Chip Cook-
question of whether the presi- ies, and Mountaintop Removal”
dent should approve this mas- begins with a clever but prob-
sive fossil fuel enterprise — a lematic game developed by the
project still in the news, as in late American Coal Foundation,

which turns mountaintop re-
moval coal mining into a play-
ful hunt for buried chocolate
chips in cookies. Played criti-
cally, the game can expose the
brutality of mountaintop re-
moval mining, how the market
system externalizes social and
environmental costs, and the
propaganda spread by the fossil
fuel industry.
• In a role play that emphasizes
hope and possibility, “Blocka-
dia: Teaching How the Move-
ment Against Fossil Fuels Is
Changing the World,” students
meet activists from seven dif-
ferent organizations who in
imaginative ways challenge
the fossil fuel industry, as they
create non-polluting alterna-
tives in the process. All the
groups ind ways to express
solidarity with the others.
hese lessons tell the truth about
the deadly impact of fossil fuels, so as to
engage students in the vital work of ex-
ploring alternatives — through organiz-
ing and activism. And teaching against
fossil fuels is not just for older students.
In a forthcoming Rethinking Schools ar-
ticle, Portland 2nd-grade teacher Rachel
Hanes describes a Storyline project she
taught with her students, in which citi-
zens in their imaginary community of
Happy Town receive a letter from the
president of the Carson Environmen-
tal Oil Co., proposing a pipeline that
will come through a part of their town
RICK RAPPAPORT
and “bring many new high-paying jobs
to your area.” Student-citizens joined a
town hall meeting to discuss the propos-
al, wrote persuasive letters to the mayor,
and defeated the proposal in a commu-
nity-wide vote. Rachel followed up by
introducing her students to other young
activists at Standing Rock and in the Our
Children’s Trust lawsuit.
“Climate justice” education means a
lot of things. But one key aspect is that we
involve students in probing the social and
economic roots of this crisis. he climate
crisis is inexplicable without looking at
the intersection of fossil fuels and the
capitalist system. Students everywhere
need to understand the role that the fossil
fuel industry plays in jeopardizing their
futures — and learn how to resist. Today,
these should be basic skills. n
RETHINKING SCHOOLS | 63
rethinking schools PERIODICALS
6737 West Washington Street
Suite 3249
Milwaukee, WI 53214

Address service requested.