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Preface

Publishing the first edition of Rethinking Our Classrooms in 1994 was a landmark accom- plishment for Rethinking Schools. Until

then, the organization had published

only a quarterly journal and occasional

pamphlets. This first book marked

the beginning of Rethinking Schools’

growth from a Milwaukee-based quar-

terly to a publisher that provides social

justice resources for teachers and pro-

spective teachers around the country.

It set the tone, style, and standard for

many more books to come, including

a second volume of Rethinking Our

Classrooms in 2001.

Thirteen years and 160,000 copies

later, profound changes in the social,

political, and educational landscape

have intensified the need to work for

social justice in public education. No

Child Left Behind (NCLB) has fueled

the trend toward increased testing

and standardization. We suffer from

top-down and outside-in education

reform that does not respect teachers,

students, or their communities. More

and more, elementary teachers must

teach scripted reading curricula, and

teachers in all grade levels are increas-

ingly pressured to teach to tests. The

marginalizing of multicultural, anti-

racist education is making it more dif-

ficult for the histories and voices of our

children’s communities to enter the

classroom. Beyond our schools, war

and militarism, environmental degra-

dation, and heightened class and racial

inequality threaten all of us, but espe-

cially children.

This new edition of Rethinking

Our Classrooms, Volume 1, has been

expanded to speak to these challenges.

We’ve added essays on science and

environmental education, immigration

and language, military recruitment,

teaching about the world through

mathematics, and gay and lesbian

issues. Updated essays on NCLB, stan-

dards, and testing address the intensi-

fied assaults on public education.

This revised edition, enriched by

new writers addressing new topics,

continues to uphold the values and

aspirations of Rethinking Schools. We

still see the classroom as a primary

site for school reform, celebrate the

work and perspectives of teachers, and

maintain that anti-racist, social justice

education must be at the fore of any

analysis of public schooling and at the

center of classroom practice.

Over the past 13 years, we have heard

from K–12 teachers, university educa-

tors, and others across the country that

Rethinking Our Classrooms has helped

them in their efforts to ensure a quality

education for every child. We hope this

new edition proves even more useful

than its predecessor.

—the editors

Introduction: Creating Classrooms for Equity and Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

Part One: Points of Departure “Lions”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

By Langston Hughes

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us: Critiquing Cartoons and Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

By Linda Christensen

Rethinking ‘The Three Little Pigs’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 By Ellen Wolpert

10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books for Racism and Sexism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

By the Council on Interracial Books for Children

Celebrating the Joy in Daily Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 By Linda Christensen

“Ode to My Socks • Oda a los calcetines” . . . . . . . . . . . 13 By Pablo Neruda

Taking Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education Seriously . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

An interview with Enid Lee

“My Hair Is Long” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 By Loyen Redhawk Gali

Part two: Rethinking my Classroom Race and Respect Among Young Children. . . . . . . . . . 20

By Rita Tenorio

Holding Nyla: Lessons from an Inclusion Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

By Katie Kissinger

Teaching for Social Justice: One Teacher’s Journey . . . 28 By Bob Peterson

Songs That Promote Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 By Bob Peterson

“Forgiving My Father” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 By Justin Morris

Playing with Gender: Lessons from an Early Childhood Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

By Ann Pelo

The Challenge of Classroom Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 By Bob Peterson

Helping Students Deal with Anger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 By Kelley Dawson Salas

Building Community from Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 By Linda Christensen

Discipline: No Quick Fix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 By Linda Christensen

“Honeybees” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 By Paul Fleischman

Teaching About Global Warming in Truck Country. . 57 By Jana Dean

Students Use Math to Confront Overcrowding . . . . . . 63 By Erin E. Turner and Beatriz T. Font Strawhun

Getting Off the Track: Stories from an Untracked Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

By Bill Bigelow

“what the mirror said” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 By Lucille Clifton

Part three: teaching ideas Using Pictures to Combat Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

By Ellen Wolpert

My Mom’s Job Is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 By Matt Witt

Father Was a Musician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 By Dyan Watson

Contents Rethinking Our Classrooms: teaching for equity and Justice Volume 1, new edition

vii

There’s More to Heroes Than He-Man . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 By Marcie Osinsky

The Military Recruitment Minefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 By Bill Bigelow

Coping with TV: Some Lesson Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 By Bob Peterson

What Do We Say When We Hear ‘Faggot’?. . . . . . . . . . 95 By Leonore Gordon

Learning from Worms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 By Rachel Cloues

The Organic Goodie Simulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond

World Poverty and World Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 By Susan Hersh and Bob Peterson

Math, SATs, and Racial Profiling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 By Eric Gutstein

The Day Sondra Took Over: Helping Students Become Self-Directed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

By Cynthia M. Ellwood

Little Things Are Big . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 By Jesús Colón

Haiku and Hiroshima: Teaching About the Atomic Bomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

By Wayne Au

Students as Textbook Detectives: An Exercise in Uncovering Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson

What Can Teachers Do About Sexual Harassment? . . 118 By Ellen Bravo and Larry Miller

Flirting vs. Sexual Harassment: Teaching the Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

By Nan Stein and Lisa Sjostrom

Celebrating the Student’s Voice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 By Linda Christensen

“Rayford’s Song”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 By Lawson Inada

Promoting Social ImaginationThrough Interior Monologues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen

“Two Women”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Anonymous

Role Plays: Show, Don’t Tell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 By Bill Bigelow

Testing, Tracking, and Toeing the Line: A Role Play on the Origins of the Modern High School . . . . . . . 133

By Bill Bigelow

‘Salt of the Earth’ Grounds Students in Hope . . . . . . 141 By S. J. Childs

“The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.” . . . . . . . . . . 144 By Nikki Giovanni

Part Four: Rethinking Our assumptions My Dirty Little Secret: Why I Don’t Grade Papers . . 146

By Linda Christensen

Expectations and ‘At-Risk’ Children: One Teacher’s Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

By L. C. Clark

Teachers and Cultural Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 By Asa G. Hilliard III

Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard? . . . . . . 154 by Linda Christensen

Seeing Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 By Lisa Delpit

When Small Is Beautiful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 An interview with Héctor Calderón

I Won’t Learn from You! Confronting Student Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

By Herbert Kohl

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new eDitiOnviii

Food Is Not for Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 By Jean Hannon

The Politics of Children’s Literature: What’s Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

By Herbert Kohl

“In Memory of Crossing the Columbia” . . . . . . . . . . 172 By Elizabeth Woody

Heather’s Moms Got Married: Creating a Gay- and Lesbian-Friendly Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

By Mary Cowhey

Thoughts on Teaching Native American Literature . . 175 By Joseph Bruchac

Why Students Should Study History . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 An interview with Howard Zinn

History Book Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 By Howard Zinn

“To the Young Who Want to Die” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 By Gwendolyn Brooks

Part Five: beyond the Classroom Why We Need to Go Beyond the Classroom . . . . . . . 188

By Stan Karp

“Rebellion Against the North Side” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 By Naomi Shihab Nye

Teachers Teaching Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 By Linda Christensen

Equity Claims for NCLB Don’t Pass the Test . . . . . . . 200 By Stan Karp

Why Standardized Tests Are Bad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 By Terry Meier

“Lineage” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 By Margaret Walker

Students Mobilize for Immigrant Rights . . . . . . . . . . 206 By Ryan Knudson and Al Levie

Part six: Resources Poetry Teaching Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

By Linda Christensen

Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen

Video Teaching Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen

Books for Young People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Curricula and Teaching Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Periodicals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Poetry Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

COntents ix

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOnx

introduction: Creating Classrooms for equity and social Justice

Rethinking Our Classrooms begins from the premise that schools and classrooms should be laboratories for a more just society

than the one we now live in. Unfortu-

nately, too many schools are training

grounds for boredom, alienation, and

pessimism. Too many schools fail to

confront the racial, class, and gender

inequities woven into our social fab-

ric. Teachers are often simultaneously

perpetrators and victims, with little

control over planning time, class size,

or broader school policies—and much

less over the unemployment, hopeless-

ness, and other “savage inequalities”

that help shape our children’s lives.

But Rethinking Our Classrooms is

not about what we cannot do; it’s about

what we can do. Brazilian educator

Paulo Freire writes that teachers should

attempt to “live part of their dreams

within their educational space.” Class-

rooms can be places of hope, where

students and teachers gain glimpses of

the kind of society we could live in and

where students learn the academic and

critical skills needed to make it a reality.

We intend the articles in Rethinking Our

Classrooms to be both visionary and

practical; visionary because we need

to be inspired by each other’s vision

of schooling; practical because for too

long teachers have been preached at by

theoreticians, well removed from class-

rooms, who are long on jargon and

short on specific examples.

We’ve drawn the articles, stories,

poems, and lessons in Rethinking Our

Classrooms from different academic dis-

ciplines and grade levels. Despite varia-

tions in emphasis, a common social

and pedagogical vision unites this col-

lection. This vision is characterized by

several interlocking components that

together comprise what we call a social

justice classroom. In Rethinking Our

Classrooms we argue that curriculum

and classroom practice must be:

n Grounded in the lives of our stu-

dents. All good teaching begins with a

respect for children, their innate curi-

osity and their capacity to learn. Cur-

riculum should be rooted in children’s

needs and experiences. Whether we’re

teaching science, mathematics, English,

or social studies, ultimately the class

has to be about our students’ lives as

well as about a particular subject. Stu-

dents should probe the ways their lives

connect to the broader society, and are

often limited by that society.

n Critical. The curriculum should

equip students to “talk back” to the

world. Students must learn to pose

essential critical questions: Who makes

decisions and who is left out? Who

benefits and who suffers? Why is a

given practice fair or unfair? What are

its origins? What alternatives can we

imagine? What is required to create

change? Through critiques of adver-

tising, cartoons, literature, legislative

decisions, military interventions, job

structures, newspapers, movies, agri-

cultural practices, or school life, stu-

dents should have opportunities to

question social reality. Finally, student

work must move outside the classroom

walls, so that scholastic learning is

linked to real world problems.

n Multicultural, anti-racist, pro-

justice. In our earlier publication

Rethinking Columbus, we used the Dis-

covery myth to demonstrate how chil-

dren’s literature and textbooks tend to

value the lives of Great White Men over

all others. Traditional materials invite

children into Columbus’s thoughts and

dreams; he gets to speak, claim land,

and rename the ancient homelands of

Native Americans, who appear to have

no rights. Implicit in many traditional

accounts of history is the notion that

children should disregard the lives of

women, working people, and especially

people of color—they’re led to view

history and current events from the

standpoint of the dominant groups.

By contrast, a social justice curricu-

lum must strive to include the lives of

all those in our society, especially the

marginalized and dominated. As anti-

racist educator Enid Lee points out

(see interview, p. 15), a rigorous multi-

culturalism should engage children in

a critique of the roots of inequality in

curriculum, school structure, and the

larger society—always asking: How are

we involved? What can we do?

n Participatory, experiential. Tra-

ditional classrooms often leave little

room for student involvement and ini-

tiative. In a “rethought” classroom, con-

cepts need to be experienced firsthand,

not just read about or heard about.

Whether through projects, role plays,

simulations, mock trials, or experi-

ments, students need to be mentally,

and often physically, active. Our class-

rooms also must provoke students to

develop their democratic capacities: to

question, to challenge, to make real deci-

sions, to collectively solve problems.

n Hopeful, joyful, kind, vision-

ary. The ways we organize classroom

life should seek to make children feel

significant and cared about—by the

teacher and by each other. Unless stu-

dents feel emotionally and physically

safe, they won’t share real thoughts and

feelings. Discussions will be tinny and

dishonest. We need to design activities

where students learn to trust and care

for each other. Classroom life should,

to the greatest extent possible, prefigure

the kind of democratic and just soci-

ety we envision and thus contribute to

building that society. Together students

and teachers can create a “community

of conscience,” as educators Asa Hill-

iard and Gerald Pine call it.

n Activist. We want students to

come to see themselves as truth-tellers

and change-makers. If we ask children

to critique the world but then fail to

encourage them to act, our classrooms

can degenerate into factories for cyni-

cism. While it’s not a teacher’s role to

direct students to particular organiza-

tions, it is a teacher’s role to suggest that

ideas should be acted upon and to offer

students opportunities to do just that.

Children can also draw inspiration from

historical and contemporary efforts

of people who struggled for justice. A

critical curriculum should be a rainbow

of resistance, reflecting the diversity of

people from all cultures who acted to

make a difference, many of whom did

so at great sacrifice. Students should

be allowed to learn about and feel con-

nected to this legacy of defiance.

n Academically rigorous. A social

justice classroom equips children not

only to change the world but also to

maneuver in the one that exists. Far

from devaluing the vital academic

skills young people need, a critical and

activist curriculum speaks directly to

the deeply rooted alienation that cur-

rently discourages millions of students

from acquiring those skills.

A social justice classroom offers

more to students than do traditional

classrooms and expects more from stu-

dents. Critical teaching aims to inspire

levels of academic performance far

greater than those motivated or mea-

sured by grades and test scores. When

But as vital as it is to reimagine and

reorganize classroom practice, ulti-

mately it’s insufficient. Teachers who

want to construct more equitable,

more meaningful, and more lively

educational experiences for children

must also concern themselves with

issues beyond the classroom walls.

For example, if a school uses so-called

ability grouping to sort students, then

no matter how successful we are in

our efforts to remake classroom life,

many students will still absorb nega-

tive messages about their capacity to

achieve. We need to confront tracking

and standardized testing, the funding

inequalities within and between school

districts, and the frequent reluctance

of teacher unions to address issues

of quality education. Rethinking our

classrooms requires inventing strate-

gies so that teachers can make alliances

with parents and community organi-

zations who have an interest in equity.

Toward this end we’ve offered a chap-

ter, “Beyond the Classroom.”

As we go to press with Rethinking

Our Classrooms, there are many reasons

to be discouraged about the future:

Districts across the country continue

to slash budgets; violence continues

to plague schools; attempts to priva-

tize the schools have not slowed; and

the country’s productive resources are

still used to make more technologi-

cal goodies, fancier athletic shoes, and

more sophisticated weaponry, rather

than used in less profitable arenas like

education and affordable housing.

There is a Zulu expression: “If the

future doesn’t come toward you, you

have to go fetch it.” We hope Rethink-

ing Our Classrooms will be a useful

tool in the movement to go fetch a

better future: in our classrooms, in

our schools, and in the larger society.

There are lots of us out there. Critical

and activist teachers work all across the

country. Let’s make our voices heard.n

—the editors

children write for real audiences, read

books and articles about issues that

really matter, and discuss big ideas with

compassion and intensity, “academics”

starts to breathe. Yes, we must help stu-

dents “pass the tests,” (even as we help

them analyze and critique the harmful

impact of test-driven education). But

only by systematically reconstructing

classroom life do we have any hope of

cracking the cynicism that lies so close

to the heart of massive school failure,

and of raising academic expectations

and performance for all our children.

n Culturally sensitive. Critical

teaching requires that we admit we

don’t know it all. Each class presents

new challenges to learn from our stu-

dents and demands that we be good

researchers, and good listeners. These

days, the demographic reality of school-

ing makes it likely that white teachers

will enter classrooms filled with children

of color. As African-American educator

Lisa Delpit writes in her review of the

book White Teacher (see p. 158), “When

teachers are teaching children who are

different from themselves, they must call

upon parents in a collaborative fashion

if they are to learn who their students

really are.” They must also call upon

culturally diverse colleagues and com-

munity resources for insights into the

communities they seek to serve. What

can be said about racial and cultural dif-

ferences between teachers and students

also holds true for class differences.

* * *

We’re skeptical of the “inspirational

speakers” administrators bring to fac-

ulty meetings, who exhort us to become

super-teachers and classroom magi-

cians. Critical teaching requires vision,

support, and resources, not magic. We

hope the stories, critiques, and lesson

ideas here will offer useful examples

which can be adapted in classrooms of

all levels and disciplines and in diverse

social milieus. Our goal is to provide

a clear framework to guide classroom

transformation.

intRODuCtiOn xi

P O i n t s O F D e Pa R t u R e Although the one-room schoolhouse is a relic of the past, certain patterns within American education have proven stubbornly durable: the dominance of the teacher’s voice, reluctance to accept cultural diversity, and uncritical acceptance of the social and political order.

The articles in this introductory chapter show how teachers can chal- lenge these patterns through classroom alternatives which deepen learning and enrich interactions between students and teachers.

S u

S a

n L

in a

R u

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Le S

PART One

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn2

Langston Hughes is probably the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance. He chose to write about ordinary people—as he said, “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters … people up today and down tomorrow … beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten.” (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

a lion in a zoo, shut up in a cage, lives a life Of smothered rage.

a lion in the plain, Roaming free, is happy as ever a lion can be.

lions

by langston hughes

points of Departure 3

Together in the Cafeteria? (1997), helps

explain how children develop distorted

views of people outside of their racial/

cultural group:

The impact of racism begins early.

Even in our preschool years, we are

exposed to misinformation about

people different from ourselves.

Many of us grow up in neighbor-

unlearning the myths that bind us Critiquing cartoons and society

by linda Christensen

I was nourished on the milk of Amer-ican culture: I cleaned the dwarves’ house and waited for Prince Charm- ing to bring me life; I played Minnie

Mouse to Mickey’s flower-bearing ado-

ration, and, later, I swooned in Rhett

Butler’s arms—my waist as narrow

and my bosom every bit as heaving as

Scarlett’s. But my daddy didn’t own

a plantation; he owned a rough and

tumble bar frequented by loggers and

fishermen. My waist didn’t dip into an

hourglass; in fact, according to the nov-

els I read my thick ankles doomed me

to be cast as the peasant woman reap-

ing hay while the heroine swept by with

her handsome man in hot pursuit.

Our students suckle the same pap.

Our society’s culture industry colo-

nizes their minds and teaches them

how to act, live, and dream. This indoc-

trination hits young children espe-

cially hard. The “secret education,” as

Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman (1983)

dubs it, delivered by children’s books

and movies, instructs young people to

accept the world as it is portrayed in

these social blueprints. And often that

world depicts the domination of one

sex, one race, one class, or one coun-

try over a weaker counterpart. After

studying cartoons and children’s litera-

ture, my student Omar wrote, “When

we read children’s books, we aren’t just

reading cute little stories, we are dis-

covering the tools with which a young

society is manipulated.”

Beverly Tatum, who wrote the book

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting

hoods where we had limited oppor-

tunities to interact with people

different from our own families.

… Consequently, most of the early

information we receive about “oth-

ers”—people racially, religiously, or

socioeconomically different from

ourselves—does not come as a

result of firsthand experience. The

secondhand information we receive

The jealous stepmother in Disney’s Snow White.

W a

Lt D iS

n e

y C

o .

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn4

has often been distorted, shaped

by cultural stereotypes, and left

incomplete.

Cartoon images, in particular the

Disney movie Peter Pan, were cited by

the children in a research study as their

number one source of information. At

the age of three, these children had a set

of stereotypes in place.

Children’s cartoons, movies, and

literature are perhaps the most influ-

ential genre “read.” Young people,

unprotected by any intellectual armor,

hear or watch these stories again and

again, often from the warmth of their

mother’s or father’s lap. The messages,

or “secret education,” linked with the

security of their homes, underscore the

power these texts deliver. As Tatum’s

research suggests, the stereotypes and

world view embedded in the stories

become accepted knowledge.

I want my students to question this

accepted knowledge and the secret edu-

cation delivered by cartoons as well as

by the canon. Because children’s mov-

ies and literature are short and visual

we can critique them together. We can

view many in a brief period of time, so

students can begin to see patterns in

media portrayals of particular groups

and learn to decode the underlying

assumptions these movies make. Bra-

zilian educator Paulo Freire (in Shor

and Freire, 1987) wrote that instead

of wrestling with words and ideas, too

often students “walk on the words.” If

I want my students to wrestle with the

social text of novels, news, or history

books, they need the tools to critique

media that encourage or legitimate

social inequality.

To help students uncover those old

values planted by Disney, Mattel, and

Nike, and construct more just ones, I

begin this “unlearning the myths” unit

with two objectives. First I want stu-

dents to critique portrayals of hierar-

chy and inequality in children’s mov-

ies and cartoons. Then I want to enlist

them to imagine a better world, char-

acterized by relationships of respect

and equality.

exposing the myths: how to Read Cartoons Prior to watching any cartoons, I ask

students to read the preface and first

chapter of Ariel Dorfman’s book The

Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone

Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent

Heroes Do to Our Minds (1983).

Students keep track of their

responses in a dialogue journal. I pose

the question: Do you agree with Dorf-

man’s position that children receive a

“secret education” in the media? Do

you remember any incidents from

your own childhood that support his

allegations?”

This is difficult for some students.

The dialogue journal spurs them to

argue, to talk back, and create a con-

versation with the writer. Dorfman is

controversial. He gets under their skin.

He wrote:

Industrially produced fiction has

become one of the primary shapers

of our emotions and our intellect

in the twentieth century. Although

these stories are supposed to merely

entertain us, they constantly give us

a secret education. We are not only

taught certain styles of violence, the

latest fashions, and sex roles by TV,

movies, magazines, and comic strips;

we are also taught how to succeed,

how to love, how to buy, how to

conquer, how to forget the past and

suppress the future. We are taught

more than anything else, how not to

rebel.

Many students don’t want to believe

that they have been manipulated by

children’s media or advertising. No one

wants to admit that they’ve been “han-

dled” by the media. They assure me that

they make their own choices and the

media has no power over them—as they

sit in their Fubu, Nike, Timberlands or

whatever the latest fashion rage might

be. And Dorfman analyzes that pose:

There has also been a tendency to

avoid scrutinizing these mass media

products too closely, to avoid asking

the sort of hard questions that can

yield disquieting answers. It is not

strange that this should be so. The

industry itself has declared time and

again with great forcefulness that it

is innocent, that no hidden motives

or implications are lurking behind

the cheerful faces it generates.

Justine, a senior in my Contempo-

rary Literature and Society class, was

bothered by Dorfman’s quest “to dis-

sect those dreams, the ones that had

nourished my childhood and adoles-

cence, that continued to infect so many

of my adult habits.” In her dialogue

journal she responded:

Personally, handling the dissection

of dreams has been a major cause

of depression for me. Not so much

dissecting—but how I react to what

is found as a result of the opera-

tion. It can be overwhelming and

discouraging to find out my whole

self-image has been formed mostly

by others or underneath my worries

about what I look like are years (17

of them) of being exposed to TV

images of girls and their set roles

given to them by TV and the media.

It’s painful to deal with. The idea of

not being completely responsible

for how I feel about things today is

scary. So why dissect the dreams?

Why not stay ignorant about them

and happy? The reason for me is

that those dreams are not unrelated

to my everyday life. They influence

how I behave, think, react to things.

… My dreams keep me from dealing

with an unpleasant reality.

In looking back through this pas-

points of Departure 5

sage and others in her dialogue with

Dorfman, Justine displayed discomfort

with prying apart her identity and dis-

covering where she received her ideas;

yet, she also grudgingly admitted how

necessary this process was if she wanted

to move beyond where she was at the

time. Her discomfort might also have

arisen from feeling incapable of chang-

ing herself or changing the standards

by which she was judged in the larger

society. But she knew such questioning

was important.

In a later section of her journal, she

wrote, “True death equals a genera-

tion living by rules and attitudes they

never questioned and producing more

children who do the same.” Justine’s

reaction may be more articulate than

some, but her sentiments were typical

of many students. She was beginning to

peel back the veneer covering some of

the injustice in our society, and she was

dismayed by what she discovered.

Charting stereotypes I start by showing students old car-

toons because the stereotypes are so

blatant. We look at the roles women,

men, people of color, and poor people

play in the cartoons. I ask students to

watch for who plays the lead. Who

plays the buffoon? Who plays the ser-

vant? I encourage them to look at the

race, station in life, and body type of

each character. What are the characters’

motivation? What do they want out of

life? What’s their mission? If there are

people of color in the film, what do

they look like? How are they portrayed?

What would children learn about this

particular group from this film?

How does the film portray over-

weight people? What about women

other than the main character? What

jobs do you see them doing? What do

they talk about? What are their main

concerns? What would young children

learn about women’s roles in society

if they watched this film and believed

it? What roles do money, possessions,

and power play in the film? Who has it?

Who wants it? How important is it to

the story? What would children learn

about what’s important in this society?

As they view each episode, they fill in

a chart answering these questions. Stu-

dents immediately start yelling out the

stereotypes because they are so obvi-

ous. Early in the unit, I show a Popeye

cartoon, “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves,”

that depicts all Arabs with the same

face, same turban, same body—and

they are all thieves swinging enormous

swords. At one point in the cartoon,

Popeye clips a dog collar on help-

less Olive Oyl and drags her through

the desert. Later, the 40 thieves come

riding through town stealing every-

thing—food, an old man’s teeth, num-

bers off a clock—even the stripe off a

barber pole. The newer cartoons—like

Mulan, Aladdin, and Pocahontas—are

subtler and take more sophistication

to see through, but if students warm

up on the old ones, they can pierce the

surface of the new ones as well.

On first viewing, students sometimes

resist critical analysis. After watching a

Daffy Duck cartoon, for example, Kam-

aui said, “This is just a dumb little car-

toon with some ducks running around

in clothes.” Then students start to notice

patterns—like the absence of female

characters in many of the older car-

toons. When women do appear, they

look like Jessica Rabbit or Playboy cen-

terfolds—even in many of the new and

improved children’s movies.

After filling in a few charts, col-

lectively and on their own, students

write about the generalizations chil-

dren might take away from these tales.

From experience, I’ve discovered that

I need to keep my mouth shut for a

while. If I’m the one pointing out the

stereotypes, it’s the kiss of death to the

exercise. Besides, students are quick to

find the usual stereotypes on their own:

“Look, Ursula the sea witch is ugly and

smart. Hey, she’s kind of dark looking.

The young, pretty ones only want to

hook their man; the old, pretty ones

are mean because they are losing their

looks.” Kenneth noticed that people of

color and poor people are either absent

or servants to the rich, white, pretty

people. Tyler pointed out that the roles

of men are limited as well. Men must be

virile and wield power or be old and the

object of “good-natured” humor. Stu-

dents began seeing beyond the charts

I’d rigged up for them. They looked at

how overweight people were portrayed

as buffoons in episode after episode.

They noted the absence of mothers, the

wickedness of stepparents.

Later in the unit, Mira, a senior,

attacked the racism in these Satur-

day morning rituals. She brought her

familiarity with Native American cul-

tures into her analysis:

Indians in Looney Tunes are also

depicted as inferior human beings.

These characters are stereotypi-

cal to the greatest degree, carrying

tomahawks, painting their faces,

and sending smoke signals as their

only means of communication.

They live in tipis and their language

Young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again, often from the warmth of their mother’s or father’s lap.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn6

reminds the viewer of Neanderthals.

We begin to imagine Indians as

savages with bows and arrows and

long black braids. There’s no room

in our minds for knowledge of the

differences between tribes, like the

Cherokee alphabet or Celilo salmon

fishing.

a black Cinderella? After viewing a number of cartoons,

Kenya scolded parents in an essay, “A

Black Cinderella? Give Me a Break.”

She wrote: “Have you ever seen a black

person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a car-

toon? Did they have a leading role or

were they a servant? What do you think

this is doing to your child’s mind?” She

ended her piece, “Women who aren’t

white begin to feel left out and ugly

because they never get to play the prin-

cess.” Kenya’s piece bristled with anger

at a society that rarely acknowledges the

wit or beauty of women of her race. And

she wasn’t alone in her feelings. Sabrina

wrote, “I’m not taking my kids to see

any Walt Disney movies until they have

a black woman playing the leading role.”

Both young women wanted the race

of the actors changed, but they didn’t

challenge the class or underlying gen-

der inequities that also characterize

the lives of Cinderella, Ariel, and Snow

White.

Kenya’s and Sabrina’s anger is jus-

tified. There should be more women

of color who play the leads in these

white-on-white wedding cake tales.

Of course, there should also be more

women of color on the Supreme Court,

in Congress, as well as scrubbing up for

surgeries. But I want students to under-

stand that if the race of the character is

the only thing changing, injustices may

still remain.

So I have students read Mary Carter

Smith’s delightful retelling of Cinder-

ella, “Cindy Ellie, A Modern Fairy Tale”

(1989), which reads like laughter—

bubbly, warm, spilling over with infec-

tious good humor and playful language.

In Smith’s version, Cindy Ellie, who lived

in East Baltimore, was “one purty young

black sister, her skin like black velvet.”

Her father, “like so many good men, was

weak for a pretty face and big legs and

big hips.” Her stepmother “had a heart

as hard as a rock. The milk of human

kindness had curdled in her breast. But

she did have a pretty face, big legs, and

great big hips. … Well, that fool man fell

right into that woman’s trap.”

Cindy Ellie’s stepsisters were “two

big-footed, ugly gals” who made Cindy

Ellie wait on them hand and foot.

When the “good white folks, the good

Asian folks, and the good black folks all

turned out and voted for a good black

brother, running for mayor” there was

cause for celebration, and a chance for

Cindy Ellie to meet her Prince Charm-

ing, the mayor’s son. With the help of

her Godma’s High John the Conqueror

Root, Cindy Ellie looked like an “Afri-

can Princess.” “Her rags turned into a

dazzling dress of pink African laces!

Her hair was braided into a hundred

shining braids, and on the end of

each braid were beads of pure gold!

… Golden bracelets covered her arms

clean up to her elbows! On each ear

hung five small diamond earrings. On

her tiny feet were dainty golden sandals

encrusted with dazzling jewels! Cindy

Ellie was laid back!”

The students and I love the story.

It is well told and incorporates rich

details that do exactly what Sabrina,

Kenya, and their classmates wanted: It

celebrates the beauty, culture, and lan-

guage of African A racism mericans. It

also puts forth the possibility of cross-

race alliances for social change.

But, like the original tale, Cindy

Ellie’s main goal in life is not work-

ing to end the plight of the homeless

or teaching kids to read. Her goal, like

Cinderella’s, is to get her man. Both

young women are transformed and

made beautiful through new clothes,

new jewels, new hairstyles. Both have

chauffeurs who deliver them to their

men. Cindy Ellie and Cinderella are

nicer and kinder than their stepsis-

ters, but the Prince and Toussant, the

mayor’s son, don’t know that. Both of

the Cinderellas compete for their men

against their sisters and the rest of

the single women in their cities. They

“win” because of their beauty and their

fashionable attire. Both of these tales

leave young women with two myths:

Happiness means getting a man, and

transformation from wretched con-

ditions can be achieved through con-

sumption—in their case, through new

clothes and a new hairstyle.

I am uncomfortable with those

messages. I don’t want students to

believe that change can be bought at

the mall, nor do I want them thinking

that the pinnacle of a woman’s life is an

“I do” that supposedly leads them to

a “happily ever after.” I don’t want my

female students to see their “sisters” as

competition for that scarce and won-

derful commodity—men. As Justine

wrote earlier in her dialogue journal, it

can be overwhelming and discouraging

to find that our self-images have been

formed by others, but if we don’t dis-

I don’t want students to believe that change can be bought at the mall, or that the pinnacle of a woman’s life is an ‘I do’

that leads to a ‘happily ever after.’

points of Departure 7

sect them, we will continue to be influ-

enced by them.

writing as a Vehicle for Change Toward the end of the unit, students

write essays critiquing cartoons. I hope

that these will encourage students to

look deeper into the issues—to chal-

lenge the servant/master relationships

or the materialism that makes women

appealing to their men. For some stu-

dents the cartoon unit exposes the

wizardry that enters our dreams and

desires, but others shrug their shoul-

ders at this. It’s OK for some people

to be rich and others poor; they just

want to see more rich people of color

or more rich women. Or better yet,

be rich themselves. They accept the

inequalities in power and exploitative

economic relationships. Their accep-

tance teaches me how deep the roots of

these myths are planted and how much

some students, in the absence of visions

for a different and better world, need to

believe in the fairy tale magic that will

transform their lives—whether it’s a

rich man or winning the lottery.

Many students write strong cri-

tiques following the viewing. But vent-

ing their frustrations with cartoons—

and even sharing it with the class—can

seem an important but limited task.

Yes, they can write articulate pieces. Yes,

they hone their arguments and seek the

just-right examples from their viewing.

Through critiques and the discussions

that follow, they are helping to trans-

form each other—each comment or

observation helps expose the engine

of our society, and they’re both excited

and dismayed by their discoveries.

But what am I teaching them if the

lesson ends there? That it’s enough to

be critical without taking action? That

we can quietly rebel in the privacy of

the classroom while we practice our

writing skills, but we don’t really have

to do anything about the problems we

uncover, nor do we need to create any-

thing to take the place of what we’ve

expelled? Those are not the lessons I

intend to teach. I want to develop their

critical consciousness, but I also hope

to move them to action.

For some the lesson doesn’t end in

the classroom. Many who watched car-

toons before we start our study say they

can no longer enjoy them. Now instead

of seeing a bunch of ducks in clothes,

they see the racism, sexism, and vio-

lence that swim under the surface of

the stories.

Pam and Nicole swore they would

not let their children watch cartoons.

David told the class of coming home

one day and finding his nephews

absorbed in Looney Tunes. “I turned

that TV off and took them down to the

park to play. They aren’t going to watch

that mess while I’m around.” Radiance

described how she went to buy Christ-

mas presents for her niece and nephew.

“Before, I would have just walked into

the toy store and bought them what I

knew they wanted—Nintendo or Bar-

bie. But this time, I went up the clerk

and said, ‘I want a toy that isn’t sexist

or racist.’”

Students have also said that what

they now see in cartoons, they also

see in advertising, on prime time TV,

on the news, in school. Turning off

the cartoons doesn’t stop the sexism

and racism. They can’t escape, and

now that they’ve started analyzing

cartoons, they can’t stop analyzing the

rest of the world. And sometimes they

want to stop. Once a student asked me,

“Don’t you ever get tired of analyzing

everything?”

During a class discussion Sabrina

said, “I realized these problems weren’t

just in cartoons. They were in every-

thing—every magazine I picked up,

every television show I watched, every

billboard I passed by on the street.” My

goal of honing their ability to read lit-

erature and the world through the lens

of justice had been accomplished at

least in part. But as Justine wrote ear-

lier, at times my students would like to

remain “ignorant and happy.” With-

out giving students an outlet for their

Jessica in Disney’s Roger Rabbit.

W a

Lt D iS

n e

y C

o .

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn8

despair, I was indeed creating “factories

of cynicism” (Bigelow, et al., 1994) in

my classroom—and it wasn’t pretty.

taking action I look for opportunities for students to

act on their knowledge. In Literature

and U.S. History class, these occasions

have presented themselves in the form

of unfair tests and outrageous newspa-

per articles about Jefferson that pro-

voked spontaneous student activism.

But in my Contemporary Literature

and Society class, I discovered that I

had to create the possibility for action.

Instead of writing the same class-

room essays students had written in

years before, I asked students to create

projects that would move beyond the

classroom walls. Who could they teach

about what they learned? I wanted their

projects to be real. Who could their

analysis touch enough to bring about

real change? Students filled the board

with potential readers of their work:

Parents, peers, teachers, children’s book

authors, librarians, Disney, video store

owners, advertisers.

My only rule was that they had to

write a piece using evidence from car-

toons or other media. Don’t just rant

in general, I told them. Use evidence

to support your thesis. The examples

might come from cartoons, advertise-

ments, novels, your mother or father’s

advice. You might use lines from TV or

movies. You don’t have to stick to car-

toons—use the world.

We discussed possible options:

n Focus on one cartoon—critique

it, talk about it in depth. Write about

Mulan or Peter Pan. Using the chart,

analyze the representation of men,

women, people of color, and poor peo-

ple in that movie.

n Focus on the portrayal of one

group. Write about how women, men,

African Americans, Latinos, Arabs,

overweight people or the poor are

depicted and give examples from sev-

eral cartoons or across time.

n Take an issue—like the represen-

tation of women—and relate it to your

life and/or society at large.

One group of playful students

wanted to create a pamphlet that

could be distributed at PTA meetings

throughout the city. That night they

went home with assignments they’d

given each other—Sarah would watch

Saturday morning cartoons; Sandy,

Brooke, and Carmel would watch after-

school cartoons; and Kristin and Toby

There’s scarcely a parent or young child who isn’t familiar with “The Three Little Pigs.” It has a simple plot line, is easily remembered, and it’s so much fun imitating the big bad wolf as he huffs and puffs and “blo-o-ws” the house down.

I find the story is also useful to talk about the stereotypes in so many of our favorite tales.

I first became aware of the story’s hidden messages when we were doing a unit on housing several years ago at my daycare center. As part of the unit, we talked about different homes and the many approaches to solving a basic human need: a place to live.

During the discussion I suddenly thought to myself, “Why are brick homes better than straw homes?”

To this day, I’m not completely sure why that question popped into my mind. I do know, however, that I

had been sensitized by the movement for a multicultural curriculum, which had taught me to take a questioning approach to even the most seemingly innocuous materials and to look beneath the surface for hidden assumptions.

After thinking about it, I realized that one of the most fundamental messages of “The Three Little Pigs” is that it belittles straw and stick homes and the “lazy types” who build them. On the other hand, the story extols the virtues of brick homes, suggesting that they are built by serious, hard-working people and strong enough to withstand adversity.

Is there any coincidence that brick homes tend to be built by people in Western countries, often by those with more money? That straw homes are more common in non-European cultures, particularly Africa and Asia?

Once I realized some of these hidden messages, the question became what to do about it. In my experience, the best approach is not to put down such beloved tales and refuse to read them, but to use them to pose questions for children. One might explain, for example, that in many tropical areas straw homes are built to take best advantage of cooling breezes. In some areas, straw homes are on stilts as protection from insects and animals or to withstand flooding.

Such a perspective then becomes part of a broader process of helping children to understand why homes are different in different parts of the world—and that just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s inferior. Ellen Wolpert is the coordinator of the Cambridge Community Partnerships for Children, in Cambridge, Mass.

Rethinking ‘the three little Pigs’

by ellen wolpert

points of Departure 9

were assigned before-school cartoons.

They ended up writing a report card

for the various programs. They graded

each show A through F and wrote a

brief summary of their findings:

Duck Tales: At first glance the

precocious ducks are cute, but look

closer and see that the whole show is

based on money. All their adven-

tures revolve around finding money.

Uncle Scrooge and the gang teach

children that money is the only

important thing in life. Grade: C-

Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles:

Pizza-eating Ninja Turtles. What’s

the point? There isn’t any. The

show is based on fighting the ‘bad

guy,’ Shredder. Demonstrating no

concern for the townspeople, they

battle and fight, but never get hurt.

This cartoon teaches a false sense of

violence to kids: fight and you don’t

get hurt, or solve problems through

fists and swords instead of words.

Grade: D

Popeye: This show oozes with hor-

rible messages from passive Olive

Oyl to the hero ‘man’ Popeye. This

cartoon portrays ethnic groups as

stupid. It is political also—teaching

children that Americans are the best

and conquer all others. Grade: F

On the back of the pamphlet, they

listed some tips for parents to guide

them in wise cartoon selection.

Catkin wrote about the sexual ste-

reotyping and adoration of beauty in

children’s movies. Her article described

how she and other teenage women

carry these messages with them still:

Women’s roles in fairy tales dis-

tort reality—from Jessica Rabbit’s

six-mile strut in Who Framed Roger

Rabbit? to Tinker Bell’s obsessive

vanity in Peter Pan. These seemingly

innocent stories teach us to look for

our faults. As Tinker Bell inspects

her tiny body in a mirror only to

find that her minute hips are simply

too huge, she shows us how to turn

the mirror into an enemy. … And

this scenario is repeated in girls’

locker rooms all over the world.

Because we can never look like Cin-

derella, we begin to hate ourselves. The

Barbie syndrome starts as we begin

a lifelong search for the perfect body.

Crash diets, fat phobias, and an obses-

sion with the materialistic become

commonplace. The belief that a prod-

uct will make us rise above our com-

petition, our friends, turns us into

addicts. Our fix is that Calvin Klein

push-up bra, Guess jeans, Chanel lip-

stick, and the latest in suede flats. We

don’t call it deception; we call it good

taste. And soon it feels awkward going

to the mailbox without makeup.

Catkin wanted to publish her piece

in a magazine for young women so

they would begin to question the ori-

gin of the standards by which they

judge themselves.

Most students wrote articles for local

and national newspapers or magazines.

Some published in neighborhood

papers, some in church newsletters.

Some have had their work published

nationally.

The writing in these articles was

tighter and cleaner than for-the-teacher

essays because it had the potential for

a real audience beyond the classroom

walls. The possibility of publishing

their pieces changed the level of stu-

dents’ intensity for the project. Anne,

who turned in hastily written drafts

last year, said, “Five drafts and I’m not

finished yet!”

But more importantly, students saw

themselves as actors in the world; they

were fueled by the opportunity to con-

vince some parents of the long-lasting

effects cartoons impose on their chil-

dren, or to enlighten their peers about

the roots of some of their insecurities.

Instead of leaving students full of bile,

standing around with their hands on

their hips, shaking their heads about

how bad the world is, I provided them

the opportunity to make a difference.n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

References

Bigelow, Bill, et al. Rethinking Our

Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and

Justice. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools,

1994, p. 4.

Dorfman, Ariel. The Empire’s Old

Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar,

and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our

Minds. New York: Pantheon, 1983, p.

ix.

Smith, Mary Carter. “Cindy Ellie,

A Modern Fairy Tale,” in Goss, Linda

(Ed.). Talk That Talk: An Anthology Of

African-American Storytelling. New

York: Touchstone, 1989, pp. 396-402.

Shor, Ira and Freire, Paulo. A Peda-

gogy for Liberation. South Hadley, MA:

Bergin & Garvey, 1987, p. 10.

Tatum, Beverly. ‘Why Are All the

Black Kids Sitting Together in the Caf-

eteria?’ and Other Conversations About

Race. New York: Basic Books, 1997, pp.

4-5.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn10

Both in school and out, young children are exposed to rac-ist and sexist attitudes. These attitudes—expressed over and over

in books and in other media—gradu-

ally distort their perceptions until ste-

reotypes and myths about minorities

and women are accepted as reality. It

is difficult for a librarian or teacher to

convince children to question society’s

attitudes. But if a child can be shown

how to detect racism and sexism in a

book, the child can proceed to transfer

the perception to wider areas. The fol-

lowing ten guidelines are offered as a

starting point in evaluating children’s

books from this perspective.

1. Check the Illustrations

Look for Stereotypes. A stereo-

type is an oversimplified generaliza-

tion about a particular group, race, or

sex, which usually carries derogatory

implications. In addition to blatant ste-

reotypes, look for variations which in

any way demean or ridicule characters

because of their race or sex.

Look for Tokenism. If there are non-

white characters in the illustrations,

do they look just like whites except

for being tinted or colored in? Do all

minority faces look stereotypically

alike, or are they depicted as genuine

individuals with distinctive features?

Who’s Doing What? Do the illus-

trations depict minorities in subser-

vient and passive roles or in leader-

ship and action roles? Are males the

active “doers” and females the inactive

observers?

10 Quick ways to analyze Children’s books for Racism and sexism by the Council on interracial books for Children

Are the oppressions faced by people of

color and women represented as caus-

ally related to an unjust society? Are

the reasons for poverty and oppression

explained, or are they just accepted as

inevitable? Does the story line encour-

age passive acceptance or active resis-

tance? Is a particular problem that

is faced by a person of color resolved

through the benevolent intervention of

a white person?

Role of Women. Are the achieve-

ments of girls and women based on

their own initiative and intelligence,

or are they due to their good looks or

to their relationship with boys? Are sex

roles incidental or critical to character-

ization and plot? Could the same story

be told if the sex roles were reversed?

3. Look at the Lifestyles

Are people of color and their set-

ting depicted in such a way that they

contrast unfavorably with the unstated

norm of white middle-class suburbia? If

2. Check the Story Line

The Civil Rights Movement led

publishers to weed out many insulting

passages, particularly from stories with

black themes, but the attitudes still

find expression in less obvious ways.

The following checklist suggests some

of the subtle (covert) forms of bias to

watch for.

Standard for Success. Does it take

“white” behavior standards for a per-

son of color to “get ahead”? Is “mak-

ing it” in the dominant white society

projected as the only ideal? To gain

acceptance and approval, do people

of color have to exhibit extraordinary

qualities—excel in sports, get A’s, etc.?

In friendships between white children

and children of color, is it the child

of color who does most of the under-

standing and forgiving?

Resolution of Problems. How are

problems presented, conceived, and

resolved in the story? Are people of

color considered to be “the problem”?

S u

S a

n Lin

a R u

g g

Le S

points of Departure 11

the non-white group is depicted as “dif-

ferent,” are negative value judgments

implied? Are people of color depicted

exclusively in ghettos, barrios, or

migrant camps? If the illustrations and

text attempt to depict another culture,

do they go beyond oversimplifications

and offer genuine insights into another

lifestyle? Look for inaccuracy and inap-

propriateness in the depiction of other

cultures. Watch for instances of the

“quaint-natives-in-costume” syndrome

(most noticeable in areas like costume

and custom, but extending to behavior

and personality traits as well).

4. Weigh the Relationships Between

People

n Do the whites in the story pos-

sess the power, take the leadership,

and make the important decisions? Do

people of color and females function in

essentially supporting roles?

n How are family relationships

depicted? In African-American fami-

lies, is the mother always dominant? In

Latino families, are there always lots of

children? If the family is separated, are

societal conditions—unemployment,

poverty—cited among the reasons for

the separation?

5. Note the Heroes

For many years, books showed only

“safe” non-white heroes—those who

avoided serious conflict with the white

establishment of their time. People of

color are insisting on the right to define

their own heroes (of both sexes) based

on their own concepts and struggles

for justice.

n When minority heroes do appear,

are they admired for the same qualities

that have made white heroes famous or

because what they have done has ben-

efited white people? Ask this question:

“Whose interest is a particular figure

really serving?”

6. Consider the Effects on a Child’s

Self-Image

n Are norms established which

limit the child’s aspirations and self-

concepts? What effect can it have on

African-American children to be con-

tinuously bombarded with images

of the color white as the ultimate in

beauty, cleanliness, virtue, etc., and

the color black as evil, dirty, menacing,

etc.? Does the book counteract or rein-

force this positive association with the

color white and negative association

with black?

n What happens to a girl’s self-esteem

when she reads that boys perform all of

the brave and important deeds? What

about a girl’s self-esteem if she is not

“fair” of skin and slim of body?

n In a particular story, is there one

or more person with whom a child of

color can readily identify to a positive

and constructive end?

7. Consider the Author or Illustra-

tor’s Background

Analyze the biographical material

on the jacket flap or the back of the

book. If a story deals with a multicul-

tural theme, what qualifies the author

or illustrator to deal with the subject?

If the author and illustrator are not

members of the group being written

about, is there anything in their back-

ground that would specifically recom-

mend them as the creators of this book?

The same criteria apply to a book that

deals with the feelings and insights of

women or girls.

8. Check Out the Author’s

Perspective

No author can be wholly objective.

All authors write out of a cultural as

well as personal context. Children’s

books in the past have traditionally

come from white, middle-class authors,

with one result being that a single eth-

nocentric perspective has dominated

American children’s literature. With

the book in question, look carefully

to determine whether the direction of

the author’s perspective substantially

weakens or strengthens the value of

his/her written work. Are omissions

and distortions central to the overall

character or “message” of the book?

9. Watch for Loaded Words

A word is loaded when it has insult-

ing overtones. Examples of loaded

adjectives (usually racist) are “savage,”

“primitive,” “conniving,” “lazy,” “super-

stitious,” “treacherous,” “wily,” “crafty,”

“inscrutable,” “docile,” and “backward.”

n Look for sexist language and

adjectives that exclude or ridicule

women. Look for use of the male pro-

noun to refer to both males and females.

The following examples show how sex-

ist language can be avoided: “ancestors”

instead of “forefathers;” “firefighters”

instead of “firemen;” “manufactured”

instead of “manmade;” the “human

family” instead of the “family of man.”

10. Look at the Copyright Date

Books on “minority” themes—usu-

ally hastily conceived—suddenly began

appearing in the mid-1960s. There fol-

lowed a growing number of “minor-

ity experience” books to meet the new

market demand, but most of these were

still written by white authors, edited by

white editors, and published by white

publishers. They therefore reflected a

white point of view.

The copyright dates, therefore, can

be a clue as to how likely the book is

to be overtly racist or sexist, although

a recent copyright date is no guarantee

of a book’s relevance or sensitivity. The

book was published. It usually takes a

minimum of a year—and often much

more than that—from the time a man-

uscript is submitted to the publisher to

the time it is actually printed and put

on the market. This time-lag meant

very little in the past, but in a time of

rapid change and changing conscious-

ness, when children’s book publish-

ing is attempting to be “relevant,” it is

increasingly significant.n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn12

Celebrating the Joy in Daily events by linda Christensen

In a classroom where students and I critique everything from Donald Duck to U.S. foreign policy, I also need to prompt kids to celebrate the

ordinary, the common daily events they

take pleasure in. I want to find ways to

coax joy back into the room, especially

when students feel down about the ways

of the world. Students are bombarded

with messages that their route to happi-

ness is a Diet Pepsi, a new deodorant, or

a shampoo that will make them irresist-

ible. At times, students and I explicitly

examine ads and their messages, but I

also use odes, a traditional poetic form,

to help students re-see the beauty in the

world outside the mall.

I stumbled across odes many years

ago when I fell in love with Pablo Ner-

uda’s poetry. Students read Neruda’s

“Ode to My Socks,” in which he praises

a pair of socks given him by a friend.

The odes allow students to find the

positive in their daily lives. Neruda’s

odes also push students to use concrete

details and imagery in their pieces.

I use Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda,

which has the original Spanish as well

as the English translation.

1. Students read the poem (see p. 13)

in both languages. (This validates stu-

dents who speak Spanish as well as

locating writing in the broader linguis-

tic world. I encourage students who

speak more than one language to write

in either or both languages.)

2. We discuss how Neruda describes

the socks: “two woolen /fish, /two long

sharks/of lapis blue/shot/with a golden

thread,/two mammoth blackbirds.”

The more time we examine the imagery

in Neruda’s poem, the more students

attempt daring, outrageous imagery.

We also note how he talks about both

the gift and the giver.

3. Then I ask students to make a list

of objects they might praise—a gift,

an everyday object, something that has

meaning for them even though it might

not seem important to anyone else. A

few students share their ideas, helping to

dislodge memories for their classmates.

4. I turn off the lights and ask students

to take a few deep breaths and close their

eyes. (They hate this at first. They’re

afraid other people might look at them.

It takes patience to get this to work in

my classes.) Then I ask students to think

about what they are going to praise. I

do this part slowly—30 to 60 seconds

for each question. There’s a tendency

to rush because the class is silent, but it

takes a while to get a visual image. I ask

students to remember what the object

looks like, smells like, sounds like, what

else it reminds them of, how they came

to get it. I find the guided visualization

helps students remember more detail.

When I turn the lights back on, I ask

students to write in silence.

5. With classes of younger students,

I sometimes begin by asking them to

write a paragraph describing the object

and a paragraph about how they came

to have the object. They can use these

details in their poems.

Students have written odes to the

Spanish language, their skin, their

weight, lesbians, a mother’s hands,

animal cookies, ham, a grandfather’s

hat, tap dance, coffee, Jefferson High

School, chocolate chip cookies, the

color red, writing, and more. The ode

became a form they returned to fre-

quently in their writing.

Sarah Scofield, whose beautiful

reading of Neruda’s poetry in Spanish

allowed her to share her linguistic tal-

ent with classmates, wrote this poem:

Ode to Spanish

A language

As beautiful as music:

Melodious verbs

Harmonious adjectives

Rhythmic nouns

Intertwine as I speak.

An orchestra of words

Conducted by my tongue.

I compose

A new song

As those around me listen.

Musical sentences

Rich with the notes

Of culture.

A romance language

stirring the hearts

of its listeners.

The music plays on

As I watch with wonder how

My untrained yet experienced tongue

conducts the orchestra,

and the music pleases me.

I don’t want to exaggerate the

importance of this lesson. It is a small

weapon in my fight against cynicism

and despair. But I do believe that if I

want my students to imagine a more

just society, I must spend time teaching

them how to find what’s good as well as

to find what’s bad. My classroom pro-

vides a small space to help students not

only construct a critique, but also to

build a community that can laugh and

share joy. (See p. 213 for suggestions on

organizing read-arounds.)n

points of Departure 13

Me trajo Maru Mori un par de calcetines que tejió con sus manos de pastora, dos calcetines suaves como liebres. En ellos metí los pies como en dos estuches tejidos con hebras del crepúsculo y pellejo de ovejas.

Violentos calcetines, mis pies fueron dos pescados de lana, dos largos tiburones de azul ultramarino atravesados por una trenza de oro, dos gigantescos mirlos, dos cañones: mis pies fueron honrados de este modo por estos celestiales calcetines. Eran tan hermosos que por primera vez mis pies me parecieron inaceptables como dos decrépitos bomberos, bomberos, indignos de aquel fuego bordado,

Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks knitted with her own shepherd’s hands, two socks soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if into jewel cases woven with threads of dusk and sheep’s wool.

Audacious socks, my feet became two woolen fish, two long sharks of lapis blue shot with a golden thread, two mammoth blackbirds, two cannons, thus honored were my feet by these celestial socks. They were so beautiful that for the first time my feet seemed unacceptable to me, two tired old fire fighters not worthy of the woven fire

Ode to My Socks • Oda a los calcetines

by Pablo neruda

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn14

de aquellos luminosos calcetines.

Sin embargo resistí la tentación aguda de guardarlos como los colegiales preservan las luciérnagas, como los eruditos coleccionan documentos sagrados, resistí el impulso furioso de ponerlos en una jaula de oro y darles cada día alpiste y pulpa de melón rosado. Como descubridores que en la selva entregan el rarísimo venado verde al asador y se lo comen con remordimiento, estiré los pies y me enfundé los bellos calcetines y luego los zapatos.

Y es ésta la moral de mi oda: dos veces es belleza la belleza y lo que es bueno es doblemente bueno cuando se trata de dos calcetines de lana en el invierno.

Pablo neruda was born on July 12, 1904, in a small frontier town of southern Chile, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher. He was active in the struggle for social justice for his entire adult life. He received the nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and died in 1973.

of those luminous socks.

Nonetheless, I resisted the strong temptation to save them the way schoolboys bottle fireflies, the way scholars hoard sacred documents. I resisted the wild impulse to place them in a cage of gold and daily feed them birdseed and rosy melon flesh. Like explorers who in the forest surrender a rare and tender deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stuck out my feet and pulled on the handsome socks, and then my shoes.

So this is the moral of my ode: twice beautiful is beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a case of two woolen socks in wintertime.

translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

points of Departure 15

taking multicultural, anti-Racist education seriously an interview with enid lee Enid Lee conducts online and on-site

professional development with school

communities working to ensure aca-

demic excellence for all students through

anti-racist education. She presents

institutes, gives talks, and writes about

language, culture, race, and racism in

education. Her publications include

Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Prac-

tical Guide to K–12, Anti-Racist, Mul-

ticultural Education and Staff Devel-

opment, which she co-edited. She is a

Virtual Scholar at Teaching for Change.

She was interviewed by Barbara Miner.

What do you mean by a multicultural

education?

The term “multicultural education”

has a lot of different meanings. The

term I use most often is “anti-racist

education.”

Multicultural or anti-racist educa-

tion is fundamentally a perspective. It’s

a point of view that cuts across all sub-

ject areas, and addresses the histories

and experiences of people who have

been left out of the curriculum. Its pur-

pose is to help us deal equitably with

all the cultural and racial differences

that you find in the human family. It’s

also a perspective that allows us to get

at explanations for why things are the

way they are in terms of power rela-

tionships, in terms of equality issues.

So when I say multicultural or anti-

racist education, I am talking about

equipping students, parents, and teach-

ers with the tools needed to combat

racism and ethnic discrimination, and

to find ways to build a society that

includes all people on an equal footing.

and isn’t that nice,” as opposed to look-

ing at how some people’s differences

are looked upon as deficits and disad-

vantages. In anti-racist education, we

attempt to look at—and change —those

things in school and society that prevent

some differences from being valued.

Oftentimes, whatever is white is

treated as normal. So when teachers

choose literature that they say will deal

with a universal theme or story, like

childhood, all the people in the stories

are of European origin; it’s basically

white culture and civilization. That

culture is different from others, but it

doesn’t get named as different. It gets

named as normal.

Anti-racist education helps us move

that European perspective over to the

side to make room for other cultural

perspectives that must be included.

What are some ways your perspective

might manifest itself in a kindergar-

ten classroom, for example?

It might manifest itself in some-

thing as basic as the kinds of toys and

games that you select. If all the toys and

games reflect the dominant culture and

race and language, then that’s what I

call a monocultural classroom even if

you have kids of different backgrounds

in the class.

I have met some teachers who think

that just because they have kids from

different races and backgrounds, they

have a multicultural classroom. Bodies

of kids are not enough.

It also gets into issues such as what

kind of pictures are up on the wall?

What kinds of festivals are celebrated?

It also has to do with how the

school is run in terms of who gets to

be involved with decisions. It has to do

with parents and how their voices are

heard or not heard. It has to do with

who gets hired in the school.

If you don’t take multicultural edu-

cation or anti-racist education seriously,

you are actually promoting a monocul-

tural or racist education. There is no

neutral ground on this issue.

Why do you use the term “anti-racist

education” instead of “multicultural

education?”

Partly because, in Canada, multicul-

tural education often has come to mean

something that is quite superficial: the

dances, the dress, the dialect, the din-

ners. And it does so without focusing

on what those expressions of culture

mean: the values, the power relation-

ships that shape the culture.

I also use the term anti-racist educa-

tion because a lot of multicultural edu-

cation hasn’t looked at discrimination.

It has the view, “People are different

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn16

What are the rules and expectations in

the classroom in terms of what kinds

of language are acceptable? What kinds

of interactions are encouraged? How

are the kids grouped? These are just

some of the concrete ways in which

a multicultural perspective affects a

classroom.

How does one implement a multicul-

tural or anti-racist education?

It usually happens in stages. Because

there’s a lot of resistance to change in

schools, I don’t think it’s reasonable to

expect to move straight from a mono-

cultural school to a multiracial school.

First there is this surface stage in

which people change a few expressions

of culture in the school. They make

welcome signs in several languages, and

have a variety of foods and festivals. My

problem is not that they start there. My

concern is that they often stop there.

Instead, what they have to do is move

very quickly and steadily to transform

the entire curriculum. For example,

when we say classical music, whose

classical music are we talking about?

European? Japanese? And what items

are on the tests? Whose culture do they

reflect? Who is getting equal access to

knowledge in the school? Whose per-

spective is heard, whose is ignored?

The second stage is transitional and

involves creating units of study. Teachers

might develop a unit on Native Ameri-

cans, or Native Canadians, or people

of African background. And they have

a whole unit that they study from one

period to the next. But it’s a separate

unit and what remains intact is the main

curriculum, the main menu. One of the

ways to assess multicultural education

in your school is to look at the school

organization. Look at how much time

you spend on which subjects. When you

are in the second stage you usually have

a two- or three-week unit on a group of

people or an area that’s been omitted in

the main curriculum.

You’re moving into the next stage

of structural change when you have

elements of that unit integrated into

existing units. Ultimately, what is at the

center of the curriculum gets changed

in its prominence. For example, civi-

lizations. Instead of just talking about

Western civilization, you begin to draw

on what we need to know about India,

Africa, China. We also begin to ask dif-

ferent questions about why and what

we are doing. Whose interest is it in that

we study what we study? Why is it that

certain kinds of knowledge get hidden?

In mathematics, instead of studying

statistics with sports and weather num-

bers, why not look at employment in

light of ethnicity?

Then there is the social change stage,

when the curriculum helps lead to

changes outside of the school. We actu-

ally go out and change the nature of

the community we live in. For example,

kids might become involved in how the

media portray people, and start a let-

ter-writing campaign about news that

is negatively biased. Kids begin to see

this as a responsibility that they have to

change the world.

I think about a group of elementary

school kids who wrote to the manager of

the store about the kinds of games and

dolls that they had. That’s a long way

from having some dinner and dances

that represent an “exotic” form of life.

In essence, in anti-racist education

we use knowledge to empower people

and to change their lives.

Teachers have limited money to buy

new materials. How can they begin

to incorporate a multicultural edu-

cation even if they don’t have a lot of

money?

We do need money and it is a pat-

tern to underfund anti-racist initia-

tives so that they fail. We must push

for funding for new resources because

some of the information we have is

downright inaccurate. But if you have

a perspective, which is really a set of

questions that you ask about your life,

and you have the kids ask, then you can

begin to fill in the gaps.

Columbus is a good example. It

turns the whole story on its head when

you have the children try to find out

what the people who were on this con-

tinent might have been thinking and

doing and feeling when they were being

“discovered,” tricked, robbed and mur-

dered. You might not have that infor-

mation on hand, because that kind of

knowledge is deliberately suppressed.

But if nothing else happens, at least

you shift your teaching, to recognize

the native peoples as human beings, to

look at things from their view.

There are other things you can

do without new resources. You can

include, in a sensitive way, children’s

backgrounds and life experiences. One

way is through interviews with par-

ents and with community people, in

which they can recount their own sto-

ries, especially their interactions with

institutions like schools, hospitals and

employment agencies. These are things

that often don’t get heard.

I’ve seen schools inviting grandpar-

ents who can tell stories about their

own lives, and these stories get to be

part of the curriculum later in the year.

It allows excluded people, it allows

humanity, back into the schools. One

of the ways that discrimination works is

that it treats some people’s experiences,

lives, and points of view as though they

don’t count, as though they are less

valuable than other people’s.

I know we need to look at materials.

But we can also take some of the exist-

ing curriculum and ask kids questions

about what is missing, and whose inter-

est is being served when things are writ-

ten in the way they are. Both teachers

and students must alter that material.

How can a teacher who knows little

about multiculturalism be expected

to teach multiculturally?

I think the teachers need to have the

time and encouragement to do some

points of Departure 17

Second, it is in their interest to be

opening their minds and finding out

how things really are. Otherwise, they

will constantly have an incomplete pic-

ture of the human family.

The other thing is, if we don’t make

it clear that some people benefit from

racism, then we are being dishonest.

What we have to do is talk about how

young people can use that from which

they benefit to change the order of

things so that more people will benefit.

If we say that we are all equally dis-

criminated against on the basis of rac-

ism or sexism, that’s not accurate. We

don’t need to be caught up in the guilt

of our benefit, but should use our priv-

ilege to help change things.

I remember a teacher telling me last

summer that after she listened to me on

the issue of racism, she felt ashamed of

who she was. And I remember wonder-

ing if her sense of self was founded on

a sense of superiority. Because if that’s

true, then she is going to feel shaken.

But if her sense of self is founded on

working with people of different colors

to change things, then there is no need

to feel guilt or shame.

What are some things to look for

in choosing good literature and

resources?

I encourage people to look for the

voice of people who are frequently

silenced, people we haven’t heard from:

people of color, women, poor people,

working-class people, people with dis-

abilities, and gays and lesbians.

I also think that you look for mate-

rials that invite kids to seek explana-

tions beyond the information that is

before them, materials that give back to

people the ideas they have developed,

the music they have composed, and

all those things which have been sto-

len from them and attributed to other

folks. Jazz and rap music are two exam-

ples that come to mind.

I encourage teachers to select mate-

rials that reflect people who are try-

reading, and to see the necessity to do

so. A lot has been written about mul-

ticulturalism. It’s not like there’s no

information. If you want to get specific,

a good place to start is back issues of

the Bulletin of the Council on Interracial

Books for Children.

You also have to look around at what

people of color are saying about their

lives, and draw from those sources. You

can’t truly teach this until you reedu-

cate yourself from a multicultural

perspective. But you can begin. It’s an

ongoing process.

Most of all, you have to get in touch

with the fact that your current education

has a cultural bias, that it is an exclusion-

ary, racist bias, and that it needs to be

purged. A lot of times people say, “I just

need to learn more about those other

groups.” And I say, “No, you need to

look at how the dominant culture and

biases affect your view of non-dominant

groups in society.” You don’t have to fill

your head with little details about what

other cultural groups eat and dance. You

need to take a look at your culture, what

your idea of normal is, and realize it is

quite limited and is in fact just reflect-

ing a particular experience. You have to

realize that what you recognize as uni-

versal is, quite often, exclusionary. To be

really universal, you must begin to learn

what Africans, Asians, Latin Americans,

the aboriginal peoples and all silenced

groups of Americans have had to say

about the topic.

How can one teach multiculturally

without making white children feel

guilty or threatened?

Perhaps a sense of being threatened

or feeling guilty will occur. But I think

it is possible to have kids move beyond

that.

First of all, recognize that there have

always been white people who have

fought against racism and social injus-

tice. White children can proudly iden-

tify with these people and join in that

tradition of fighting for social justice.

ing and have tried to change things to

bring dignity to their lives, for example

Africans helping other Africans in the

face of famine and war. This gives stu-

dents a sense of empowerment and

some strategies for making a difference

in their lives. I encourage them to select

materials that visually give a sense of

the variety in the world.

Teachers also need to avoid mate-

rials that blame the victims of racism

and other “isms.”

In particular, I encourage them to

look for materials that are relevant.

And relevance has two points: not only

where you are, but also where you want

to go. In all of this we need to ask what’s

the purpose, what are we trying to

teach, what are we trying to develop?

What can school districts do to fur-

ther multicultural education?

Many teachers will not change cur-

riculum if they have no administra-

tive support. Sometimes, making these

changes can be scary. You can have par-

ents on your back and kids who can be

resentful. You can be told you are mak-

ing the curriculum too political.

What we are talking about here is

pretty radical; multicultural education

is about challenging the status quo and

the basis of power. You need adminis-

trative support to do that.

In the final analysis, multicultural

or anti-racist education is about allow-

ing educators to do the things they

have wanted to do in the name of their

profession: to broaden the horizons of

the young people they teach, to give

them skills to change a world in which

the color of a person’s skin defines their

opportunities, where some human

beings are treated as if they are just

junior children.

Maybe teachers don’t have this big

vision all the time. But I think those are

the things that a democratic society is

supposed to be about. n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn18

my hair is as long as a pony’s tail and as shiny as a river. my skin is as brown as a bear getting up in the sunlight. my eyes are as big as berries but as dark as buffalo hide. my ears are like pears cut in half ready to eat. my heart is like the drum beat as i dance in the arbor. my hands are soft as a rabbit’s fur in the forest. my legs are as long as a baby deer’s legs as they run along the edge of the river. my stomach is as big as a buffalo’s as it grazes through the land. my voice is like the scream of an eagle but can be as quiet as a mouse. when i laugh, it sounds like a woodpecker getting some food. and my smile is as big as a lake.

Loyen Redhawk Gali was 11 years old when she wrote this poem as a student in Oakland, California. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

my hair is long

by loyen Redhawk gali

JO S

E P

h B

LO u

g h

Rethinking my ClassROOm Theoretical recipes for changing the classroom are many; practical examples are few.

In this chapter, classroom teachers at various grade levels share their personal struggles to transform their teaching. They explain how they work with young people to confront and transcend key dilemmas such as tracking, student passivity, and social injustice.

PART TwO

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn20

both seemed satisfied, and they went

back to their puzzle.

The issue was resolved—for the

moment. Questions remained, how-

ever. Would Matt react differently the

next time he wanted his way? Had

Angela become more assertive in

responding to insults? While I felt that

Matt’s put-down reflected a deeper

problem, I had handled it the same way

I would have handled any squabble.

Most importantly, I hadn’t resolved

Other questions that students have

raised in our “Questions We Have” book

include: Who tells the television what to

put on? Why do geese fly together in

an angle? Did ministers or priests have

slaves? How many presidents owned

slaves? Why haven’t we had a woman

president? How do horses sweat? If we

are free, why do we have to come to

school? When did photography start?

Who invented slavery? Why are people

homeless? What runs faster, a cheetah

or an ostrich? Did any adults die in the

1913 massacre of 73 children in Calu-

met County, Michigan? (in reference to

the Woody Guthrie song about a trag-

edy that grew out of a labor struggle).

Some questions are answered by

students working together using ref-

erence materials in the classroom or

school library. (Cheetahs can run up

to 65 miles an hour while ostriches run

only 40 mph.) Other questions are sub-

jects of group discussion; still others we

work on in small groups. For example,

the question “What is the difference

between the master/slave relationship

and parent/child relationship?” devel-

oped one afternoon when a child com-

plained that his parent wouldn’t allow

him out in the evening for school story

hour. A girl responded that we might

as well all be slaves, and a third stu-

dent posed the question. After a brief

group discussion, I had children work

in groups of three or four and they

continued the debate. They made two

lists, one of similarities and one of dif-

ferences, between the master/slave rela-

tionship and the parent/child relation-

ship. They discussed the question in

the small groups, then a spokesperson

from each group reported to the class.

The fascinating thing was not only

the information that I found about

their lives, but also how it forced chil-

dren to reflect on what we had been

studying in our unit on slavery and the

Underground Railroad. When one stu-

dent said, “Yeah, it’s different because

masters whipped slaves and my mom

doesn’t whip me,” another student

responded by saying, “All masters

didn’t whip their slaves.”

When another student said that

their mothers love them and masters

didn’t love their slaves, another girl gave

the example of the slave character Izzie

in the movie Half Free, Half Slave that

we watched, in which Izzie got special

privileges because she was the master’s

girlfriend. Another girl responded that

that wasn’t an example of love; she was

just being used.

In this discussion, students pooled

their information and generated their

own understanding of history, chal-

lenging crude generalizations typical

of children this age. It was clear to all

that the treatment of slaves was unjust.

Not so clear was to what extent and

how children should be disciplined by

their parents. “That’s abuse!” one stu-

dent remarked after hearing about how

one child was punished.

“No, it’s not. That’s how my mom

treats me whenever I do something

bad,” responded another.

While no “answers” were found,

the posing of this question by a stu-

dent, and my facilitating its discussion,

added both to kids’ understanding of

history and to their sense of the com-

plexity of evaluating what is fair and

just in contemporary society.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn32

emphasis on Critiquing bias Raising questions about bias in ideas

and materials—from children’s books

to school texts, fairy tales, news reports,

song lyrics, and cartoons—is another

key component of a social justice class-

room. I tell my 5th graders it’s impor-

tant to examine “the messages that are

trying to take over your brain” and that

it’s up to them to sort out which ones

they should believe and which ones

promote fairness and justice.

To recognize that different perspec-

tives exist in society is the first step

toward critiquing materials and evalu-

ating what perspectives they represent

or leave out. Ultimately it helps chil-

dren see that they, too, can have their

own values and perspectives indepen-

dent of what they last read or heard.

“Whose point of view are we hear-

ing?” I ask.

One poem that is good to initiate

such a discussion is Paul Fleischman’s

dialogue poem, “Honeybees,” from Joy-

ful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. (See p.

55.) The poem is read by two people,

one describing the life of a bee from the

perspective of a worker, and one from

the perspective of a queen. Children

love to perform the poem and often

want to write their own. They begin to

understand how to look at things from

different perspectives. They also start

to identify with certain perspectives.

After hearing the song of the week,

“My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re

Dying,” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, one of

my students wrote a dialogue poem

between a Native American and a U.S.

soldier about smallpox-infected blan-

kets the U.S. government traded for

land. In another instance, as part of a

class activity when pairs of students

were writing dialogue poems between

a master and a slave, two girls wrote

one between a field slave and a house

slave, further deepening the class’s

understanding about the complexity

of slavery. During writing workshop

six weeks later, three boys decided to

write a “Triple Dialogue Poem” that

included the slave, a slave master, and

an abolitionist.

Students also need to know that

children’s books and school textbooks

contain biases and important omis-

sions. I find the concept of “stereo-

types” and “omission” important to

enhance children’s understanding of

such biases.

For example, around Thanksgiving

time I show my students an excellent

filmstrip called “Unlearning Native

American Stereotypes” produced by

the Council on Interracial Books for

Children. It’s narrated by Native Amer-

ican children who visit a public library

and become outraged at the various

stereotypes of Indians in the books.

One year after I showed this, my kids

seemed particularly angry at what they

had learned. They came the next day

talking about how their siblings in first

grade had come home with construc-

tion paper headdresses with feathers.

“That’s a stereotype,” my kids proudly

proclaimed. “What did you do about

it?” I asked. “I ripped it up,” “I slugged

him,” came the chorus of responses.

After further discussion, they

decided there were more productive

things they could do than to hit their

siblings. They scoured the school library

E TTm

A n

n /c

O R

B IS

Homeless people sleep under blanket-covered park benches across the street from the white House. Teachers can use news photos such as this to spark discussion about contemporary social issues.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 33

for books with Indian stereotypes and

found few. So they decided to investi-

gate the 1st-grade room. They found a

picture of an Indian next to the letter I

in the alphabet strip on the wall. They

came back excited, declaring that they

had “found a stereotype that everybody

sees every day!” They decided they

wanted to teach the 1st graders about

stereotypes. I was skeptical, but agreed,

and after much rehearsal they entered

the 1st-grade classroom to give their

lesson. Returning to my classroom,

they expressed frustration that the 1st

graders didn’t listen as well as they had

hoped, but nonetheless thought it had

gone well. Later the two students, Paco

Resendez and Faviola Alvarez, wrote in

our school newspaper:

We have been studying stereotypes

of Native Americans. What is a

stereotype? It’s when somebody

says something that’s not true

about another group of people. For

example, it is a stereotype if you

think all Indians wear feathers or say

“How!” Or if you think that all girls

are delicate. Why? Because some

girls are strong.

The emphasis on critique is an

excellent way to integrate math into

social studies. Students, for example,

can tally numbers of instances cer-

tain people, viewpoints, or groups are

presented in a text or in mass media.

One year my students compared the

times famous women and famous men

were mentioned in the 5th-grade his-

tory text. One reaction by a number of

boys was that men were mentioned far

more frequently because women must

not have done much throughout his-

tory. To help facilitate the discussion,

I provided background resources for

the students, including biographies of

famous women. This not only helped

students better understand the nature

of “omission,” but also generated inter-

est in reading biographies of women.

In another activity I had students

tally the number of men and women

by occupation as depicted in magazine

and/or TV advertisements. By compar-

ing their findings to the population as

a whole, various forms of bias were

uncovered. Another interesting activ-

ity is having students tally the number

of biographies in the school library

and analyze them by race, gender, and

occupation.

One of my favorite activities

involves comparing books. I stumbled

on this activity one year when my class

read a story about inventions in a read-

ing textbook published by Scott Fores-

man. The story stated that the traffic

light was invented by an anonymous

policeman. Actually it was invented by

the African-American scientist Garrett

A. Morgan. I gave my students a short

piece from an African-American his-

tory book and we compared it with the

Scott Foresman book. We talked about

which story we should believe and how

one might verify which was accurate.

After checking out another book about

inventions, the students realized that

the school text was wrong.

the teaching of activism for social Justice The underlying theme in my classroom

is that the quest for social justice is a

never-ending struggle in our nation and

world; that the vast majority of people

have benefited from this struggle; that

we must understand this struggle; and

that we must make decisions about

whether to be involved in it.

I weave the various disciplines

around this theme. When I read poetry

and literature to the children, I often

use books that raise issues about social

justice and, when possible, in which the

protagonists are young people working

for social justice. In math, we will look

at everything from the distribution of

Following are a few of the songs that I use in my classroom.

“Bread and Roses,” written by James Oppenheim, sung by Judy collins. “Dear mr. President,” Pink and the Indigo girls. “Deportee,” Woody guthrie. “Don’t Laugh at me,” Peter, Paul and mary. “Family Tree,” Tom chapin. “1492,” nancy Schimmel. “garbage!” written by Bill Steele, sung by Pete Seeger. “have You Been to Jail for Justice,” Peter, Paul and mary. “If It Were up to me,” cheryl Wheeler. “The Letter,” Ruben Blades. “Lives in the Balance,” Jackson Browne. “masters of War,” Bob Dylan.

“mr. Wendal,” Arrested Development. “my country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” Buffy Sainte-marie. “new underground Railroad,” written by gerry Tenney, sung by holly near and Ronnie gilbert. “1913 massacre,” written by Woody guthrie, sung by Jack Elliott. “not in my name,” John mccutcheon. “Sister Rosa,” The neville Brothers. “There But for Fortune,” Phil Ochs. “unite children,” The children of Selma. “Wearing of the green,” traditional Irish. “Why?” Tracy chapman. “You can get It If You Really Want,” Jimmy cliff. “Young and Positive,” Sweet honey in the Rock.

songs that Promote Justice

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn34

wealth in the world to the percentage

of women in different occupations. The

class songs and posters of the week also

emphasize social struggles from around

the world. I also have each student make

what I call a “people’s textbook”—a

three-ring binder in which they put

handouts and some of their own work,

particularly interviews that they con-

ducted. There are sections for geog-

raphy, history, current events, songs,

poetry, and mass media. I also have a

gallery of freedom fighters on the wall—

posters of people we have studied.

In addition to studying movements

for social justice of the past, students

discuss current problems and possible

solutions. One way I do this is by having

students role-play examples of discrim-

ination and how they might respond.

I start with kids dramatizing histori-

cal incidents such as Sojourner Truth’s

successful attempt to integrate street

cars in Washington, D.C., after the Civil

War, and Rosa Parks’ role in the Mont-

gomery, Ala., bus boycott. We brain-

storm contemporary problems where

people might face discrimination,

drawing on our current events studies

and interviews children have done with

family members and friends.

One day in the spring of 1993, my

class was dramatizing contemporary

examples. Working in small groups, the

students were to choose a type of dis-

crimination—such as not being allowed

to rent a house because one receives

welfare, or not getting a job because one

is a woman—and develop a short dra-

matization. Afterward, the kids would

lead a discussion about the type of dis-

crimination they were acting out.

After a few dramatizations, it was

Gilberto, Juan, and Carlos’ turn. It was

a housing discrimination example—

but with a twist. Gilberto and Juan

were acting the part of two gay men

attempting to rent an apartment, and

Carlos was the landlord who refused to

rent to them. I was surprised, in part

because in previous brainstorming ses-

sions on discrimination none of my

students had mentioned discrimina-

tion against gay people. Further, as is

often the case with 5th graders, in the

past my students had shown they were

prone to uncritically accept anti-gay

slurs and stereotypes. But here were

Gilberto, Juan, and Carlos transfer-

ring our class discussion of housing

discrimination based on race to that of

sexual orientation.

The dramatization caused an ini-

tial chorus of laughs and jeers. But the

students also listened attentively. After-

ward, I asked the class what type of dis-

crimination had been modeled.

“Gayism,” one student, Elvis, yelled.

It was a new word to me, but it got

the point across. The class then went

on to discuss “gayism.” Most of the kids

agreed that it was a form of discrimi-

nation. During the discussion, one stu-

dent mentioned a gay rights march on

Washington a week earlier. (Interest-

ingly, Gilberto, Juan, and Carlos said

they were unaware of the march.)

Elvis, who coined the term “gayism,”

then said: “Yeah, my cousin is one of

those lesi… les…”

“Lesbians,” I said.

“Yeah, lesbian,” he said. He then

added enthusiastically: “And she

went to Washington to march for her

rights.”

“That’s just like when Dr. King

made his dream speech at the march in

Washington,” another student added.

Before long the class moved on to a

new role play. But the “gayism” drama-

tization lingered in my memory.

One reason is that I was pleased that

the class had been able to move beyond

the typical discussions around gay

issues—which had in the past seemed

to center on my explaining why stu-

dents shouldn’t call each other “fag-

got.” More fundamentally, however,

the incident reminded me of the link

between the classroom and society, not

only in terms of how society influences

the children who are in our classrooms,

but also in terms of how reform move-

ments affect daily classroom life.

It’s important not only to study

these progressive social movements

and to dramatize current social prob-

lems, but to encourage students to take

thoughtful action. By doing this they

see themselves as actors in the world,

not just things to be acted upon.

One of the best ways to help stu-

dents in this area is by example—to

expose them to people in the commu-

nity who are fighting for social justice.

I regularly have social activists visit and

talk with children in my classes. I also

explain the activities that I’m person-

ally involved in as an example of what

might be done.

I tell students they can write let-

ters, circulate petitions, and talk to

other classes and children about their

concerns. My students have gone with

me to marches that demanded immi-

grant rights. Two of my students tes-

tified before the City Council, asking

that a Jobs With Peace referendum

be placed on the ballot. Another time

students testified with parents in front

of the City Council that special mon-

ies should be allocated to rebuild our

school playground.

If we neglect to include an activist

component in our curricula, we cut

students off from the possibility of

social change. We model apathy as a

response to the world’s problems.

Such apathy is not OK. At a time

when cynicism and hopelessness

increasingly dominate our youth, help-

ing students understand the world and

their relationship to it by encouraging

social action may be one of the few

antidotes. Schools are a prime place

where this can take place. Teachers are

a key element in it happening.n

Bob Peterson ([email protected]) teaches

5th grade at La Escuela Fratney in Mil-

waukee and is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 35

Forgiving my Father

by Justin morris

Justin Morris was a student at Jefferson High School in Portland, Ore., when he wrote this poem. (See p. 212 for teaching ideas.)

i’d like to forgive you father, but i don’t know your heart. your face, is it a mirror image of mine?

i’d like to forgive you father, but i find your absence a fire that your face might be able to extinguish. i’d like to forgive you father, but my last name isn’t the same as yours like it’s supposed to be. you rejected me, Dad, but can i sympathize for your ignorance? For all the birthdays you didn’t send me a card, for the Christmases when i’d wake up, and you weren’t sitting by the tree waiting for me. what about the summer nights where prospects of you began to fade? Fade like you did seventeen years go.

Out of my life.

i’d like to forgive you father, but i don’t know you. and for that i hate you.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn36

explored a year-long research question

as a way to make our teaching more

intellectually engaging for ourselves

as well as for the children. Working

with a research question helps us with

detailed observation of children’s play,

and our observations are the founda-

tion for our curriculum planning.

We chose the research question

because we wanted to bring an inten-

tional focus to our learning about anti-

bias principles and practices. We’d said

for a long time that anti-bias, culturally

relevant practices were integral to our

program. But we hadn’t invested insti-

tutional energy to explore what this

means or to reshape our pedagogy. The

research question helped us do that.

Hilltop is located in an affluent

Seattle neighborhood, and, with only

a few exceptions, the staff and families

are mainly white. They are also, for the

most part, politically and socially liberal

and highly educated. While many of

the teachers live paycheck to paycheck,

as most childcare workers do, the fami-

lies at Hilltop are from upper-income

brackets. With our research question,

we began to look directly at the issues

of culture and class that shape our pro-

gram. We wanted to deepen our under-

standing of what it means to do anti-

bias work in a privileged community.

When we began our work with

the research question, our goal was to

learn about how the children under-

stand gender, race, class, and other

core elements of cultural identity, so

that we could either reinforce their

Three 4-year-old boys sat in a circle, each

with a doll tucked under his shirt.

“It’s time to have our babies!” Nicho-

las declared. One by one, the boys pulled

their babies from their shirts and cradled

them tenderly for a moment before they

leaped into action, cutting the babies’

umbilical cords, wrapping them snug-

gly in small cotton blankets, and holding

their babies to their chests to nurse.

“You gotta feed your baby some milk,”

Jeremy instructed. “When your baby

cries, that means he wants some milk.”

“Or he might have a poopy diaper,”

Sam added. “Then you gotta change the

diaper or the baby gets a rash.”

“We’re the dads of these babies,”

Nicholas said.

“But dads can’t have babies,” Sam

objected. After a brief pause, he found

a way to resolve the conundrum: “We’re

human sea horses!”

The boys tended to their babies gen-

tly and deliberately, alternating between

nursing and diapering their newborns.

Their game stretched until lunchtime,

when they carefully tucked their babies

into little improvised bassinets—dress-

up clothes bundled into soft nests.

At the beginning of the school year, teachers at Hilltop Chil-dren’s Center, the full-day childcare program where I work in

Seattle, took up a research question:

How are the children exploring and

expressing their identities through

their dramatic play?

This was the second year we had

Playing with gender lessons from an early Childhood Center

by ann Pelo

understandings or challenge them. We

wanted to get better at responding to

the subtle “teachable moments” that

children create. And we wanted to plan

curriculum that counters racist, sexist,

and classist understandings. We didn’t

anticipate the ways our study would

lead us right to the heart of anti-bias

teaching and learning.

Our Research begins There are 55 preschool-aged children

at Hilltop, in four classroom groupings

of various sizes, each with two, three,

or four teachers (we have 12 teachers

in our preschool classrooms). Each

team comes together for collaborative

curriculum planning for an hour and a

half once a week. As the mentor teacher

at Hilltop, I facilitate each team’s meet-

ings. Teachers bring detailed notes

about children’s play and conversa-

tions to the team meetings. We study

c O

u R

TE S

Y O

F h ILLTO

P c

h ILD

R E

n ’S

c E

n TE

Rethinking My ClassRooM 37

kindergarten.”

I nudged the teachers to turn their

attention back to the elements of gen-

der identity in this game: “The boys

acknowledged that men don’t give

birth or nurse babies, but they weren’t

willing to let go of the maternal role.

Instead, they let go of being human

and became sea horses, which allowed

them to stay male and keep doing the

maternal work that’s associated with

being female. They seem to be wres-

tling with how to be both male and

maternal. What can we learn about

their understandings of masculinity?

Of moms and dads?”

I wanted to move us away from

individualistic explanations. While

these factors are important, they don’t

give us the full picture of children’s

identities. In our discussion about the

three boys’ play, I hoped to focus us on

gender identity, through their internal-

ized understandings of masculinity,

caregiving work, and the distinctions

between motherhood and fatherhood.

It took a lot of effort continually to

refocus the discussion on the social and

political contexts shaping this play—

and my efforts weren’t particularly

successful. At the time, I attributed the

struggle to the newness of our work

with the research question; we were still

training ourselves to look through the

lens offered by the question. I expected

teachers’ observations and ask our-

selves the following questions: What

questions are the children expressing

in their play? What understandings or

experiences are they drawing on? What

theories are they testing? How does

this present an opportunity for us to

strengthen the values we want to pass

on to the children?

From our study and reflection, we

plan one or two concrete next steps the

teachers will take in the classroom and

in communications with the children’s

families. These steps are intended to

extend, deepen, or challenge children’s

thinking about identity, difference, and

issues of culture. These next steps, in

turn, launch us into another round of

observation and study.

Early in the year, Sandra brought to

her team meeting the notes she’d made

as Nicholas, Jeremy, and Sam played

about birthing and caring for babies. As

we looked beneath the surface details

of the game, teachers began to tease out

elements of identity and culture.

“Sam clearly understands that men

don’t birth babies, but he wanted to be

in that ‘maternal’ role and found a way

to do that by being a sea horse,” Megan

said.

“I was curious about why they

wanted to play this game at all,” Sandra

added. The teachers shared hypotheses.

One teacher pointed out that Sam’s

mom had recently had a baby: “Maybe

this game is a way for Sam to stay con-

nected to his mom.” Another teacher

called attention to the boys’ knowl-

edge of the tasks of caring for babies,

and the mastery they demonstrated

with diapers and nursing; clearly,

they’d been watching adults take care

of babies. A third teacher commented

on Sam’s leadership role in the game:

“That’s new for Sam, to give direction

to a game. I see this game as a way for

him to try on this new role, now that

there are younger kids in the group and

some of the older kids have gone on to

that this would soon become a regular,

familiar practice. I underestimated the

work we had in front of us.

unexpected Challenges Week by week, our teams’ collections of

observations expanded.

n Three-year-old Claudia emphati-

cally refused the role of princess in a

game with three other girls. “I hate

princesses, and that’s why I’m a boy!”

she exclaimed fiercely.

n Two-year-old Juliet chose a mask

to wear. It was a mask with long braids

and with freckles. “This is a girl mask,”

she explained, “because it has freckles.”

She noticed the mask that Molly was

wearing, a mask with short hair: “You

look like a boy in that mask, Molly.”

n Matthew and Joshua, 4-year-old

buddies, slipped capes over their shoul-

ders. “We’re rescue heroes and our job

is to save babies who are in danger!”

Joshua called out, as he and Matthew

raced across the room.

n Three-year-old Kathryn initiated a

game with John. She draped a piece of

silky fabric over his shoulders, shawl-

like, exclaiming delightedly, “You’re

Cinderella!” Then she shifted the fab-

ric onto his shoulders to be more like

a cape: “Now you’re the prince.” Back

and forth, from shawl to cape, Cinder-

ella to prince, Kathryn transformed

John again and again.

trying to be a boy makely: “I’m trying hard to be a boy.” megan: “Why?” makely: “They have cooler bikes.” Jamice: “They’re stronger than us girls.” makely: “no, actually girls can do more sooner than boys.” Jamice: “Well, they can pee standing up.” makely: “But that’s not why I want to be one. They get treated better! They get to watch more violent things like Pokemon and Yu-gi-Oh. Plus their clothes are really cool—like I have old clothes from my brothers and they’re so cool.”

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn38

we’d been paying attention to children’s gender identities but we’d failed to

acknowledge our own experiences, values, and tensions related to gender.

As fall slipped into winter, a couple

things became increasingly apparent to

me. Within the context of our research

question, children’s exploration of

gender identity had become teach-

ers’ primary focus. When we launched

our research question in the fall, we’d

started out with a bigger frame. We

naively expected that we’d be looking

at race, class, and gender, all lumped

together under the vague heading of

“culture.” As the fall progressed, our

focus narrowed as gender became the

lens through which we explored the

idea of cultural identity.

Certainly, the children’s play pro-

vided us with many opportunities

to pay attention to gender. But, more

significantly, gender was comfortable

terrain for our staff of predominantly

white women. We were familiar with

considering the impact of sexism on

our lives. We assumed that we shared

values and goals about what we want

children to learn about gender identity.

Gender seemed a safe starting place for

our staff as we stepped into more con-

scious and intentional anti-bias work.

The other striking aspect of our

work with the research question was

that, even within the fairly comfort-

able arena of gender identity explora-

tion, teachers continued to struggle to

stay focused on the social and politi-

cal aspects of children’s play. In their

discussions about their observations,

teachers emphasized children’s individ-

ual developmental and family stories.

For example, reflecting on Claudia’s

assertion that she hates princesses and

that’s why she’s a boy, teachers made

the following observations: “Claudia’s

mom is athletic and strong, and not

very ‘princessy.’ Maybe she’s trying to

figure out how to be like her mom and

she doesn’t have words for that.” “Clau-

dia doesn’t really like to play princess

games. She’s more interested in build-

ing and construction sorts of games.”

I asked, “What if Claudia’s comment

isn’t really about princesses at all? What

if she’s trying to find words for ques-

tions about what it means to be a girl

or a boy? What if she’s asking, ‘To be a

girl, do I have to wear dresses and play

games about being rescued and feast-

ing and dancing? If I don’t do that stuff,

does that make me a boy? What is pos-

sible for me as a girl?’”

With our research question we

wanted to develop the habit of pay-

ing attention to the ways children’s

play reflects their understandings of

their political and social contexts. We

wanted to strengthen this practice in

ourselves until it became as easy and

instinctive for us as paying attention to

children’s individual circumstances like

their family relationships, their play

and learning styles, their skills with lit-

eracy or math. But this effort was much

more difficult than we’d imagined.

Why was this so challenging?

Claiming Our Cultural Perspectives Four months into our work with the

research question, I experienced a

dramatic moment of understanding.

During one week’s team meeting, Lisa

brought an observation of 5-year-old

Jamie’s play with his younger friend, 3-

year-old Laura:

Jamie ran to greet Laura at the door

as soon as she arrived. He swept her into

his arms, exclaiming, “Let’s play baby

and dad!” Laura grinned her agreement,

and Jamie picked her up, carrying her to

the drama area. As their game unfolded,

Jamie told Laura what to do: “Now cry,

baby.” “Now go to sleep.” “Now eat,

baby.” Laura cheerfully followed Jamie’s

directions. Jamie picked her up, set her

down, rolled her over, changed her dia-

per, put her to bed, woke her up; Laura

didn’t move her body on her own, but

waited for Jamie to instruct her or phys-

ically to move her.

Lisa’s co-teacher, Kirstin, had an

immediate and strong reaction: “I see

Jamie and Laura play this game just

about every morning that they’re both

here, and I’ve been putting a stop to it. I

tell Laura that she’s a powerful girl, that

she can move her own body. And I tell

Jamie to let Laura walk, that he’s not to

carry her anymore.”

Lisa quickly echoed Kirstin’s pas-

sionate words: “I absolutely agree with

your decision. This game really bugs

me, and I’m not sure why—but I don’t

like it.”

Jamie and Laura’s baby game was in

itself fairly innocuous in the context of

our program; we tend to be quite com-

fortable with kids’ physicality and with

affectionate, informal touch between

children. However, Lisa and Kirstin

had stepped away from the usual per-

spectives that shape discussions at

Hilltop about this sort of game. They

began their conversation by focus-

ing on aspects of Jamie’s and Laura’s

personal circumstances: Jamie’s much

older than Laura, he’s an only child

and just beginning to develop the flex-

ibility in his play that makes room for

other children’s contributions; Laura

is young and is just beginning to move

into collaborative play. But Kirstin and

Lisa quickly left this terrain of individ-

ual psychology and circumstances and

Rethinking My ClassRooM 39

stepped emphatically into the terrain

of gender identity.

“As a woman, I hate seeing a girl

being so passive,” said Kirstin, startling

me with the force behind her words.

“I see Jamie telling Laura what to do

and even moving her body for her and

all my protectiveness for Laura as a 16-

year-old girl on a date comes out,” Lisa

continued. “I want Laura to tell Jamie,

‘No!’ and I want Jamie to hear it!”

Lisa and Kirstin were responding to

the children’s play as women, reflecting

on Jamie and Laura’s play through their

own experiences. They responded to

their students’ play with their hearts as

well as from a more considered, mea-

sured place of intellectual reflection.

As I listened to Kirstin and Lisa

talk, I experienced a sudden clarify-

ing of what we’d been working with

(and against) all fall. We’d been paying

attention to children’s gender identities

but not paying attention to our own

understandings and identities. We’d

failed genuinely to acknowledge our

own lenses, our own experiences, val-

ues, questions, and tensions related to

gender. In order to see children as cul-

tural beings, we must see ourselves as

cultural beings, and we hadn’t tended

to that work.

We weren’t asking central ques-

tions of ourselves: What does each of

us know about gender? How have we

each experienced the meaning and

impact of gender in our lives? What

values and goals do we each hold for

children’s learning about gender iden-

tity? With the research question, we’d

challenged ourselves to pay atten-

tion to gender identity as the children

experience and understand it. Now, we

needed to investigate the ways in which

we adults express and explore our gen-

der identities.

I brought this new awareness to

Claudia’s teachers, eager to examine

her comments about hating princesses

and being a boy through the lens of the

teachers’ experiences of gender. “We’ve

been trying to understand what’s going

on for Claudia,” I said. “But we haven’t

talked about what each of us has expe-

rienced about gender. I think that could

help us understand Claudia’s experi-

ence. When you think about Claudia

rejecting princesses and claiming to

be a boy, do you see any connection to

what you’ve experienced in your life?”

Sandra started talking before I fin-

ished my question: “Yes! When I was a

little girl, growing up with two sisters, I

knew early on that I wasn’t like them. It

wasn’t about being lesbian or straight

or anything like that, but I knew I didn’t

like to play dolls and dress up like they

did. I wanted to be outside riding my

bike or playing tag.”

Sonja nodded in eager understand-

ing. “I remember really clearly my feel-

ing of relief when I learned the word

‘tomboy.’ There was a word to describe

how I was in the world! There were

other people like me!”

Megan listened intently, adding, “I

think of ‘tomboy’ as a little insulting.

Why do girls who are athletic have to be

called anything other than girls? Why

some cute word that refers to boys?”

We talked for a while about how

our early experiences shaped who we

are now, as teachers and as women. We

considered the ways these early experi-

ences could help us understand Clau-

dia’s comment.

“It helps me think about Claudia

being like I was as a kid,” said Sandra.

“She’s not necessarily trying to figure

out if she’s a girl or a boy, but what it

means to be someone who’s not a girlie

girl. Maybe the only language she has

for ‘not a girlie girl’ is ‘boy.’”

“When I remember my own girl-

hood, trying to reconcile what I felt

excited by and what I knew I was sup-

posed to be excited by as a girl, it helps

me think about Claudia,” said Sonja.

“I wonder if Claudia knows the

word ‘tomboy’?” I asked. “I wonder

what it would mean to her to hear your

stories about growing up as girls.”

The teachers made plans to share

their stories with Claudia and the rest

of the group, as well as to bring in

photos of themselves from childhood

soccer games and tree-climbing adven-

tures. Their planning was anchored by

an explicit awareness of their political

and social experiences and perspectives,

and by their goals for children. These

teachers, all of whom are female, knew

how it feels to be a girl growing up in a

sexist culture, and they wanted to sup-

port Claudia as she claimed her identity

as a girl who rejects princess play and

embraces full-bodied adventure.

Our Journey Continues All four preschool teaching teams come

together for a two-hour meeting once a

month for reflection and study. At the

full-staff meeting after my conversa-

tions with Kirstin and Lisa, and Sonja,

Sandra, and Megan, I shared my new

awareness and questions.

“I’ve noticed that, in our team meet-

ing discussions about our research

question, we’ve struggled to stay con-

nected to the political and social con-

texts of children’s play,” I said. “We’re

really good at seeing kids as individuals

c O

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn40

with individual life stories, but we’re

not as good at seeing them as politi-

cal, cultural beings. When we fail to

recognize children’s social identities,

we erase fundamental aspects of who

they are and who their families are.

And when we fail to give voice to our

cultural identities or to acknowledge

our co-teachers’ cultural perspectives,

we erase fundamental aspects of our-

selves,” I added.

I posed several questions for discus-

sion during our full-staff meeting:

n Why is it an effort for us at Hilltop

to address the political and social con-

text that shapes children’s identities?

n What are the societal values and

belief systems that focus us on individ-

ual circumstances rather than broader

cultural identities?

n What do we gain when we empha-

size political and social identity—both

the children’s and our own?

The discussion that unfolded

was rich with insight and with

contradiction.

Lisa described her sense of not

wanting to emphasize what could

divide people: “I want to bring us closer

together, not make us feel different and

separated.”

Susan said, “Our society’s storyline

is that we achieve or fail as individuals.

When we emphasize being women, or

people of color, or white, we either are

held back or we get unfair advantages—

according to society’s storyline.”

“We haven’t had to look at these

issues as teachers at Hilltop because of

our cultural privilege on many fronts,” I

added. “It’s an aspect of white privilege

not to think about race, for example. We

need to keep asking ourselves: How have

we each experienced the meaning and

impact of gender—or race, or class—in

our lives? What values and goals do we

each hold for children’s learning?”

During the rest of that staff meeting,

we took the first steps toward explicitly

naming the cultural lenses that shape

how each of us experiences our teach-

ing and learning. First, Lisa and Kirstin

recapped our discussion about Jamie

and Laura’s game. And Sonja, Sandra,

and Megan told the story of their con-

versation about Claudia and tomboys.

Then, we practiced doing what these

teachers had done, acknowledging our

cultural perspectives as we studied chil-

dren’s play. Teachers worked in small

groups with one of several observations

of children’s play that I provided. A typ-

ical example focused on a conversation

I’d overheard among several children as

they tried to figure out why their buddy

(a girl) had commented that “she’s try-

ing hard to be a boy.”

I asked teachers to read and talk

about each observation “not as teach-

ers trying to understand the children’s

points of view, but as who you are: a

lesbian, or a person from a working-

class background, or a Filipina, or a

European American, or a woman.” I

posed several questions to guide their

discussion of the observation:

n What caught your attention right

away? What was your first reaction or

judgment?

n What experiences in your life are

you tapping into?

n What values come to the surface

for you? Can you trace those values

back to their roots in the political and

social context of your life?

With this activity, I introduced

what I hoped would become a regu-

lar element in our team meetings: I

wanted us to make explicit the social

and political contexts and assump-

tions that shape our thinking and

planning as teachers, so that we bring

clarity and awareness to our planning

for the children’s learning. I wanted us

to acknowledge and claim our work as

political work—seeing teaching as not

only about supporting children’s indi-

vidual development and learning, but

also about cultivating particular values

and practices that counter oppression

and enhance justice.

This staff meeting launched us into a

new stage of our journey. Our practice

with the research question unearthed

our collective discomfort with talk-

ing about culture—and talking about

culture is essential if we are to take up

the work of anti-bias, culturally rel-

evant teaching and learning. Probably

at the beginning of the year we could

have said that we needed to examine

our own political and social identities

at the same time as we pay attention to

children’s political and social identities.

But without our observations of the

children’s interactions and our deeply

felt reactions, our inquiry would have

remained abstract.

For too long, our anti-bias efforts

at Hilltop were standard-issue: brown

play dough, books with characters from

a range of families, dolls with different

skin colors. The new work we’re aim-

ing to do is much less comfortable and

easy; it makes us squirm and stammer

and get angry and defensive to look at

the ways in which our cultural privi-

leges have been knit together to form

the fabric of our program.

As we continue to do this work, we

expect to look more closely at race,

building on our work last year around

gender. And we’ve added a step to our

curriculum planning process. This year,

in addition to reflecting on the possible

meanings of the children’s play, we’ve

committed to considering the personal

social-political experiences and identi-

ties that we bring to our observations

before we begin planning next steps

and curriculum investigations to take

up with the children. Our encounter

with the research question is slowly,

surely transforming our practice. n

Ann Pelo teaches at Hilltop Children’s

Center in Seattle. She edited Rethinking

Early Childhood Education (Rethinking

Schools, 2008).

Rethinking My ClassRooM 41

the Challenge of Classroom Discipline by bob Peterson

what they write, read, and study, to

deciding the nature of their collabora-

tive projects, to helping establish the

classroom’s rules and curriculum.

Each year I have students discuss

their vision of an ideal classroom and

the rules necessary in such a classroom.

I explain how certain rules are made

by the state government, by the school

board, by the school itself, and by the

classroom teacher. I let kids know that

One of the most challenging tasks in any elementary class-room is to build a community where students respect one another and

value learning. Too often, children use

put-downs to communicate, resolve

conflicts violently, and have negative

attitudes toward school and learning.

These problems often are based in soci-

ety. How can one tell students not to

use put-downs, for example, when that

is the predominant style of comedy on

prime-time television?

But schools often contribute to

such problems. Approaches based on

lecturing by teachers, passive reading

of textbooks, and “fill-in-the-blank”

worksheets keep students from mak-

ing decisions, from becoming actively

involved in their learning, and from

learning how to think and communi-

cate effectively.

involving students in Decision-making If a teacher wants to build a commu-

nity of learners, a number of things

have to happen. Students need to be

involved in making decisions. They

need to work regularly in groups. They

need a challenging curriculum that

involves not only listening but actually

doing. They need to understand that it

is OK to make mistakes, that learning

involves more than getting the “right”

answer.

At the same time, teachers need to

make sure that students are not set

up for failure. Teachers need to model

what it means to work independently

and in groups so that those who have

not learned that outside of school will

not be disadvantaged. Teachers need to

be clear about what is and what is not

within the purview of student decision-

making. And teachers need to learn to

build schoolwide support for this kind

of learning and teaching.

The parameters of students’ deci-

sion-making range from choosing

S u

S a

n Lin

a R u

g g

Le S

Student involvement is key to a successful class.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn42

I will be willing to negotiate certain

rules, but that my willingness to agree

to their proposals (because ultimately

I hold authority in the classroom) is

dependent on two things: the sound-

ness of their ideas and their ability as

a group to show that they are respon-

sible enough to assume decision-mak-

ing power. I also tell kids that if they

disagree with rules made outside of

the classroom, they should voice their

concerns.

Things don’t always go smoothly.

One year while discussing school rules

the kids were adamant that anybody

who broke a rule should sit in a corner

with a dunce cap on his or her head.

I refused on the grounds that it was

humiliating. Eventually we worked out

other consequences including time-

outs and loss of the privilege to come

to the classroom during lunch recess.

The cooperative learning technique

of the “T-Chart” is helpful in getting

kids to understand what a community

of learners looks like during different

activities. The teacher draws a big “T”

on the board and titles the left side

“looks like” and the right side “sounds

like.” Kids brainstorm what an outside

visitor would see and hear during cer-

tain activities. For example, when we

make a “T-chart” about how to con-

duct a class discussion, students list

things like “one person talking” under

“sounds like” and “kids looking at the

speaker” and “children with their hands

raised” under “looks like.” We hang the

T-chart on the wall; this helps most

children remember what is appropriate

behavior for different activities.

Classroom organization is another

essential ingredient in building a com-

munity of learners. The desks in my

class are in five groups of six each,

which serve as “base groups.” I divide

the students into these base groups

every nine weeks, taking into account

language dominance, race, gender, and

special needs, creating heterogeneous

groups to guard against those subtle

forms of elementary school “tracking.”

Dividing students into base groups Throughout the day children might

work in a variety of cooperative learn-

ing groups, but their base group

remains the same. Each group has its

own bookshelf where materials are kept

and homework turned in. Each group

elects its own captain who makes sure

that materials are in order and that his

or her group members are “with the

program.” For example, before writing

workshop, captains distribute writing

folders to all students and make sure

that everyone is prepared with a sharp-

ened pencil.

Sometimes the group that is the

best prepared to start a new activity,

for example, will be allowed to help in

dramatization or be the class helpers

for that lesson. This provides incentive

for team captains to get even the most

recalcitrant students to join in with

classroom activities.

By organizing the students this

way, many of the management tasks

are taken on by the students, creat-

ing a sense of collective responsibility.

Arranging the students in these base

groups has the added advantage of

freeing up classroom space for drama-

tizations or classroom meetings where

kids sit on the floor.

When students use their decision-

making power unwisely, I quickly

restrict that power. During reading

time, for example, students are often

allowed to choose their own groups

and books. Most work earnestly, read-

ing cooperatively, and writing regularly

in their reading response journals. If

a reading group has trouble settling

down, I intervene rapidly and give

increasingly restrictive options to the

students. Other students who work

successfully in reading groups model

how a reading group should be run:

The students not only conduct a dis-

cussion in front of the class, but plan

in advance for a student to be inatten-

tive and show how a student discussion

leader might respond.

A well-organized class that is

respectful and involves the students in

some decision-making is a prerequi-

site for successful learning. Coopera-

tive organization and student involve-

ment alone won’t make a class critical

or even build a community of learners,

but they are essential building blocks in

its foundation.n

Bob Peterson ([email protected]) teaches

5th grade at La Escuela Fratney in Mil-

waukee and is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 43

helping students Deal with anger by kelley Dawson salas

Let me go! LET ME GO!!!” Michael’s screams fill the entire second floor hallway. I imagine the noise bolting like lightning down

the stairway, forcing its way through

the double doors at the bottom, and

arriving abruptly in the principal’s

office.

Arms flail and a fist connects with

my teaching partner’s ribs. I speak

in what I hope is a soothing voice,

although I know it is tinged with ten-

sion: “Michael, it’s gonna be OK. As

soon as you settle down we can let you

go.”

By the time Michael is allowed to

bring his hoarse voice and his 3rd-

grade body back into our classroom

the next morning, I have decided that I

need to teach my young students some

strategies for dealing with anger.

Earlier in the year, after Michael’s

first few outbursts, I had sought help

for Michael from people outside of

our classroom. I was in my first year

of teaching, learning what kids were

all about for the very first time. I was

going to school twice a week to meet

the requirements of my alternative cer-

tification program. I simply didn’t feel

I had the time or the experience to help

Michael respond to his emotions more

appropriately.

“What can we do to find out what

is behind Michael’s angry behaviors?

Can he receive counseling from the

social worker or psychologist?” I asked

our Collaborative Support Team.

Michael did see the psychologist a few

times after that. Both the social worker

and I made calls to the family. But the

flare-ups continued, and I was not the

only person to notice. More than once,

the students saw Michael fly into a tan-

trum. They saw how he put his head

down on his desk and covered it up

with his coat from time to time. They

took a step backwards as he pushed a

chair out of the way or hit another stu-

dent on the playground and called it an

accident. They had seen me give him a

choice of “cooling down” and getting

back to work or leaving the classroom.

Other staff also were aware of

Michael. One day, I heard a specialist

who had stepped in to supervise my

students say, “We have to be real care-

ful of Michael when he comes back to

the classroom. We don’t know what

he’ll do, do we?”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I,

the teacher, was Anglo, almost all of

the students were Latino, and Michael

was one of three African-American

boys. I did not want our classroom to

be a place where students or staff were

allowed to reinforce stereotypes that

link anger with boys and men, espe-

cially African-American boys and men.

PATR Ic

k JB

FLY n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn44

I taught about anger during these

moments, I would only be singling

Michael out and escalating the prob-

lem. The rest of the students would

pick up on my cue and would probably

label him as an angry person. I might

send an incorrect message that the

only people who feel angry are those

who act out the way Michael did.

Instead, I tried to plan a few simple

lessons that would help all students

consider what anger is, what other

emotions or experiences it is linked

to, and how we can respond. Over the

course of the next four weeks, I devel-

oped and taught four short lessons. I

drew upon my own personal experi-

ences with anger and tantrums to put

the lessons together. The resources I

used were minimal. I am sure there

are much more extensive curricula on

this topic. The important thing for me

and my students was that these lessons

helped us create a common frame-

work for thinking about anger. Later I

would refer to this framework in cri-

sis moments or in interventions with

Michael.

I wanted my students to be able to

identify the experiences and emotions

that lead to what might be described

as angry behaviors. I wanted them to

recognize different responses to anger

that they and others use. Most impor-

tant, I wanted students to consider

the choices we have for responding

to strong emotions such as anger. I

wanted them to recognize that when

we are upset, we can either choose

a course of action that is unsafe or

unhealthy for ourselves and others, or

we can choose a course of action that

is safe and healthy. I hoped this dis-

cussion would lead students not only

to see that it is unacceptable to allow

anger and strong emotions to explode

in outbursts, but also to identify and

practice safe responses when they feel

angry.

I led three discussions with my stu-

dents. First, we made a list of “things

that make us angry.” Students cited

a great many sources of anger, from

the trivial to the unjust. Some of their

responses: “I get mad when I can’t find

the remote;” “when people treat me

like I’m stupid;” “when we lose part of

our recess;” and “when my mom hits

me.”

Second, we made a list of “things

people do when they’re mad.” I encour-

aged the students to share examples of

things they personally do when they’re

mad, and allowed them to share things

they’d seen other people do. Many stu-

dent responses were negative, hurtful

or unsafe, such as: “I punch the nearest

person;” “hurt myself;” “bang my own

head against the wall;” “kick or slam a

door as hard as I can;” and “yell at the

person who’s making me mad.”

A couple of students offered what I

would categorize as “safe” responses to

anger: “I go for a bike ride to blow off

steam;” “I go in my room and read until

I’m not mad anymore;” “I talk to my

mom about what’s making me mad.” I

asked the students, “Can you think of

any other things like that, things that

would help you to cool down or solve

the problem?”

They suggested a few more: “You

could talk to an adult you trust;” “go

for a walk or go outside and play;” “tell

the person who’s making you mad how

you feel.”

Finally, we made a large poster to

hang in the classroom that showed dif-

ferent responses to anger. The students

each made their own copy of the poster

In fact, Michael was normally an

outgoing, upbeat kid who was well-

liked by his classmates and teachers.

But the emotionally charged interac-

tions that took place fairly regularly

in our classroom indicated that some-

thing needed to change. As I tried to

help Michael through a long process

of learning how to identify his feelings

and emotions and respond construc-

tively, I also went through an impor-

tant learning process.

Classroom Dynamics I had to consider all the factors

that contributed to our classroom

dynamic. I had to examine my own

beliefs, attitudes, and responses to

Michael’s behaviors. I had to consider

how my actions as a white teacher of

students of color affected Michael’s

emotions and responses. I had to try

different approaches. These respon-

sibilities weighed on me as I planned

my course of action, and I continue

to consider them as I reflect on what

I did and what I might do differently

next time. For example, at the time I

characterized Michael’s outbursts as

anger. Whether that is the appropriate

emotional term, I am not sure; perhaps

he was expressing frustration, or lone-

liness, or pain. I realize, in retrospect,

that I used the term “anger” to describe

strong emotional outbursts that may

have had their origin in any number of

emotions.

Teaching about anger immediately

after a conflict with Michael didn’t

make sense. All eyes were on him. If

I wanted my students to be able to identify the experiences and emotions that lead to what might be described

as angry behaviors.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 45

without having to do it in a moment

of crisis, and without making him feel

like he was being singled out.

Looking back on these discussions,

it seems necessary to discuss with

students some of the complexities of

responding to feelings of anger. Rather

than just telling students to respond

“safely” to a situation that makes them

mad, they need to be taught to consider

the source of their anger and to develop

a response that is not only safe but also

effective. Routine bickering with a sib-

ling might be effectively solved by some

time apart, while a series of name-call-

ing incidents or physical bullying by a

classmate will not be resolved just by

walking away one more time. Students

should be encouraged to see the differ-

ence between a response which simply

helps them blow off steam, and one

that actively seeks to address the cause

of their anger and solve the problem.

Our discussions around anger

focused mostly on interpersonal rela-

tionships, and sought to understand

what an individual can do when he or

she feels angry. Looking back at this

focus on individual interactions, I see

that I missed an opportunity to guide

students in an inquiry into other types

of anger. I think it is important to help

students understand that anger exists

not only on an individual level, but can

be related to societal issues of oppres-

sion and injustice.

This in turn could lead to a discus-

sion of the role anger can play in the

fight for social justice. As an activist

for social justice, I use my anger at

injustice to guide my own actions on a

daily basis. Students can and should be

aware that emotions often described as

anger are not categorically “bad.” Just as

anger on an individual level can com-

pel us to address a problem or make a

change, the anger we feel when we wit-

ness injustice on a societal level should

guide us toward changing unjust and

oppressive systems. Rosa Parks comes

quickly to mind as an example any 3rd

grader can understand.

adult behavior It was during our talks about anger that

students’ questions provided a spring-

board to an additional discussion that

could have turned into a whole unit

of its own. As we looked together at

the abundance of unsafe or violent

responses to anger, a few students

began to ask, “If we’re not supposed

to throw tantrums, why do so many

adults do it?”

They’re right, I thought. How can

I tell them that they should choose

safe responses to anger when so many

adults choose verbal outbursts or even

physical violence? I allowed my teach-

ing to take a brief detour in pursuit

of an answer to the students’ impor-

tant question: How and when can we

hold adults responsible for their angry

behaviors?

I designed a lesson in which I talked

about my own experiences with adults

and anger, and shared a poem about

a parent’s angry outbursts. Together

for their own use. In the center, the

question “What can you do when you

feel angry?” prompted kids to remem-

ber the responses we had brainstormed

in the previous activity. The top half

of the poster was reserved for writing

in safe or healthy responses to anger,

while the bottom half was labeled

“unsafe/scary.” While completing this

activity, we had a chance to discuss

the idea that each person must make

a choice when she is angry about what

course of action she’s going to take. I

again reminded students that some

responses to anger are safe and some

are not.

Several complexities surfaced in our

discussions. Michael, who in addition

to his tantrums had also been known

to crumple his papers in frustration or

to put his head down and “drop out”

during class time, asked about how to

classify these kinds of actions. “Is it

safe to crumple up your paper? You’re

not hurting anyone if you do that.”

“Well, let’s think about that one,”

I responded. “It might not be physi-

cally dangerous to anyone, but is it

hurting you in any way? Does it hurt

you when you put your head down for

hours and decide not to learn or do

your work?” My hope was that Michael

would slowly come to realize that he

was hurting himself with some of his

behaviors.

Michael participated during these

sessions just as any other student. I

did not single him out or use him as

an example; in fact, I tried hard not to

allow myself or other students to refer

to his behavior in our discussions. I did

keep a close eye on him, and noticed

that he participated actively. His brain-

storming worksheets also gave me an

idea of some things that made him

angry, and some of his usual responses

to anger at school and at home. This

was important to my work with

Michael because it allowed me to think

about possible causes of his behaviors

I allowed my teaching to take a brief detour in pursuit of an answer to the

students’ important question: How and when can we hold adults

responsible for their angry behaviors?

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn46

we discussed a few key concepts about

adult anger and tantrums. We discussed

the fact that adults, just like kids, must

make choices about how to act when

they are angry. Some adults make poor

choices, I said. I also wanted to make

sure that my students didn’t internalize

feelings of guilt over an adult’s anger,

as if they were somehow to blame for

the outburst. I pointed out that it is

not a child’s fault if an adult they know

responds to anger in a way that hurts

others. I referred back to a previous

unit we had done on human rights

and asserted that as human beings, we

have a right to live free from the threat

of angry outbursts and violence. We

agreed that it is important for us to

talk with someone we trust if someone

is threatening that right. Adults can

change their behaviors, and may need

help to do so.

These affirmations provided a very

basic introduction which could have

easily turned into a much more pro-

found examination of anger and vio-

lence in families—our discussion only

scratched the surface.

I did not assume or suspect that

Michael was dealing with anger or

violence in his own family. Rather, I

planned this lesson in order to address

the students’ concerns and to give stu-

dents a clear message that adults are

responsible for making safe choices

when faced with anger. By helping

students see the connection between

their responses to anger and adults’

responses, I tried to encourage them

to understand that each of us has a

lifelong responsibility to resolve anger

appropriately and safely. It is not

appropriate to use our feelings as an

excuse to lash out at others.

The school year went on. Michael

did not miraculously change overnight,

but he did make some changes, and so

did I. In situations where he resorted

to angry behaviors, we had a language

in which to talk about his feelings and

his choices for responding to them. I

also had developed more sensible and

effective strategies for helping Michael

through tough times.

Later in the year when Michael was

angry, he was no longer as likely to say

to me: “Look what you made me do.”

He knew I would respond by saying,

“You choose what you do.” Many times,

I said to him, “It’s clear to me that

you’re feeling frustrated or angry. Are

you choosing to deal with your feelings

in a safe way?” Things got easier. The

cooling down periods got shorter. He

seemed to be taking more responsibil-

ity for his actions and developing some

strategies for what to do when he felt

frustrated or angry.

For my part, I tried to become more

flexible and to stop trying to force

Michael to respond exactly as I wanted

him to when he felt angry. I gave him

more time to cool down. I always tried

to get to what triggered his discontent

and to acknowledge his feelings. Per-

haps most important, I learned not to

touch Michael while he was angry, or to

try to move him physically. I had seen

that that simply did not work.

workable solution I was relieved that we had found a some-

what workable solution to Michael’s

behavior in our classroom. Part of me

continued to wonder whether there

were circumstances in Michael’s life

that were causing anger and frustration

to build up. I kept working with his

family and advocating with school sup-

port staff for additional help for him.

I talked with Michael often about his

feelings and tried to be alert to signs of

a more serious problem without mak-

ing unfounded assumptions.

Michael and I worked together

for a year and I think each one of us

made some progress. As I struggled to

become an effective teacher in my first

year on the job, I was willing to learn

from anyone who wanted to teach.

Michael proved to have a lot of lessons

in store for me. How little I would have

learned had I simply written him off.

For his part, Michael could have just

as easily have turned his back on me.

I am thankful to him for giving me a

chance to be his teacher and to learn

from him. n

Kelley Dawson Salas is a teacher at

Milwaukee Spanish Immersion School in

Milwaukee and an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 47

Recently, I read a book on teach-ing that left me feeling desolate because the writer’s vision of a joyful, productive classroom did not

match the chaos I faced daily. My stu-

dents straggled in, still munching on

Popeye’s chicken, wearing Walkmen,

and generally acting surly because of

some incident in the hall during break,

a fight with their parents, a teacher, a

boyfriend or girlfriend. This year, more

than any previous year, they failed to

finish the writing started in class or

read the novel or story I assigned as

homework. Many suffered from pains

much bigger than I could deal with:

homelessness, pregnancy, the death of

a brother, sister, friend, cousin due to

street violence, the nightly spatter of

guns in their neighborhoods, the decay

of a society.

For too many days during the first

quarter, I felt like a prison guard trying

to bring order and kindness to a class-

room where students laughed over the

beating of a man, made fun of a class-

mate who was going blind, and mim-

icked the way a Vietnamese girl spoke

until they pushed her into silence.

Each September I have this opti-

mistic misconception that I’m going

to create a compassionate, warm, safe

place for students in the first days of

class because my recollection is based

on the final quarter of the previous

year. In the past, that atmosphere did

emerge in a shorter time span. But the

students were more homogeneous,

and we were living in somewhat more

secure and less violent times. While

students shared the tragedies of divorce

and loss of friendships, their class talk

tears, and anger are the crucible from

which a real community grows.

Still, I hate discord. When I was

growing up, I typically gave up the fight

and agreed with my sister or mother so

that a reconciliation could be reached.

I can remember running to my “safe”

spot under my father’s overturned

rowboat whenever anger ran loose in

our house.

Too often these days I’m in the

middle of that anger, and there’s no

safe spot. My first impulse is to make

everyone sit down, be polite, and lis-

ten to each other, a great goal that I’ve

come to realize doesn’t happen easily.

Topics like racism and homophobia are

avoided in most classrooms, but they

seethe like open wounds. When there

is an opening for discussion, years of

was less often disrupted by the pressure

cooker of society—and I was more

naive and rarely explored those areas.

We were polite to each other as we kept

uncomfortable truths at bay.

Now, I realize that classroom com-

munity isn’t always synonymous with

warmth and harmony. Politeness is

often a veneer mistaken for understand-

ing, when in reality it masks uncovered

territory, the unspeakable pit that we

turn from because we know the anger

and pain that dwells there. At Jeffer-

son High School in Portland, Oregon,

where the interplay of race, class and

gender creates a constant background

static, it’s important to remind myself

that real community is forged out of

struggle. Students won’t always agree

on issues, and the fights, arguments,

building Community from Chaos by linda Christensen

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn48

tudes. Many of them already had histo-

ries with each other.

To complicate matters, our year

opened with a storm of violence in the

city. The brother of a Jefferson student

was shot and killed. Two girls were

injured when random bullets were

fired on a bus. A birthday party at a

local restaurant was broken up when

gunfire sprayed the side of the restau-

rant. So violence was on the students’

minds. I learned that I couldn’t ignore

the toll the outside world was taking

on my students. Rather than pretend-

ing that I could close my door in the

face of their mounting fears, I needed

to use that information to reach them.

In the first days, the only activity

that aroused interest was when they

wrote about their history as Eng-

lish students—what they liked, what

they hated, and what they wanted to

learn this year. Many of these stu-

dents skulked in the low track classes

and they were angry—not at track-

ing, because they weren’t aware that

another kind of education might be

possible, but at the way their time had

been wasted on meaningless activity.

“The teacher would put a word on the

board and then make us see how many

words we could make out of the let-

ters. Now what does that prepare me

for?” Larry asked. But they also hated

reading novels and talking about them

because novels “don’t have anything to

do with our lives.” The other constant

in many of their written responses was

that they felt stupid.

For the first time, they got excited.

I knew what they didn’t want: work-

sheets, sentence combining, reading

novels and discussing them, writing

about “stuff we don’t care about.” But

I didn’t know what to teach them. I

needed to engage them because they

were loud, unruly, and out of control

otherwise. But how? I decided to try

the “raise the expectations” approach

and use a curriculum I designed for my

Contemporary Literature and Society

class which receives college credit.

During those initial days of listen-

ing to these seniors and trying to read

the novel Thousand Pieces of Gold, by

Ruthann Lum McCunn, I discovered

that violence aroused my students. Stu-

dents weren’t thrilled with the book; in

fact, they weren’t reading it. I’d plan a

90-minute lesson around the reading

and dialogue journal they were sup-

posed to be keeping, but only a few stu-

dents were prepared. Most didn’t even

attempt to lie about the fact that they

weren’t reading and clearly weren’t

planning on it.

In an attempt to get them involved

in the novel, I read aloud an evocative

passage about the unemployed peasants

sweeping through the Chinese coun-

tryside pillaging, raping, and grabbing

what was denied them through legal

employment. Suddenly students saw

their own lives reflected back at them

through Chen, whose anger at losing

his job and ultimately his family led

him to become an outlaw. Chen created

a new family with this group of bandits.

Students could relate: Chen was a gang

member. I had stumbled on a way to

interest my class. The violence created

a contact point between the literature

and the students’ lives.

This connection, this reverberation

across cultures, time, and gender chal-

lenged the students’ previous notion

that reading and talking about novels

anger and pain surface. But students

haven’t been taught how to talk with

each other about these painful matters.

I can’t say that I’ve found defini-

tive answers, but as the year ended, I

knew some of the mistakes I made. I

also found a few constants: To become

a community, students must learn to

live in someone else’s skin, understand

the parallels of hurt, struggle, and joy

across class and culture lines, and work

for change. For that to happen, students

need more than an upbeat, supportive

teacher; they need a curriculum that

teaches them how to empathize with

others.

sharing Power and Passion Before I could operate on that level,

I had to find a way to connect with

my students. Ironically, violence was

the answer. This year none of the get-

acquainted activities that I count on to

build a sense of community worked in

my fourth-block class. Students didn’t

want to get up and interview each

other. They didn’t want to write about

their names. They didn’t want to be in

the class, and they didn’t want any jive-

ass let’s-get-to-know-each-other games

or activities. Mostly, our 90-minute

blocks were painfully long as I failed

daily to elicit much response other

than groans, sleep, or anger. It’s hard

to build community when you feel

like you’re “hoisting elephants through

mud” as my friend Carolyn says. I knew

it was necessary to break through their

apathy and uncover something that

made these students care enough to

talk, to read, to write, to share—even

to get angry.

My fourth-block class first semes-

ter was Senior English, a tracked

class where most of the students were

short on credits to graduate—as TJ

said, “We’re not even on the five year

plan”—but long on humor and poten-

tial. They came in with their fists up

and their chins cocked. They had atti-

Building community begins when students get inside the lives of

others.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 49

Kari wrote that she joined a gang

when she was searching for family.

Her father lost his job; her mother

was forced to work two jobs to pay the

rent. Kari assumed more responsibil-

ity at home: cooking dinner, putting

younger brothers and sisters to bed,

and cleaning. While at middle school,

Kari joined the Crips. She said at first

it was because she liked the “family”

feel. They wore matching clothes. They

shared a language and nicknames.

In a neighborhood that had become

increasingly violent, they offered her

protection. She left the gang after mid-

dle school because she was uncomfort-

able with the violence.

Students were surprised to learn

that Hua, a recent immigrant from

Vietnam, was also worried about her

brother who had joined a gang. Her

classmates were forced to reevaluate

their initial assessments of her. While

she had seemed like an outsider, a for-

eigner, her story made a bond between

them.

At first, I worried that inviting stu-

dents to write about violence might

glorify it. It didn’t turn out that way.

Students were generally adamant that

they’d made poor choices when they

were involved in violent activities. As

TJ states in his essay, “I wanted to be

known wherever I went. ... But I went

about it all wrong and got mixed in. ...

It was nothing I had hoped for. Sure I

was known and all that, but for all the

wrong reasons.”

More often students shared their

fears. Violence was erupting around

them and they felt out of control. They

needed to share that fear.

Through the topic of violence I cap-

tured their interest, but I wanted them

to critique the violence rather than

just describe it. I had hoped to build a

community of inquiry where we iden-

tified a common problem and worked

to understand it by examining history

and our lives. That didn’t happen. It

was still early in the year, and students

were so absorbed in telling their stories

and listening to others it was difficult

to pull them far enough away to ana-

lyze the situation. I didn’t have enough

materials that went beyond accusations

or sensationalism, but the topic itself

also presented practical and ethical

problems, especially around issues of

safety and confidentiality.

I want to be clear: Bringing student

issues into the room does not mean

giving up teaching the core ideas and

skills of the class; it means I need to use

the energy of their connections to drive

us through the content.

For example, students still had to

write a literary essay. But they could

use their lives as well as Lalu’s to illus-

trate their points. Students scrutinized

their issues through the lens of a larger

vision as James did when he compared

the violence in his life to the violence

in Lalu’s:

Lalu isn’t a gang member, but some

of the folks, or should I say, some

of the enemies she came in contact

with reminded me of my enemies.

Bandits in the story represented the

worst foes of my life. In some ways

bandits and gangs are quite similar.

One would be the reason for them

turning to gang life. Neither of

them had a choice. It was some-

thing forced upon them by either

educational problems or financial

difficulties. It could have been the

fact that their families were corrupt

didn’t have relevance for them. They

could empathize with the Chinese but

also explore those issues in their own

lives.

This connection also created space

to unpack the assumption that all

gangs are bad. Chen wasn’t born vio-

lent. He didn’t start out robbing and

killing. Lalu, the novel’s main character,

remembered him as a kind man who

bought her candy. He changed after he

lost his job and his family starved.

Similarly, kids in gangs don’t start

out violent or necessarily join gangs to

“pack gats” and shoot it out in drive-

bys. Because the tendency in most

schools is to simultaneously deny and

outlaw the existence of gangs, kids

rarely talk critically about them.

A few years ago, scholar Mike Davis

wrote an article analyzing the upsurge

of gang activity in L.A. He found it

linked to the loss of union wage jobs.

I hadn’t explored Portland’s history to

know whether our situation is similar

to L.A.’s, but I suspected economic par-

allels. When I raised Davis’s research,

kids were skeptical. They saw other

factors: the twin needs of safety and

belonging.

Our discussion of gangs broke the

barrier. Students began writing about

violence in their own lives and their

neighborhoods. TJ explained his own

brushes with violence:

[T]he summer between my sopho-

more and junior years, some of my

friends were getting involved in a

new gang called the Irish Mob. ... My

friends were becoming somebody,

someone who was known wherever

they went. The somebody who I

wanted to be. ... During the next

couple of weeks we were involved

in six fights, two stabbings, and one

drive-by shooting. We got away on

all nine cases. The next Saturday

night my brother was shot in a

drive-by. The shooters were caught

the same night.

For too many days during the

first quarter, I felt like a

prison guard.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn50

We asked students to respond to the

reading by keeping a dialogue journal.

Dirk, who is African-American, wrote,

“He’s not the only one who feels like

an exile in America. Some of us who

were born here feel that way too.” As

he continued reading, he was sur-

prised that some of the acts of violence

Bulosan encountered were similar to

those endured by African Americans.

In his essay on immigration, he chose

to write about the parallels between

Bulosan’s life and the experiences he’s

encountered:

When I was growing up I thought

African Americans were the only

ones who went through oppression.

In the reading, “In the Heart of Fili-

pino America,” I found that Filipinos

had to go through a lot when com-

ing to America. I can relate with the

stuff they went through because my

ancestors went through sort of the

same thing.

Dirk went on to describe the paral-

lels in housing discrimination, lynch-

ing, name calling, being cheated out of

wages that both Filipinos and African

Americans lived through.

Besides reading and studying about

“others,” we wanted students to come

face to face with people they usually

don’t meet as a way of breaking down

their preconceived ideas about people

from other countries. For example,

during this unit, we continued to hear

students classify all Asians as “Chi-

nese.” In the halls, we heard students

mimic the way Vietnamese students

spoke. When writing about discrimi-

nation, another student confessed that

she discriminated against the Mexican

students at our school. Our students

were paired with English-as-Second-

Language students who had emigrated

from another country—Vietnam,

Laos, Cambodia, Eritrea, Mexico, Gua-

temala, Ghana. They interviewed their

partner and wrote a profile of the stu-

dent to share in class. Students were

moved by their partners’ stories. One

student whose brother had been killed

at the beginning of the year was paired

with a student whose sister was killed

fighting in Eritrea. He connected to her

loss and was amazed at her strength.

Others were appalled at how these

students had been mistreated at their

school. Many students later used the

lives of their partners in their essays on

immigration.

Besides making immigration a

contemporary rather than a historical

topic, students heard the sorrow their

fellow students felt at leaving “home.”

In our “curriculum of empathy,” we

forced our class to see these students

as individuals rather than the ESL

students or “Chinese” students, or an

undifferentiated mass of Mexicans.

A curriculum of empathy puts stu-

dents inside the lives of others. By writ-

ing, interior monologues (see “Pro-

moting Social Imagination,” p. 126),

acting out improvisations, taking part

in role plays (see “Role Plays: Show

Don’t Tell,” p. 130), and creating fiction

stories about historical events, students

learn to develop understanding about

people whose culture, race, gender, or

sexual orientation differs from theirs.

“Things changed for me this year,”

Wesley wrote in his end-of-the-year

evaluation. “I started respecting my

peers. My attitude has changed against

homosexuals and whites.” Similarly,

Tyrelle wrote, “I learned a lot about my

own culture as an African American

but also about other people’s cultures.

I never knew Asians suffered. When

we wrote from different characters in

movies and stories I learned how it felt

to be like them.”

sharing Personal stories Building community begins when stu-

dents get inside the lives of others in

history, in literature, or down the hall-

way, but they also learn by exploring

or no love was shown. Whatever the

reasons, it was a way of survival.

Finding the heartbeat of a class isn’t

always easy. I must know what’s hap-

pening in the community and the lives

of my students. If they’re consumed by

the violence in the neighborhood or

the lack of money in their house, I’m

more likely to succeed in teaching them

if I intersect their preoccupation.

Building community means taking

into account the needs of the mem-

bers of that community. I can sit stu-

dents in a circle, play getting-to-know-

each-other games until the cows come

home, but if what I am teaching in the

class holds no interest for the students,

I’m just holding them hostage until the

bell rings.

a Curriculum of empathy As a critical teacher I encourage stu-

dents to question everyday acts or

ideas that they take for granted (see

“Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us,”

p. 3 and “Teaching Standard English:

Whose Standard?” p. 154). But I also

teach them to enter the lives of char-

acters in literature, history, or real life

whom they might dismiss or misun-

derstand. I don’t want their first reac-

tion to difference to be laughter or

withdrawal. I try to teach them how to

empathize with people whose circum-

stances might differ from theirs. Empa-

thy is key in community building.

I choose literature that intentionally

makes students look beyond their own

world. In the class I teach with Bill Big-

elow, we used an excerpt from Ronald

Takaki’s A Different Mirror about Fili-

pino writer Carlos Bulosan. Bulosan

wrote, “I am an exile in America.” He

described the treatment he received,

good and bad. He wrote of being

cheated out of wages at a fish can-

nery in Alaska, being refused housing

because he was Filipino, being tarred

and feathered and driven from town.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 51

a great wash of wings and waves while

I broke the bread into pieces to throw

to them. I loved to watch them gobble

up the soggy loaf, but I began noticing

how some ducks took more than oth-

ers. In fact, some ducks were pushed

to the side and pecked at. I’ve noticed

the same thing happens in classrooms.

Students find someone who they think

is weak and attack them. In my fourth-

block class, the victim was Jim. He’d

been in my class the year before. I’d

watched him progress as a writer and

thinker. In his end of the year evalua-

tion, he drew a picture of himself as a

chef; his writing was the dough. In an

essay, he explained how writing was

like making bread. He was proud of his

achievements as a writer.

In both classes, Jim was a victim. He

was going blind because of a hereditary

disease. It didn’t happen overnight, but

he struggled with terror at his oncom-

ing blindness. Because he was steadily

losing his eyesight, he was clumsy in

the classroom. He couldn’t see where

he was going. He knocked into people

and desks. He accidently overturned

piles of books. Students would respond

with laughter or anger. Some days he

cried silently into the fold of his arms.

He told me, “I know the darkness is

coming.” Several male students in the

class made fun of him for crying as

well. One day, Amber was in a typically

bad mood, hunched inside her too-big

coat and snarling at anyone who came

near. When Jim bumped her desk on

the way to the pencil sharpener and

her books and papers tumbled on the

floor, she blew up at him for bumbling

around the room. Jim apologized pro-

fusely and retreated into his shell after

her attack.

A few days later I gave an assignment

for students to write about their ances-

tors, their people. First, they read Mar-

garet Walker’s poems, “For My People”

and “Lineage” and others. I told them

they could imagine their people as their

immediate ancestors, their race, their

nationality or gender. Jim wrote:

To My People with

Retinitis Pigmentosa

Sometimes I hate you

like the disease

I have been plagued with.

I despise the “sight” of you

seeing myself in your eyes.

I see you as if it were you

who intentionally

damned me to darkness.

I sometimes wish

I was not your brother;

that I could stop

the setting of the sun

and wash my hands of you forever

and never look back

except with pity,

but I cannot.

So I embrace you,

the sun continues to set

as I walk into darkness

holding your hand.

Students were silenced. Tears rolled.

Kevin said, “Damn, man. That’s hard.”

Amber apologized to Jim in front of

the class. At the end of the year she

told me that her encounter with Jim

was one of the events that changed her.

She learned to stop and think about

why someone else might be doing what

they’re doing instead of immediately

jumping to the conclusion that they

were trying to annoy her.

My experience is that, given a chance,

students will share amazing stories.

Students have told me that my willing-

their own lives and coming to terms

with the people they are “doing time”

with in the classroom. Micere Mugo,

a Kenyan poet, recently said, “Writing

can be a lifeline, especially when your

existence has been denied, especially

when you have been left on the mar-

gins, especially when your life and pro-

cess of growth have been subjected to

attempts at strangulation.” For many

of our students their stories have been

silenced in school. Their histories have

been marginalized to make room for

“important” people, their interests and

worries passed over so I can teach Ore-

gon history or The Scarlet Letter.

To develop empathy, students

need to learn about each others’ lives

as well as reflect on their own. When

they hear personal stories, classmates

become real instead of cardboard ste-

reotypes: rich white girl, basketball-

addicted black boy, brainy Asian. Once

they’ve seen how people can hurt, once

they’ve shared pain and laughter, they

can’t so easily treat people as objects to

be kicked or beaten or called names.

When students’ lives are taken off the

margins, they don’t feel the same need

to put someone else down.

Any reading or history lesson offers

myriad opportunities for this kind

of activity. I find points of conflict,

struggle, change, or joy and create an

assignment to write about a parallel

time in their lives. We’ve had students

write about times they’ve been forced

to move, been discriminated against

or discriminated against someone else,

changed an attitude or action, worked

for change, lost a valuable possession.

Obviously, losing a treasured item does

not compare to the Native Americans’

loss of their land, but telling the story

does give students a chance to empa-

thize with the loss as well as share a

piece of themselves with the class.

When I was a child, my mother took

me to the pond in Sequoia Park on Sun-

days to feed the ducks. They’d come in

Given a chance, students will

share amazing stories.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn52

create a project to teach at nearby ele-

mentary or middle schools. Students

in Literature and U.S. History write

children’s books about Abolitionists,

the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph, and oth-

ers. After students critique the media

(see “Unlearning the Myths That Bind

Us,” p. 3), they are usually upset by the

negative messages children receive, so

I have them write and illustrate books

for elementary students. They brain-

storm positive values they want chil-

dren to receive, read traditional and

contemporary children’s books, cri-

tique the stories, and write their own.

They develop lesson plans to go with

their books. For example, before Bev

read her book about John Brown she

asked, “Has anyone here ever tried to

change something you thought was

wrong?” After students shared their

experiences, she read her book. Stu-

dents also created writing assignments

to go with their books so they could

model the writing process.

Students were nervous before their

school visits. As they practiced lesson

plans and received feedback from their

peers, there was much laughter and

anticipation. They mimicked “bad”

students and asked improper ques-

tions that have nothing to do with the

children’s book: Is she your girlfriend?

Why are your pants so baggy? Why

does your hair look like that?

When they returned, there were

stories to share: children who hugged

their knees and begged them to come

back; kids who wouldn’t settle down;

kids who said they couldn’t write. My

students proudly read the writings

that came out of “their” class. They

responded thoughtfully to each stu-

dent’s paper.

James, a member of my English 12

class, was concerned by the number of

young children who join gangs. He and

several other young men wrote stories

about gang violence and took them to

our neighborhood elementary school.

He strode into the class, wrote “gangs”

in big letters on the board and sat

down. The 5th-grade class was riveted.

He and his teaching mates read their

stories and then talked with students

about gangs. As James wrote after his

visit:

For a grown person to teach a kid

is one thing. But for a teenager

like myself to teach young ones is

another. Kids are highly influenced

by peers close to their age or a little

older. I’m closer to their age, so they

listen to me. ... Some of these kids

that I chatted with had stories that

they had been wanting to get off

their chest for a long time. ... When I

came to class with my adventures of

being a gangster, that gave them an

opportunity to open up. Spill guts.

[No one] should object to me teach-

ing these shorties about gang life,

telling them that it’s not all fun and

games. It’s straight do or die. Kill or

be killed.

The seriousness with which the

students understand their lives was in

sharp contrast to the seeming apathy

they displayed at the year’s beginning.

Through the year, I came to understand

that the key to reaching my students

and building community was helping

students excavate and reflect on their

personal experiences, connecting it to

the world of language, literature, and

society. We moved from ideas to action,

perhaps the most elusive objective in

any classroom.

Community and activism: These

are the goals in every course I teach.

The steps we take to reach them are

not often in a straight path. We stag-

ger, sidestep, stumble, and then rise to

stride ahead again.n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

ness to share stories about my life—my

father’s alcoholism, my family’s lack

of education, my poor test scores, and

many others, opened the way for them

to tell their stories. Students have writ-

ten about rape, sexual abuse, divorce,

drug and alcohol abuse. And through

their sharing, they make openings to

each other. Sometimes a small break.

A crack. A passage from one world to

the other. And these openings allow the

class to become a community.

students as activists Community is also created when stu-

dents struggle together to achieve a

common goal. Sometimes the oppor-

tunity spontaneously arises out of

the conditions or content of the class,

school, or community. During Bill’s

and my first year teaching together,

we exchanged the large student desks

in our room with another teacher’s

smaller desks without consulting our

students. We had forty students in the

class, and not all of the big desks fit

in the circle. They staged a “stand in”

until we returned the original desks.

One year our students responded to

a negative article in a local newspaper

by organizing a march and rally to “tell

the truth about Jefferson to the press.”

During the Columbus quincentenary,

my students organized a teach-in about

Columbus for classes at Jefferson. Of

course, these “spontaneous” uprisings

only work if teachers are willing to give

over class time for the students to orga-

nize, and if they’ve highlighted times

when people in history resisted injus-

tice, making it clear that solidarity and

courage are values to be prized in daily

life, not just praised in the abstract and

put on the shelf.

But most often I have to create situ-

ations for students to work outside of

the classroom. I want them to con-

nect ideas and action in tangible ways.

Sometimes I do this by asking students

to take what they have learned and

Rethinking My ClassRooM 53

wrote in his end of the year evaluation,

“I started the year off as I finished the

last year: bad, wicked and obnoxious. I

was getting kicked out of class and hav-

ing meetings with the deans about my

behavior every other day.”

For critical teachers trying to build

community, this creates a serious

problem. Do we eliminate this stu-

dent? When, after trying time-outs,

calling his home, talking with his

coach, and keeping him after class, we

finally kicked him out—his friends

said, “They’re picking on him.” Which

wasn’t true. But it set us up as the bad

guys and divided us from the students

we wanted to win over.

Increased police presence in the

area has created situations where stu-

dents gain honor by taunting the cops

in front of peers. This carries over to

class, where we represent the same

white authority as the police until stu-

dents get to know us. While Wesley

was not skilled academically, in other

respects he was brilliant. He was an

artist at toeing the line technically and

creating total chaos in the process. He’d

raise his hand and make perfectly nice

comments about someone’s paper in

such a way that the entire class knew

he was mocking the whole procedure.

Even with two of us in the classroom,

he defeated us at every turn. Clearly,

we were playing on his terrain, and he

knew the game better than we did even

if we’d taught longer than he’d been

alive.

Here we were teaching about justice,

tolerance, equality, and respect, and yet

when we had a problem with a talented

student who didn’t want to go along,

we turned him over to the deans. Ulti-

mately, what lesson does that teach our

students? That we talk a good game,

but when pushed, we respond like

other traditional teachers? It’s a com-

plex issue. I don’t want to keep the class

from progressing because of one or

two students, but I don’t want to “give

up” on students either. On bad days, I

threw him out. On good days, I tried

to look behind his behavior and figure

out what motivated it.

looking beyond the words In teaching critical literacy, I tell stu-

dents to look behind the words to dis-

cover what the text is really saying; in

working with “problem” students in

class, I need to look behind the stu-

dents’ behavior. What is motivating

this? How can I get to the root of the

problem? In my experience, the more

negative students feel about themselves

Creating a climate of respect is easy to talk about and hard to practice. Ideally, we want a space where students listen respectfully

and learn to care about each other. A

or Sexist Remarks. I’ve often said, “I

just don’t tolerate that kind of behav-

ior.” But this year, it was like saying,

“I don’t tolerate ants.” I have ants in

my kitchen. I can spray chemicals on

them and saturate the air with poison

and “not tolerate” them, or I can find

another solution that doesn’t harm my

family or pets in the process. If I just

kick kids out of class, I “don’t tolerate”

their actions, but neither do I edu-

cate them or their classmates. And it

works about as well as stamping out a

few ants. I prepare them for repressive

solutions where misbehavior is tempo-

rarily contained by an outside author-

ity, not really addressed. Sometimes, I

am forced to that position, but I try not

to be.

Dealing with name-Calling One year, students in the class Bill Big-

elow and I co-teach were often rude to

each other. Their favorite put-down

was “faggot.” (This in a class where a

young woman came out as a lesbian.)

During the first weeks, several young

women complained that they had been

called names by boys in class. They felt

the hostility and wanted to transfer

out. They didn’t feel comfortable shar-

ing their work or even sitting in the

class because they were pinched, hit,

or called names when our backs were

turned. As one of the main, but cer-

tainly not the only, instigators, Wesley

Discipline: no Quick Fix by linda Christensen

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn54

embarrassment over poor skills—and

helping them achieve success helped to

change their behavior. Once the with-

drawn or antisocial actions stopped,

they contributed to the community

rather than sabotaging it. This was not

a miraculous, overnight change. On

some days, the behavior backslid to day

one, but most times there was steady

improvement.

I have yet to discover a quick fix

for out of control behavior. I try call-

ing my students’ homes in September

to establish contact and expectations. I

usually ask, “Is there anything you can

tell me that will help me teach your

child more effectively?” Parents know

their child’s history in schools and

can give important insights. When my

daughter didn’t turn in a project, her

teacher called me. I discovered that her

class had long term work that students

needed to complete at home. I appreci-

ated the call because Anna insisted that

she didn’t have homework. Her teacher

made me realize how much parents

need to hear from teachers—not only

for keeping track of homework, but so

we can work in tandem.

Often working with a coach or

activities advisor helps because they’ve

established strong one-on-one rela-

tionships. They also have access to an

area where the student feels successful.

One coach, for example, told me that

“Jeremy” just realized that he would

play high school ball, maybe college

ball, but he’d never be pro. He’d turned

from gangs to sports in the 7th grade,

and the vision that fueled him was

the NBA. Suddenly, that dream came

against reality. He practiced hours

every day, but he knew he wouldn’t

make it. His attitude had been sour

and nasty for weeks. He needed a new

vision. This information helped me to

understand Jeremy and allowed me to

get out the college guide and talk about

choices. His final essay was “Life After

Sports.”

Mostly, I call students at night and

talk with them after the day is over,

their friends are no longer around, and

both of us have had a chance to cool

down. Students joke about how they

can’t get away with anything because

Bill and I call their homes. I overheard

one student say, “Man, I got to go to

class today otherwise they’ll call my

uncle tonight.” Perhaps it’s just letting

them know we care enough to take our

time outside of school that turns them

around.n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

and their intellectual ability, the more

cruel or withdrawn they are in the

classroom.

Tyrelle, Wesley’s classmate, wrote

early in the year that he felt stupid. “My

problem is I don’t like to read out loud

because I don’t think the class would

like it. Every time I try to write or do

something my teachers told me that’s

stupid, you did it wrong, or you can’t

spell. My friends [who were classmates]

say it too. I don’t say anything. I just act

like I don’t hear it, but I really do.”

One day I overheard his friends teas-

ing him about his spelling. After class

I talked with him about it. I arranged

for him to come in so we could work

privately and I would teach him how to

write. Because so many of his friends

were in the class, he was afraid to ask

for help. His way of dealing with the

problem was to close down—put his

head on his desk and sleep—or make

fun of people who were trying to do

their work. This did not totally stop,

but once he found a way into his writ-

ing he would usually settle down and

work.

During the second semester he

wrote, “You guys have helped me

become a better person because you

were always after me, ‘Tyrelle, be quiet.

Tyrelle, pay attention.’ After a while I

learned how to control myself when

it was time to.” He’d also learned to

separate himself from his friends so he

could work.

Wesley, who admitted to being “bad,

wicked and obnoxious,” was also a vic-

tim of poor skills and low academic

self-esteem. He’d sneak in after school

for help with his writing, or I’d go over

the homework readings and teach him

how to “talk back” to the author. Some-

times he’d call me at home when he was

stuck. At the end of the year his mother

said, “He told me that he didn’t think

he could write. Now he says he knows

how.” With both of these students, rec-

ognizing the cause of the behavior—

Helping students achieve

success helps to change their

behavior.

http://www.videoproject.com

Rethinking My ClassRooM 55

being a bee is a pain. i’m a worker i’ll glaDly exPlain. i’m up at dawn, guarding the hive’s narrow entrance then i take out the hive’s morning trash then i put in an hour making wax, without two minutes’ time to sit and relax. then i might collect nectar from the field three miles north

The following is a dialogue poem, to be read by two people. The first person reads down the left column, the second person, down the right. Capitalized phrases are to be read in unison.

being a bee is a joy. i’m a queen i’ll glaDly exPlain. upon rising, i’m fed by my royal attendants, i’m bathed then i’m groomed. the rest of my day is quite simply set forth: i lay eggs,

honeybees

by Paul Fleischman

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn56

by the hundred. i’m loved and i’m lauded, i’m outranked by none. when i’ve done enough laying i retire for the rest of the day. tRuly, a bee’s is the best OF all liVes.

or perhaps i’m on larva detail feeding the grubs in their cells, wishing that i were still helpless and pale. then i pack combs with pollen—not my idea of fun then, weary, i strive to patch up any cracks in the hive. then i build some new cells, slaving away at enlarging this hell, dreading the sight of another sunrise, wondering why we don’t all unionize. tRuly, a bee’s is the wORst OF all liVes.

Paul Fleischman writes books for young children—prose and poetry. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

Rethinking My ClassRooM 57

teaching about global warming in truck Country by Jana Dean

Ms. Dean, are you trying to tell me I can’t drive a truck?”Alex, an 8th grader, leaned back until he was perched on two chair

legs, his arms crossed defiantly. It was

the end of a class period, the second day

of our class’s study of climate change. I

knew Alex expected he’d someday drive

a big truck like his father.

“Not necessarily,” I answered, “but

together we are going learn enough sci-

ence to understand global warming.

Then we’ll do something about it.”

Global warming is a subject most

of us don’t like to think about. Worst-

case scenario: Ocean currents come to

a rolling stop, resulting in a domino

effect of chain reactions and a cli-

mate unlike anything in the collective

memory of humanity. In other words,

the ecosystem as we know it is a goner,

and it isn’t going to be pretty. Among

the predictions are wars over water and

total economic and social collapse.

What’s creating this change? Mea-

surable increases in gases such as meth-

ane and carbon dioxide that absorb and

hold heat radiating from the surface of

the earth. What’s worse, the global ther-

mal balance that drives ocean currents

reacts gradually. We’ve only begun to

see the impact of changes that occurred

in the atmosphere years ago. We may

not feel the real global impact of atmo-

spheric change until it’s too late.

In the unit I taught, I wanted my

students to understand the physics and

chemistry that explain the anthropo-

genic (human-produced) causes of

m Ic

h A

E L D

u FFY

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn58

few private schools, and the district has

only two middle schools, both of which

serve a similar mix of suburban and

rural areas: We get the wealthy students

along with the poor.

When I first moved here in 1989,

logging trucks still rumbled in from

the surrounding forests to dump logs

by the millions at our port. Many of

those trees were hauled out of the

woods by the relatives of my students.

Even though the economy has changed,

a rural cultural relationship to the land

remains intact. Most families still have

plenty of practical uses for a truck.

They cut and haul firewood. They

pull stumps. They keep livestock. Even

many families that don’t actively use

a truck for work choose to drive one

because on weekends they haul and

hunt. I teach in truck country.

As the daughter of a gas station

owner, I have many stories about

trucks and a father who always smelled

of grease and gasoline. I learned to

drive my father’s Ford when I was still

too small to shift it without using both

hands. Many of my students and I have

truck culture in common.

Jimmy comes to school a few times

a month hobbled after trying to lift

“a tranny with guts in it.” Kylie drives

her quad ATV into ditches. Justin stays

home some school days to help his dad

with the fifth-wheel trailer. I figured

our knowledge of fossil-fuel-powered

internal combustion engines would

support us in understanding the causes

of global warming.

But when Alex first crossed his

arms, I began to realize that indicting

our beloved motors for global warming

before building a ton of background

would be like petting a cat in the wrong

direction. At the same time, it was a

sign that I was going in the right direc-

tion: Change doesn’t happen without

resistance. As auto-dependent rural

people, we love the ease, convenience,

and speed of the open road. My up-

front commitment to action had acti-

vated in my students a fear of losing a

way of life they’d been raised to inherit.

Alex’s statement, echoed by many of

his classmates—yeah, what about my

quad, my motorcycle?—worried me,

and I had to talk myself into pushing

past the resistance. But I would have to

proceed carefully since fearful people

have a hard time thinking critically.

Carbon Dioxide would have to wait I decided to carefully sidestep any men-

tion of the causes of global warming

until we thoroughly understood the

effects.

To get a handle on the effects, we did

two projects using a curriculum devel-

oped by the Union of Concerned Sci-

entists. (See resources, p. 61.) The first

involved following links on a world

map to learn about scientifically proven

signs of rising temperatures. The map is

based on measurable data and climate

models that predict increased flood-

ing, drought, heat waves, and wildfires,

along with more catastrophic weather

events. The second had students study-

ing the transmission cycle of tropical

diseases and their vectors.

We learned that changes in climate

are severely affecting the polar regions.

In many parts of the arctic, sea ice has

decreased by 50 percent or more. For

the first time, scientists have observed

open water at the North Pole. The pop-

ulation of penguins in the Antarctic has

declined by one third. Large sinkholes

have developed in Alaska as permafrost

melts and the ground collapses. Gla-

cial ice in Olympic National Park will

be gone by 2070 if it continues to melt

climate change. I also hoped my stu-

dents would reflect on their own lives

and consider how their own behavior

could change to become more “cli-

mate friendly.” I entertained the pos-

sibility of a broader political response,

but accepted at the outset that I might

not have time to build enough back-

ground in global economics and trade

to expose the politics behind global

inaction as the earth heats up. As a sci-

ence teacher operating within the con-

straints of a bell schedule, I decided to

prioritize the science.

And I had another motive, which

was embedded in my answer to Alex’s

challenge two days into our study:

Together we would do something about

global warming. I wanted my students

to join together to create change. For

them, uniting across socioeconomic,

racial, and political differences can be

uncomfortable territory. Yet that’s just

what needs to happen as humanity

faces a global environmental crisis.

I teach in a public middle school on

the edge of Washington State’s capital

city. While mostly white, my students

are socioeconomically diverse. To the

north, Tumwater’s middle- and work-

ing-class neighborhoods of houses

and apartments merge with the city of

Olympia. To the south, junkyards and

machine shops set among small indus-

try and warehouses gradually fade into

a rural mix of wood lots, farms, sub-

divisions, and trailer parks. Many stu-

dents spend an hour on the bus getting

to school in the morning. The homes

they leave behind range from upscale

new houses to trailer parks in some of

the most underserved neighborhoods

in the county. Our community offers

It is hard to imagine change when it disrupts your sense of identity.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 59

ten. Jimmy wrote, “On Sunday night

I was walking a friend home. Right as

we walked in her driveway the cops

had their spotlight on us. I got a ride

back to my cousin’s house in a cop

car. It sucked.” Kylie described being

stuck in a ditch on her quad and not

being able to get out. Julie read about

being lost on a city bus. Warren read

about moving: “I feel overwhelmed

every time I have to move from house

to house.” Our stories helped us to see

that when faced with an out of control

situation—like global warming—we

will feel angry, overwhelmed, stuck,

confused, trapped, and scared.

I told my students, “As we continue

to learn about global warming, expect

to feel all of those feelings. We’ll be

learning and feeling together. In many

of your stories you were alone. In the

global warming story, we’ll have each

other.”

arctic meltdown I thought that by then we might have

been ready to look again at the causes

of climate change. Arctic Meltdown, Ris-

ing Seas (See resources, p. 61.) features

stories and interviews of indigenous

people in Alaska and in the Marshall

Islands who are suffering as ice melts

and sea levels rise.

Before showing the video, I asked

students to listen carefully to the nar-

rative for “Changes on the Ice” and

“Changes on the Beach” and to take

notes.

The video opens with footage of

people in Alaska meeting with a scien-

tist: “Polar bears are thin and hungry.

Walruses are fewer and fewer every

year, and we depend on them for our

food.”

The video continues with interviews

of a family from the Marshall Islands

who almost lost a baby in a rogue wave

that swept in at high tide. With that

story, feelings ran high. The class was

silent. Interviews with Marshallese sci-

entists reveal that erosion due to higher

sea levels is taking away their land and

their way of life. The film then bom-

bards us with a message about our

cars, our trucks, our factories, our

consumption.

As he put his notebook away, Ron

slammed it shut and said: “I don’t get it.

What are we gonna do? Stop driving?”

Consternation ran through the class.

“What about my quad … my motorcy-

cle … how will we get to school … too

far to ride my bike.” I had no answer.

Even though I had previewed the

film, and knew it would challenge their

assumptions, I wasn’t ready for the

strength of their opposition. Students’

responses reminded me of how much

harder it is to imagine change when it

disrupts your sense of identity. My stu-

dents have grown up with the expecta-

tion that they will have the privilege of

driving. They weren’t ready to give up

their dreams of the open road.

How could I teach about the fossil

fuel causes of global warming and at

the same time respect local identity? I

knew from the outset that in propos-

ing change I’d meet with resistance. I

would have to proceed very carefully

to build science background in a non-

politicized manner. I decided to wait to

thoroughly teach the causes of global

warming until I could figure out how

to do it effectively. At this point in our

learning, the film was too confronta-

tional for these heirs of truck culture.

During the next class I acknowl-

edged that the film had made some

students feel uncomfortable, and that

some of them felt angry. I explained

that understanding the message of the

film would take more science back-

ground, and that I was ready to teach

them that background so they could

form a powerful reasoned opinion

about the film’s message.

We spent the next two weeks build-

ing science background. I demon-

strated the expansion of water as it

at the current rate. In tropical Africa,

rising temperatures and rainfall have

both increased the range, severity, and

frequency of tropical diseases such as

malaria and schistosomiasis.

I asked students to write about what

concerned them most about global

warming. As they shared aloud, I wrote

down their worries on poster paper

hung at the front of the class. The

mood was somber. My students sat so

still and silent we could hear each other

swallow.

I learned that Ryan, who lives for

hunting season, worried about elk that

will suffer from diminishing alpine

environments. Brandon loves pen-

guins and lamented the loss of sea ice.

Other students cited enormous wild-

fires attributable to warmer and drier

trends in some parts of the world.

Many of them felt deep concern about

the spread of malaria and other tropi-

cal diseases.

Whenever I bring my students’

awareness to big problems, I worry I

will overwhelm them and short-circuit

their potential for critical thinking. I

knew that we’d be more likely to be able

to push through to more learning if we

took the time to talk about how we feel:

Acknowledging feelings opens the way

for clear thinking. Otherwise emotions

and thoughts get muddled up in each

other. But in my experience, asking 8th

graders to name their feelings can be

like trying to get a stone to talk.

I asked the class, “How many of you

have ever had a time when things were

going wrong and you felt there was

nothing you could do about it?” Nearly

every hand went up. “Turn to your

partner and tell them the story you’re

thinking of. If you don’t have one yet,

go second.” The room hummed with

the noise of storytelling.

After five minutes of talking, I

directed everyone to write down the

incidents they had shared, and then

we read to the class what we had writ-

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn60

The science behind climate change isn’t hard: Burn carbon-based fuels (virtually all fossil fuels are carbon-based) and you add heat- trapping carbon to the atmosphere. create oxygen-free conditions for decomposition, such as those in the still water behind a dam or in a landfill, and methane results.

Since pre-industrial times, the concentration of cO2 in our

atmosphere has risen by about a third, from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 378 ppm. methane has doubled its concentration from 0.78 ppm to 1.76 ppm. cO2 and methane levels haven’t been this high since the age of the dinosaurs. current methane levels are the highest they’ve been in 420,000 years. The current concentration of cO2 is the highest it’s been in 20 million years.

the science behind Climate Change

make an aluminum can is expended

before the metal reaches the plant that

makes the container.”

I explained the assignment: “Pick

a product and place it on the end of

your roll of adding machine tape [that

I’d distributed]. Then work together

to brainstorm everything everyone in

your group knows about what it takes

to make that product. For each thing

you can think of, make a labeled draw-

ing. Trace what it takes for as long as

you can, drawing arrows between each

step.”

Justin, Sarah and Angel worked on

a poster together. Angel was bursting

with questions.

“Ms. Dean, what does it take to

make cans?” she asked.

“Electricity.”

“Ms. Dean, where does electricity

come from?”

“A dam, or a steam plant powered

by coal.”

“OK. A dam,” she simplified. “What

does it take to make a dam?”

“Concrete.”

“What does it take to make con-

crete?”

“It comes from rock, which is

mined.”

She rushed back to her group, eager

to have them include what she’d just

learned on their chart. As soon as she

got them going, she was back at me,

ready to take it further.

“What does it take to make a

mine?”

“An excavator.”

“What does it take to make an

excavator?”

I don’t like to spoon-feed students,

even when they are excited about pur-

suing a topic. I realized that with this

one, Justin probably knew more about

excavators than I did. Justin’s got a lot

of big equipment in his life. He’s quiet

and often lets other people do the talk-

ing. Until then he’d been relying on

Angel for the answers, so I told Angel,

“Ask Justin. He knows better than I

do.”

Before they had finished, their chart

included three different kinds of metal,

hydraulic fluid, oil, and diesel. As they

ran out of time, they’d moved on to the

road it would take to drive the excava-

tor to the mine and Justin was working

on describing a grader to his group so

they could figure out what it took to

make one of those.

By the end of the day, the charts

stretched for up to 20 feet around the

room. They demonstrated how much

we knew about the world around us

and made visible a lot of the process

behind manufacturing products. I told

my students, “I think you now have

heats by placing a flask with a stop-

per and a pipette over a candle. With

a 5-degree rise in temperature, the

water in the pipette rose more than 1

inch. The molecules in a warm fluid

move more energetically and therefore

occupy more space if they can. This is

a factor in rising sea levels. Warm water

takes up more space than cold water.

I created convection currents with

smoke in a fish tank. Following the

directions in the sourcebook Physics Is

Fun (See resources, p. 61.) I cut holes at

either end of a plywood lid, filled the

tank with smoke and then started the

current by placing a lit candle under

one hole.

On a global scale, such rising and

falling air and water currents are

responsible for our climate as we know

it. We then modeled the greenhouse

effect with plastic bottles set on a sunny

windowsill. One bottle had large holes

cut in the side and the other had small

ones. The second bottle simulated an

atmosphere with more heat-trapping

gases.

Charting Our stuff Finally, I felt we had enough back-

ground to learn about the anthropo-

genic sources of greenhouse gases. One

of the problems with greenhouse gases

is that they are invisible. Unlike the

particles in the wood smoke that wafts

through our neighborhoods all winter,

the gases can’t be seen. I wanted my

students to connect these unseen gases

to things they could see.

I told students they now had

enough background to understand

the science behind some of the causes

of global warming that the film had

quickly introduced. I told them we’d

be starting with things they knew well:

everyday items. They would find out

what it took to make them. “For exam-

ple,” I said, “the materials to create one

piece of paper weigh 98 times the paper

itself, and 95 percent of the energy to

Rethinking My ClassRooM 61

turn off the lights. A few brought up the

possibility of shorter showers. Many of

them suggested reusing products and

not buying anything they didn’t need.

A few mentioned looking for local pro-

ducers to limit the transportation of

goods to market. At the national level,

they named efforts to support alterna-

tive fuels. Internationally, they wrote of

treaties and a united global agenda to

decrease dependence on fossil fuels. At

the level of “our school” almost all of

them named recycling as a way to make

a difference.

This may have been the result of con-

ventional and simplistic environmen-

talism that most students are exposed

to. It’s easy to believe that recycling is

an easy way to solve environmental

ills—sort paper, plastic, and aluminum

and you feel like you’ve done some-

thing without changing the underlying

patterns of consumption that create so

much waste in the first place. But I had

four reasons to pursue recycling as a

collective action:

n I teach 8th graders, many of

whom are at their best when they are

moving.

n Our school didn’t recycle at all.

n A push to have the school recycle

on the basis of global warming would

give my students a chance to teach oth-

ers about what they had learned, and

teaching concepts goes a long way in

strengthening them.

n Landfills and the transportation

of waste are a significant part of the

problem.

I told the students they needed to

find out exactly how recycling could

reduce our contribution to global

warming and how to set up a program

in our school. They prepared questions

and I invited the recycling coordinator

from our local disposal company along

with an educator from the county solid

waste department to tell us what we

needed to know.

Together, my students and I learned

that our school currently produces two

10-yard dumpsters a week, most of

which is paper. We learned that every

resident of our county generates on

average five pounds of waste per day,

and that amount has increased by more

than 15 percent over the past three

years. The reasons? Increased pack-

aging and consumption and reduced

recycling. People are buying more stuff

and throwing more of it away. We also

learned that our waste goes from a local

collection site into rail containers that

make their way south to the Columbia

River, then up the Gorge to Roosevelt

Landfill. The trains depart daily and are

enough background to really under-

stand the sources of greenhouse gases

that the video introduced.”

I was right. They were ready. Students

listened and took notes attentively as I

gave a half-hour lecture on the sources

of the most common greenhouse gases.

I provided for students 15 anthropo-

genic sources of these gases, including

the extraction and production of fossil

fuels, deforestation, hydropower, and

livestock digestion. Also included on

the chart were landfills, which account

for 10 percent of anthropogenic meth-

ane, and fossil-fuel combustion, which

accounts for 75 percent of anthropo-

genic CO2.

Together students brainstormed a

list of every fossil fuel they could think

of. By the end of the period they saw

greenhouse gases everywhere—in tail-

pipes of tractors, in stockyards, in the

power behind the pump, in oil wells, in

the manufacturing of hydraulic fluid,

in the coal that powered the cement

kiln.

I wanted to see if my students

could apply what they finally seemed

so eager to learn. The next day, I chal-

lenged them: “Show me how much you

understand about the causes of global

warming by making one more poster.

Pick any product you want and show at

least three ways CO2 or methane results

from its production.” I can rarely claim

universal success, but this time, every

student in my class was able to make

the connections I was looking for.

taking action I polled my students on what action

they wanted to take to combat global

warming. I had them consider five lev-

els of action by finishing sentence stems

that read: “I can … . My family can … .

Our school can … . Our country can

… . The world can … . ” At the individ-

ual level, most of them said something

about walking or riding their bikes.

They suggested their families could

Resources on global warming Arctic Meltdown/Rising Seas. video produced by greenpeace, 2001, 32 min. Distributor: www.videoproject.com. The video Project, PO Box 411376, San Francisco, cA 94141. 800-4-PLAnET. Early Warning Signs: Global Warming Curriculum. union of concerned Scientists. www.climatehotmap.org/curriculum. The curriculum is downloadable as a PDF file and the map is an interactive student resource.

Physics Is Fun. Octavo Editions, 1995. Order at www.awsna.org/catalog. This book is filled with easy-to-make and inexpensive demonstrations that show the beauty of the laws of physics. Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. Dauncey, guy. new Society Publishers, 2001.This is an especially helpful teacher resource. www.earthfuture.com/stormyweather

http://www.climatehotmap.org/curriculum

http://www.awsna.org/catalog

http://www.earthfuture.com/stormyweather

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn62

just about half a mile long. Almost all

of western Washington’s waste crosses

the mountains for burial in the desert.

While my students asked their ques-

tions, I asked my own. “How does

transporting waste create greenhouse

gases?”

John asked, “What powers trains?”

“Diesel,” I answered. “What gas will

result?”

“Carbon dioxide.”

Someone added, “Methane too

when it’s extracted.”

We learned that the monstrous

regional landfill is capped and lined

with a thick rubber sheet that keeps

the “garbage juice” from entering the

ground water.

“Anaerobic decomposition,” I said.

“What gas comes from that?”

“Methane.”

It turns out that over the course of 20

years methane is 62 times more power-

ful a greenhouse gas than CO2 because

it traps more heat radiated from the

Earth’s surface. Landfill operators have

to do something with it, and usually,

they burn it off. This environmental

compromise results in more CO2.

My students then took what they

had learned and launched an incre-

mentally growing schoolwide recycling

effort. First they perfected a paper

recycling system for our classroom and

took responsibility for maintaining it.

Students then set out to teach every 7th

grader and the rest of the 8th graders

in our building about the connection

between waste and global warming. We

visited 7th-grade science classes and

the rest of the 8th-grade science classes

and delivered recycling bins donated

by the disposal company and post-

ers depicting the connection between

atmospheric gases and the catastrophes

that so worried us when we first learned

about the effects of global warming.

Students emphasized to others

how important it was that everyone

work together, and that we could only

keep the support of our custodian if

we stuck with it and emptied the bins

every single day. Our effort is slowly

expanding to recycle all the waste our

school produces in the classrooms. The

lunchroom is next.

looking back Thinking over what my students

learned, I wonder how it might have

played out differently if I hadn’t made

the commitment to action so early. The

student resistance that resulted may

have cost us valuable learning and time.

On the other hand, that activated resis-

tance may have created in my students

a powerful need to know that kept them

engaged until we decided on action.

But early on, I gave up on indicting

auto emissions as a key greenhouse gas

contributor—unfortunate, because the

statistics are so impressive. According

to Dauncey (see resources), an aver-

age SUV emits about 13 tons of CO2

per year, while more efficient hybrid

cars reduce that to 3 tons. If I had built

more background before introduc-

ing fossil fuel emissions at all, there’s a

chance we could have gone further.

Also, we started our recycling

effort too late in the year. As sum-

mer approached, I took on the tasks

of identifying teacher captains and

securing administrative and custodial

support for our efforts. If the students

had done this work, they might have

learned more about how to create insti-

tutional change.

But the recycling project helped

my middle school students see with

their own eyes how the actions we take

collectively speak much louder than

words. And I want my students to see

themselves as agents in our world,

rather than subject to it. They made

a change in their school that will last

much longer than their short stay in

8th grade. And they’ve established a

climate of concern in their school that

I can take further next year.

the Future A few weeks ago, Alex popped a piece

of gum into his mouth. When he got

to the garbage with his wrapper, he

stopped. He looked at it. He looked at

me.

“Ms. Dean, what am I supposed to

do with this?”

“I don’t know, Alex.”

“I have aluminum and paper here

right?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say anything more. He

stuck around after the bell to sepa-

rate the foil from the paper so neither

would end up in the landfill. Maybe

when the time comes for Alex to buy

his first truck, he’ll stop and remem-

ber what he learned in 8th grade about

global warming.n

Jana Dean teaches 8th-grade social studies

and science at Bush Middle School in

Tumwater, Wash. She belongs to Olympia’s

Educators for Social Justice.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 63

students use math to Confront Overcrowding by erin e. turner and beatriz t. Font strawhun

In an overcrowded New York middle school, students discovered that math was a path to investigating and working to change conditions at their

school.

After planning a unit with Erin, a

university professor, Beatriz taught

a six-week unit where students used

mathematics to investigate issues

of overcrowding at Francis Middle

School, which is located in a predomi-

nantly working class African-Amer-

ican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican

community in New York City. Erin was

present in the classroom for all of the

class discussions.

When the school opened in 1990,

following a district call for the creation

of more “small schools” for middle-

grade students, the founding (and cur-

rent) principal faced the near impos-

sible task of finding available space for

the school within the district. At that

time, the elementary school that cur-

rently shares a building with Francis

had vacated the top floor because of

continual problems with a leaking roof.

Francis’s principal claimed the space

for the new school, repairs began, and

the school opened shortly thereafter.

Although Francis began as a small

school, districtwide changes in stu-

dent enrollment caused the school’s

student population to grow dramati-

cally, from approximately 145 students

to 213 students, and it was projected

to grow another 15 to 20 percent (an

additional 30 to 40 students) the fol-

lowing year. So as students climbed

the five flights of stairs to reach the

once pigeon-infested fifth floor that

now housed their school, they worried

about how the narrow halls and lack of

classroom space might accommodate

their already cramped school commu-

nity. Some students were concerned

about the potential fire hazards cre-

ated by the school’s long, narrow hall-

ways. A building across the street had

recently been damaged in a fire, and in

the aftermath of 9/11, students were

all too aware of the dangers of being

trapped in a burning building. Others

felt their classrooms, several of which

had recently been subdivided to cre-

ate multiple rooms, were too small and

overcrowded. Floor-to-ceiling columns

and smaller poles scattered throughout

classrooms made simple tasks like see-

ing the chalkboard difficult.

It was students’ concern about the

lack of space at their school that guided

the initial development of this project.

One of our primary goals was to design

a unit of study that drew upon students’

interests and experiences, and provided

students opportunities to learn and use

mathematics in personally and socially

meaningful ways. With this in mind,

Beatriz asked students to make lists of

issues about the school and local com-

munity that concerned them.

Several topics appeared repeatedly

in students’ lists, including violence in

the neighborhood, health issues such as

AIDS, racism and sexism in the media,

and the “space crisis” at the school.

While any one of these topics might

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn64

have sparked a rich mathematical unit,

we selected the issue of “Overcrowd-

ing at Our School” for several reasons,

including (a) the rich mathematical

content the unit would draw upon, (b)

the opportunities it would provide for

students to generate their own data,

versus analyzing data from an external

source, (c) the salience this issue had

for students, and (d) the potential links

to issues of equity and fairness.

Initially, students claimed they were

more crowded than other schools and

were eager to speak out in hopes of

increasing their school space. Students

were particularly bothered by the dis-

parity they observed between their own

school space and that of Longmore,

another small middle school that had

recently moved into the fourth floor of

the same school building. (Note: When

the fourth floor initially became avail-

able, Francis lobbied to move into it,

but the request was not granted; the

space was instead awarded to Long-

more, a technology magnet school

that attracted affluent, predominantly

white families from across the district.)

Yet students were not sure how to

talk about the crowding in terms that

might convince others, and it was

unclear to them how mathematics

could support their argument. To help

students connect their concerns about

overcrowding with mathematical tools

that would support their investigation,

Beatriz posed questions such as, “How

can we show them how much space

we have? What kind of information

would we need to collect? What kinds

of measurements? How can we prove

that we are more crowded than Long-

more?” Students quickly realized that

quantifying the school’s space would

be helpful.

One student, Jhana, raised a con-

cern about the tight space in the hall-

ways after second period, a time when

all 213 students in the school were

simultaneously released from their

classrooms. In class, she repeatedly lob-

bied to investigate this. “What we need

to know,” she argued during a discus-

sion, “is after second period, because

that’s when the most kids come out.

How many kids get dismissed? . . . And

[we need] the area of all the hallways.”

Other students agreed that finding the

area of classroom and hallway spaces

would “give proof ” to their claims of

overcrowding, and so Beatriz prepared

a series of mini-lessons that addressed

concepts such as linear measurement,

and how to find the area of spaces with

mixed number dimensions, such as a

hallway that measured 10 1/2 meters

by 1 1/4 meters.

Jhana worked with several class-

mates to measure and calculate the

area of the school’s hallways, and used

ratios to compare the hallway space per

student at Francis to the hallway space

per student at Longmore. She argued

that ratios “make it easier to see the big

difference,” and noted:

[Before] I wouldn’t really use math.

I would just say, LOOK how much

space they have [in their school]

instead of what we have [in our

school]. . . . But I would really use

math now. . . . Math made my argu-

ment make more sense, and have

more of an idea, and actually tell

what is happening, because it gave

more detail to it.

As the class continued to analyze

overcrowding at their school, they dis-

covered disparities between their own

space and that of other schools, and

numerous instances where their school

violated district building codes.

For example, during one lesson after

students had worked in teams to mea-

sure and calculate the area of different

classrooms and hallways, Beatriz asked

each group to share their measure-

ments. Students were shocked as they

viewed the size of their own classrooms

(e.g., 474, 497, and 567 square feet)

compared to the classrooms at Long-

more (e.g., 772, 864, and 918 square

feet). One student commented, “It’s

not fair! They have a smaller amount of

students and bigger classrooms. They

have to keep cutting our classrooms in

half because we have so many kids.”

Ultimately, students decided to

share this information with the dis-

trict. They wrote letters to the superin-

tendent, prepared fact sheets with the

results of their analysis for administra-

tors, and spoke at a school governing

board meeting. As Jhana considered

whether the students’ analysis of the

space crisis at their school made a dif-

ference, she commented: “Yes [we made

a difference], because first of all, we

found out something for ourselves, and

we actually proved a point. Math made

our argument make more sense. … You

couldn’t do it without the math.”

As mathematics educators, we

would like all of our students to exhibit

such passion about the power of math-

ematics. Jhana and her classmates

invented novel problem-solving strate-

gies, and used mathematics to analyze

and act upon situations at their school.

We believe that students’ participa-

tion in this unit helped them develop

a sense of themselves as people who

make a difference.

students negotiate Curriculum Throughout the “Overcrowding at

Our School” project, the students had

opportunities to insert their interests,

goals, and purposes into the curricu-

lum. For example, after several days of

measuring classrooms and calculating

‘with math it’s like you have

more defense.’

Rethinking My ClassRooM 65

areas, students formed small groups

to pose their own problem about a

particular aspect of the school space.

Beatriz asked students to identify one

issue dealing with overcrowding at the

school and to discuss how they might

use mathematics to find out more

about the situation. As students posed

problems that mattered to them, their

desire to understand and affect the

overcrowding increased their engage-

ment in mathematics and enhanced

the learning that occurred.

Angel, a tall and rather quiet Afri-

can-American student, was not a fre-

quent participant in problem-solving

discussions before this unit. But when

the class began to investigate over-

crowding at their school, there was a

notable shift in Angel’s level of engage-

ment. Angel was extremely concerned

about the school’s bathrooms.

She found it difficult to navigate

among the other 10 or 12 people in the

tight space. She noted that all females

in the school, including 103 students

and 15 teachers, had to share one rather

small facility with only three working

stalls, and a very small sink station. So

when Beatriz asked Angel’s group what

aspect of the school space they wanted

to investigate, the choice for Angel was

obvious: “We want to know, why are

the girls’ bathrooms so small?”

Angel’s group constructed a floor

plan of the restroom, measured its

dimensions, calculated the area, and

then analyzed the bathroom space

based on the number of stalls, the esti-

mated wait time during peak use peri-

ods, and the space available for waiting.

Angel spoke about how the opportu-

nity to investigate an issue she cared

about made her feel “mad curious”

and drew her into the mathematics.

She commented, “It was easier to do

the math this way, instead of just learn-

ing it straight, like solving a problem,

because we would actually really get

into it, and that made it easier.”

area of Longmore, and I want to see

how much [space] they will each get.

You found out how much each person

will get in Francis, and I want to do the

same thing in Longmore. But I don’t

know how to do it.”

“You’ve got to know how many stu-

dents there are,” said Thomas.

“Sixty,” said Lianna.

“Sixty students. And how much is

the area?” asked Thomas.

“246 and 3/4 meters squared,” she

answered.

“So I am going to divide 60 into

246,” said Thomas. “Because that way

I can find out how much each person

gets, cause it kind of divides it [the

space] up.”

Several days before this conversa-

tion, Beatriz had presented a mini-les-

son designed to help students think

about overcrowding in terms of “space

to people” ratios. Many students found

that comparing ratios helped support

their claims about overcrowding, and

some, like Thomas, had become adept

at using this mathematical tool. It was

not uncommon for students in the

classroom to ask each other for help,

or to question one another’s strategies

in order to understand them better, as

Lianna did.

With Thomas’s help, she figured out

that if all students at Longmore entered

the hallways at the same time, each

student would have 4.1 square meters

to herself or himself. She was shocked

when she compared that figure to the

less than 1 square meter of hallway space

allotted to each student at her school.

For other students, the opportu-

nity to investigate real issues not only

increased their engagement, but also

pushed them to construct and apply

important mathematical concepts.

Lianna, like Jhana, was concerned

about the school’s narrow and densely

populated hallways. As she left Beatriz’s

classroom each day, she faced the chal-

lenge of navigating through one of the

school’s narrowest and most densely

populated hallways. Not a student

who was comfortable pushing her way

through oncoming crowds of up to 80

children at a time, Lianna was often left

standing just outside the door for four

or five minutes while other students

passed in and out of adjacent class-

rooms. Her group decided to compare

the total hallway area at Francis with

the area of the hallways of Longmore.

The mathematics that Lianna’s

group engaged in would qualify as rig-

orous in any sixth-grade classroom.

They developed their own strategies

for multiplying mixed numbers to find

the area of hallways with dimensions

like 18 3/4 by 1 1/4 meters, and subdi-

vided irregular spaces into rectangular

and triangular areas.

But Lianna was not content with

simply stating the total hallway area of

each school; she wanted to make her

argument stronger, or to use her words,

to “use more specifics so people will lis-

ten.” When she overheard that a class-

mate, Thomas, had calculated hallway

space per student, she was intrigued.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“We already found out the [hallway]

Discussions began with matter-of-fact statements about the data,

but shifted to an exploration of why particular discrepancies existed.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn66

school or add a floor to the building,

they felt good about contributing to

the public discussion of overcrowding

at the school. As Lianna argued, “We

have to say something because we are

the students and we are the ones that

have to live in the school everyday.”

Not only did opportunities to

engage in responsive action support

students’ sense of themselves as people

who can and do make a difference, but

using mathematics as a tool to support

their actions challenged students’ view

of the discipline. For instance, when we

initially asked Naisha what she thought

of mathematics, she responded, “What

do I think of math—you mean, num-

bers?” She described math as some-

thing she felt good about only when

she got the answers right.

In contrast, as Naisha reflected on

Beatriz’s class at the end of the semes-

ter, she explained that unlike previous

classes, where she studied material but

never had the opportunity to “do any-

thing” with what she learned, in this

class, “we did something with it. …

Without the math, then, we wouldn’t

have the area of the school, and we

wouldn’t really know. And the [dis-

trict] meeting wouldn’t have been as

powerful as it was.”

Naisha was not the only student to

begin to recognize that math “made

[her] arguments make more sense.”

Other students said math helped them

ing code that the classrooms have

to be at least 750 square feet for

30 children. As you can see on the

graph, only three classrooms are big

enough, the rest of the classrooms

that are orange on the graph are

smaller than 750 square feet. [Refers

to a large diagram of the school

created by several students.] … The

board of education has another

building code that says the hallways

must be 5 feet and 8 inches wide.

… There is only one hallway that

is 5 feet and 8 inches. All the other

hallways that are red on the graph

do not meet the board of education

building code. … In our school we

have 213 kids. If there was a fire in

our school, it would be a hazard to

get through our narrow halls. So, as

a school, we think we should have

less students or more space.

Naisha felt that speaking out as a

way of resisting the inequities her class

discovered was not only necessary, but

also potentially effective. “I think it’s

good [that we talked to the district],

because if you keep talking to them

then they will probably listen,” she

explained. “And you will get on their

nerves and maybe then they will want

to give us more space, or let us be in

a different building with more space,

[space] that is lawful.”

Even though the students knew that

the district lacked funds to build a new

taking action We wanted to support students in

sharing what they learned through

their investigations with the school

and neighborhood community. Bea-

triz helped students brainstorm ways

to educate others about overcrowding

at the school. Students generated lots

of ideas, including distributing fliers,

visiting the school board, going “on

strike,” making a large floor plan of

the school to display, and compiling

all their data to share with the district.

Except for going on strike, the students

implemented all of these ideas.

At the end of the unit, Naisha, a

spirited and opinionated African-

American student, spoke at a school

advisory council meeting. This council

represented the school at the district

level, and helped make decisions on

matters of spending, curriculum and

assessment, staffing, and enrollment.

Naisha embraced the opportunity and

volunteered to prepare a speech. What

follows is the text of the speech she pre-

sented to the board:

Good evening, my name is Naisha

Watson. I am a 6th grader at Francis

Middle School, and I am going to

talk about overcrowding at our

school. Our math class has been

comparing our school to Longmore.

We have noticed, as a class, that we

have no space for kids to sit. … The

board of education has a build-

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking My ClassRooM 67

over the summer, the district decided

to reduce Francis’ incoming class

by approximately 30 students. This

allowed the school to retain its current

size of 213 students instead of increas-

ing to 240 as initially planned. The

district’s action prevented an already

overcrowded school from growing,

which students welcomed as one small

success.

Yet, what seems most important is

not whether this particular “battle” was

won or lost, but the shifts in under-

standing and increased critical aware-

ness that students took from the expe-

rience. As Jhana put it: “We found out

something for ourselves, and we actu-

ally proved a point. We made a differ-

ence. Math made our argument make

more sense. You couldn’t do it without

the math.”n

Erin E. Turner is an assistant professor of

mathematics education at Santa Clara

University. She is a former bilingual class-

room teacher. She currently conducts col-

laborative research with math teachers at

the elementary and middle school levels.

Beatriz T. Font Strawhun is a graduate

of Pennsylvania State University and

has taught in Austin and San Antonio,

Texas; Pennsylvania; and New York City.

She currently works with teachers at the

University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

We also found that creating a class-

room culture where critique was wel-

comed, and even expected, was essen-

tial. It was important for students to

feel safe posing difficult questions, such

as those that alluded to the connection

between their particular situation at

Francis (a poor school, with inadequate

space and resources), and broader edu-

cational inequalities that exist along the

lines of race and class. While classroom

discussions began with matter-of-fact

statements about the data students

were collecting, through questions such

as, “Why do you think it is like that?”

the talk gradually shifted to an explo-

ration of why particular discrepancies

existed, namely those between Francis

and Longmore. Students argued that

the superior conditions at Longmore

were not random, but directly related

to the race and socioeconomic status

of the students. “There are more white

people than anyone else at that school,”

one student noted, and “the white peo-

ple always get the good education, it’s

like an upper-class thing, for the white

kids. … That’s just how it is!” In further

discussion, students suggested that the

demographics (in particular, the socio-

economic status) of Longmore stu-

dents were unlike those of Francis, and

that these differences in demographics

might be linked to the discrepancies

in the condition and size of school

facilities, and to the “protection” of the

school by those in power.

Beatriz opened a space in her class-

room for students to approach their sit-

uation with a critical mind-set, and in

doing so, she supported their sense that

they can act and make a difference.

At the end of the study, it was still

unclear whether the district would

increase the school’s allocated space or

make any adjustment to the number of

incoming students that Francis had to

accept. So unfortunately, the students

ended 6th grade not knowing whether

their efforts had any direct impact. But

to “prove how most stuff is not shared

evenly” and “to prove to the district that

our school was smaller,” and that math

“gave more details” and “specifics” to

their arguments, and afforded them

“more defense” in the problems they

were fighting against. Students also

spoke eloquently about how they drew

upon mathematics to address “things

in [the] community and school,” and

referred to this way of engaging with

the discipline as “a lifelong thing,” that

is not only about mathematics but also

about “things that you be in everyday,

and it’s a part of your life.” Given that

students often struggle to identify rea-

sons why they should learn mathemat-

ics, these shifts in their understanding

of the discipline are significant.

Further Reflections As we reflected on the project, we

found that creating spaces for stu-

dents to pose their own problems and

to inject their interests and concerns

into the curriculum was a powerful

way of supporting student activism.

Occasionally, students posed prob-

lems about the school that did not

lend themselves to rich mathemati-

cal investigations. We recognize that

teachers have a responsibility to ensure

that students learn certain content, and

students’ interests may not always lead

them to a given mathematical idea.

Beatriz had clear mathematical goals

in mind for this unit (linear and area

measurement, ratio, operations with

fractions, and mixed numbers). But

she thought it was equally important

that students participated in math-

ematics projects that were personally

and socially meaningful. We acknowl-

edge that mathematics may not always

be the best discipline to address the

questions that students pose. Beatriz’s

challenge was to work with students to

negotiate an intersection between their

interests and the mathematical content

they needed to study.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn68

getting Off the track stories from an untracked classroom

by bill bigelow

In school, I hated social studies. My U.S. history class was, in the words of critical educator Ira Shor, a memory Olympics, with students com-

peting to see how many dates, battles,

and presidents we could cram into our

adolescent heads. My California his-

tory class was one long lecture, almost

none of which I remember today, save

for the names of a few famous men—

mostly scoundrels. This marathon fact-

packing was interrupted only once, as

I recall, by a movie on raisins. Social

studies—ostensibly a study of human

beings—was nothing of the kind. “Poor

History,” writes Eduardo Galeano, “had

stopped breathing: betrayed in aca-

demic texts, lied about in classrooms,

drowned in dates, they had imprisoned

her in museums and buried her, with

floral wreaths, beneath statuary bronze

and monumental marble.”

Today, students who prove unre-

sponsive to similar memory games

are often labeled “slow learners,”—or

worse—and find themselves dumped

in a low-track class, called “basic” or

“skills,” understood by all as “the dumb

class.” This is classic victim-blaming,

penalizing kids for their inability to

turn human beings into abstractions,

for their failure to recall disconnected

factoids. And it’s unnecessary. Tracking

is usually advocated with good inten-

tions; but its only educational justifica-

tion derives from schools’ persistence

in teaching in ways that fail to reach so

many children, thus necessitating some

students’ removal to less demanding

academic pursuits.

and sleep, doodle, or disrupt—and fail.

Those of us critical of tracking need to

offer a concrete and viable vision of an

untracked classroom. Otherwise, the

results of untracking will replicate the

results of tracking, and many educa-

tors will lean back in their chairs and

say, “I told you so.”

Components of an untracked Classroom As a classroom teacher, I’ve found that

an anti-tracking pedagogy has several

essential and interlocking compo-

nents. And while the examples I’ll use

are drawn from my high school social

studies classes, these components

remain as valid in other content areas

or can be adapted.

n Show, don’t tell. Through role

plays, improvisations, and simulations

students need to experience, not simply

Untracking a school requires un-

tracking instruction. Unfortunately,

many of those who argue against

tracking offer only the vaguest hints of

what an effective untracked class could

look like. Hence their critique that

tracking delivers inferior instruction

to many students, lowers self-esteem,

reproduces social hierarchies, and

reinforces negative stereotypes may

have ironic consequences. Compelled

by these and other arguments, schools

that untrack without a thoroughgoing

pedagogical transformation can end

up simply with a system of tracking

internal to each classroom. I’ve seen

this in more than one “untracked”

school: students who come to class

able to absorb lectures, write tradi-

tional research papers, memorize dis-

crete facts—and stay awake—succeed;

those who can’t, sit in the back of class

JA m

E S

W h

ITn E

Students in Bill Bigelow’s classroom.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 69

hear about, social dynamics.

n Assignments need to be flexible

enough to adjust to students’ inter-

ests or abilities. Teachers can assign

projects, poetry, personal writing,

and critiques, which allow students to

enter and succeed at their own levels of

competence and creativity. This is not

a suggestion to give easy assignments,

but to adopt a flexible academic rigor.

And in no way should this detract from

students developing traditional scho-

lastic skills they will need to pursue

higher education.

n The curriculum needs to con-

stantly draw on students’ lives as a

way of delving into broader social

themes. Knowledge needs to be both

internal and external; history, govern-

ment, sociology, literature is always

simultaneously about “them” and us.

n The classroom environment

needs to be encouraging, even lov-

ing. All students need to know that

their potential is respected, that they

are included in a community of learn-

ers. A rhetoric of caring is insufficient.

Both the form and content of the class

must underscore every child’s worth

and potential.

n What we teach has to matter.

Students should understand how the

information and analytic tools they’re

developing make a difference in their

lives, that the aim of learning is not just

a grade, simple curiosity, or “because

you’ll need to know it later.”

n An anti-tracking pedagogy

should explicitly critique the prem-

ises of tracking. Students need to

examine the history and practice of

tracking in order to become aware of

and expel doubts about their capacity

to think and achieve. We cannot merely

untrack our classrooms; we have to

engage students in a dialogue about

why we untrack our classrooms. More

than this, the curriculum needs to cri-

tique the deeper social inequities and

hierarchies that were the original stim-

ulus for tracking and continue today to

breed unjust educational practices.

n Finally, the method of evaluat-

ing students in an untracked class

should embody the flexibility and car-

ing described above. We can’t advo-

cate creating flexible assignments that

adjust to students’ interests and abili-

ties and then hold youngsters account-

able to rigid performance criteria. Eval-

uation needs to be guided by principles

of equity rather than efficiency.

The power of an anti-tracking

approach lies in the interrelationship

of these components, not in merely

applying them checklist fashion. Lest

my examples sound too self-congrat-

ulatory or facile, I should begin by

confessing that all this is easier said

than done, and my classroom is rarely

as tidy as my written descriptions. My

students, just like everyone else’s, get

off task, hold distracting side conversa-

tions, and often fail to complete their

homework. The aim here is not to

provide a cookbook of tried and true

educational recipes but to contribute

to a broader discussion about how we

can teach for justice in an unjust soci-

ety, and to explore how such a com-

mitment can contribute to successful

classroom practice.

bringing the Curriculum to life Role plays, simulations, and improvisa-

tions allow students to climb into his-

tory and social concepts and to explore

them from the inside. It’s a first-person

approach to society that gives each stu-

dent an equal shot at grasping concepts

and gaining knowledge. Students who

are advanced in traditional academic

terms are not held back with this more

experiential approach, but neither are

they privileged by their facility with,

say, Standard English or their stamina

in reading and memorizing textbook-

speak. Just about every unit I teach

includes at least one role play, simula-

tion, or set of improvisations.

For example, in a unit on U.S. labor

history, students role-play the 1934

West Coast longshore strike (see The

Power in Our Hands, pp. 74-77 and 148-

163). In five groups—longshoremen,

waterfront employers, farmers, unem-

ployed workers and representatives of

the central labor council—students

confront the choices that confronted

the original strike participants. From

each group’s respective standpoint stu-

dents propose solutions to the strike,

decide whether they want the governor

to call in the National Guard to pro-

tect strikebreakers, and determine how

they will respond if the Guard is called

upon. Not all groups have clear posi-

tions on the questions and so students

have to use their creativity to design

potential resolutions and their per-

suasive powers to build alliances with

members of other groups.

The dynamics of the strike are lived

in the classroom, experienced firsthand

by students, instead of being buried in

the textbook. Longshoremen negoti-

ate with farmers to support the strike,

waterfront employers seek to entice the

unemployed with offers of work, and

more than one group threatens vio-

lence if the governor calls in the Guard.

Students must master lots of informa-

tion in order to effectively represent

their positions, but it’s not just a mem-

ory Olympics—they have to use the

information in the heat of deal-making

and debate.

Most students have a great time,

Role plays allow students to climb into history and explore it

from the inside.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn70

running around the room negoti-

ating and arguing with recalcitrant

peers; often, students remain engaged

after the bell rings. But the role play is

not simply play. As Paulo Freire says,

“Conflict is the midwife of conscious-

ness,” and the simulated conflict in role

plays like this allows students to reflect

on much larger issues: When are alli-

ances between different social groups

possible? What role does the govern-

ment play, and should it play, in labor

disputes? Is violence or the threat of

violence justified in class conflict?

Can people be out for themselves, but

also support each other? These are big

and tough questions, but because they

draw on an experience every student

watched and helped create, they are

concrete rather than abstract. Regard-

less of past academic achievement,

the activities and discussion challenge

every student.

These and other questions can also

lead us to explore the contemporary

relevance of the strike. Often students-

as-longshoremen cobble together an

alliance including farmers, the unem-

ployed, and the central labor council.

What do you think happened in real

life? I ask. “Sure we can get together,”

many a student has responded. “But

we’re just in a role play in a classroom.

It’s easy to get together in here. I don’t

think it could happen in real life.” Most

students are surprised to learn that it did

happen in real life—working people in

1934 maintained a remarkable degree

of solidarity. And from this knowledge

we discuss when people can and can-

not get together. Students also reflect

and father, who are enslaved, that he’s

going to sell their children. He needs

the money.

n An enslaved person encounters

a poor white farmer on the road. The

farmer accuses the slave of looking him

directly in the eye, which is illegal.

n An enslaved person asks an owner

if she or he can buy her or his freedom.

There’s an obvious danger that stu-

dents’ performances of these and any

role plays can drift toward caricature.

Caricature may allow students to dis-

tance and insulate themselves from the

enormity of the subject, but it can also

allow them to trivialize one of the most

horrendous periods in human history.

However, the alternative of students

remaining outside, removed from a

subject like the enslavement of African

people, seems to me a greater danger.

So we talk about how we can’t possi-

bly know what people experienced, but

through our performance, imagination,

writing, and discussion we’re going to

do the best we can. And students have

responded with passionate skits that

have moved many in the class to tears—

that have, in Toni Morrison’s words,

given “voice to the ‘unspeakable.’”

As students perform the improvs

I ask them to take notes on powerful

lines or situations, as they’ll be writing

from the perspective of one or more

of the characters. After each skit we

discuss the problem posed, and how

students handled it. As we progress, I

draw on their improvs to teach about

laws, different forms of resistance, how

certain practices varied from region to

region or in different time periods. It’s

a series of mini-lectures, but accessible

to all students because they are linked

to a shared experience.

Afterward I ask students to write

an interior monologue—the inner

thoughts—from the point of view of

one of the characters in an improv. Peo-

ple have the freedom to write from the

point of view of a character they repre-

on their own cynicism about people’s

capacity to unite for worthy goals.

After the role play I sometimes ask

students to relate our discussion to

their lives, and to write about a time

when they were able to stick together

with a group for a common objective.

In our class read-around the next day

I encourage students to take notes on

common themes they hear in each oth-

er’s stories. Here, too, we can continue

to pursue theoretical questions about

unity, but it’s a pursuit rooted in our

experience, not one imposed on a class

as an abstract academic inquiry. It is

serious academic work, democratized

through students’ in-class experience

and its connection to their lives.

improvisation and equal access to the Curriculum Improvisation is another kind of “lev-

eling” role play that seeks to give all stu-

dents equal access to information and

theoretical insight. In a unit on U.S.

slavery and resistance to slavery, I pro-

vide students with a set of first person

roles for different social groups in the

South, which supplements informa-

tion already gleaned from films, a slide-

lecture, poetry, a simulation, readings,

and class discussions. They read these

roles and in small groups select from a

list of improvisation choices. They can

also create their own improv topic or

combine some of mine to form some-

thing new.

The topics are bare-bones descrip-

tions requiring lots of student initiative

to plan and perform. For example:

n A plantation owner tells a mother

Students have responded with passionate skits that have moved many

in the class to tears.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 71

sented or one they watched. I encour-

age students to “find your passion,”

as my teaching partner, Linda Chris-

tensen, likes to say—so they’re free to

rearrange and massage the assignment

to fit their interest. Most students write

the assigned interior monologue, but

some prefer poems, dialogue poems,

or letters. This, too, is a vital part of an

anti-tracking pedagogy: Students need

sufficient freedom to enter an assign-

ment at a point of their choosing; they

must be able to reconstruct the task

according to their interests and abilities.

For example, after one set of impro-

visations, “Diane,” a young woman

with a low-track academic history,

wrote a dialogue poem about child-

birth. The paired perspectives are from

the wife of a white plantation owner

and an enslaved African-American

woman. It reads in part:

My man is not here to hold my hand.

He’s out in the field.

with a whip in his hand.

with a whip at his back.

I lie here on my feather bed.

I lie here on the blanketed floor.

The pain comes. I push.

Someone, please come and help.

The midwife comes, the doctor, too.

The midwife comes, no doctor.

Silk sheets in my mouth.

A wood stick in my mouth.

To halt the screams.

I push some more.

I sigh relief. The child is born.

Strong lungs scream.

Silence.

It squirms there, full of life.

It lies there, cold and blue.

It is a boy.

It was a boy.

Another born to be big and strong

Another one born to be laid in the

ground.

A babe suckling at my breast.

This babe lying in my arms.

Tomorrow I will plan a party.

Tomorrow I will go to the field.

None of the improvs had been about

childbirth, but this was where Diane

found her passion.

There are no wrong answers here.

Virtually every interior monologue

or poem is plausible, even if students

approach the same character’s thoughts

in very different ways. Chaunetta writes

from the point of view of a woman

whose children are sold off, Eric from

that of a man contemplating escape,

Monica from that of a plantation

owner reflecting on his dissatisfaction

with his overseers. Some of the pieces,

like Diane’s, are publishable, some

not even close. But each student gains

an insight with validity, and together

their portraits form an emotional and

empathic patchwork quilt. And again,

the assignment challenges all students,

regardless of supposed skill levels.

Strikers battle the police during the 1934 west Coast longshore strike. As part of a unit on U.S. labor history, students role-play the strike.

O R

B IS

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn72

untracking the big Questions Before students begin the read-around

I ask them to take notes on three ques-

tions: 1) In what ways were people hurt

by slavery? 2) How did people resist

slavery? and 3) Explain why you think

slavery could or could not have ended

without a violent struggle. We circle-

up for the read-around. I encourage,

but don’t require, everyone in class to

share his or her writing. As students

read their pieces they compliment

each other, offer “aha’s,” and take notes

on the questions. This is not an edit-

ing session, so critical remarks aren’t

allowed—thus students know they’ll

only hear positive comments if they

choose to share. The read-around, or

sharing circle, builds community as

youngsters applaud each other’s efforts

and insights. The medium is the mes-

sage: We all count here.

Afterward, people look over their

notes and write on the questions.

Unlike textbook questions, these

encourage students to make mean-

ing themselves, not to parrot back the

meaning decided by some publishing

company. The third question is a dif-

ficult one, calling for students to reflect

on the obstacles to social change. It’s

a question that ordinarily might be

set aside for the “advanced” class, but

because of an anti-tracking pedagogy it

can be approached by everyone: They

all watched the improvs, they all par-

ticipated, they heard my mini-lectures,

they discussed their questions and

insights, they climbed inside someone’s

head to write from his or her point of

view and they listened to the “collective

We can also allow kids to get out of

the classroom and into the community,

both as social investigators and change-

makers. Students can visit a senior citi-

zens’ center to interview people about

a particular time period. They might

tour a factory to learn about working

conditions, or travel to a Native Ameri-

can community to meet and talk with

activists. Often, I conclude a major unit

or a semester by encouraging students

to become “truth-tellers”—to take their

knowledge about an issue beyond the

classroom walls. One year, a student

of Linda’s and mine choreographed

and performed for a number of classes

a dance on the life of Ben Linder, the

Portlander murdered by the Contras

in Nicaragua. Numbers of students re-

write children’s books from a multicul-

tural standpoint and use them to lead

discussions at elementary schools. One

group produced a videotape, cablecast

citywide, about the erosion of Native

American fishing rights on the Colum-

bia River. One year, a student in a global

studies class wrote and recorded “The

South Africa Rap,” questioning why

corporations leave communities in the

United States and invest in apartheid;

it was subsequently played by several

community radio stations around the

country. A real-world curriculum aims

to give students an equal opportunity to

understand society—and to change it.

a new teacher-student Covenant An anti-tracking pedagogy needs to

offer alternatives to traditional teach-

ing methods and critique these meth-

ods as well. The traditional teacher-

student covenant proposes to rehearse

students for alienation: I give you an

assignment over which you have no

or little control. It’s not about you; it’s

about subject x. I think it up—or, more

often, a textbook company thinks it

up—I design it, you perform it, and I

evaluate it. In exchange for successfully

text” created by the entire class.

Wrestling with a question like this

is simply the next step. Everyone can

succeed, and everyone is intellectu-

ally challenged. And because theory is

grounded in students’ in-class experi-

ence, the assignment doesn’t privilege

those students who may be more prac-

ticed at abstract thinking.

If we want our classes to be acces-

sible to students regardless of academic

background and confidence we have

to discover ways of bringing concepts

alive. Simulations are another show-

don’t-tell strategy. For example, in

exploring the history of work in the

United States, particularly “scientific

management” or “Taylorization”—

owners studying and then chopping

up the labor process into component

parts and assigning workers one repeti-

tive task—a simple lecture would reach

some students. But using paper air-

planes and students as skilled workers

to simulate changes in the production

process provides all students access to

a vital piece of history that can help

them reflect on their own work lives.

We can tape off the floor and offer

pieces of chocolate to simulate land

and wealth distribution in different

societies; unsharpened and sharpened

pencils can represent raw materials and

manufactured products to help us show

the dynamics of colonialism; and with

balls of cotton, shirts, wheat, “guns,”

and bank notes, we can walk students

through pre-Civil War sectional con-

flicts. An untracked classroom can be

both more playful and more rigorous

than a traditional read-this/listen-to-

this/write-this approach.

The read-around celebrates the diversity of students’ experience, and in some cases their bravery or self-sacrifice.

Rethinking My ClassRooM 73

carrying out your part of the bargain I

give you a reward: your grade. Neither

the work nor the grade has any intrin-

sic value, but the grade has exchange

value that can be banked and spent

later for desired ends. Conception and

execution are separate, and this dichot-

omy prepares young people for a life of

essential powerlessness over the condi-

tions of their labor and the purposes

towards which that labor is used. An

anti-tracking pedagogy needs to offer

a new covenant, one that promises

students an education rooted in their

lives, with much greater initiative and

participation.

In Linda Christensen’s and my Lit-

erature and History course we con-

stantly draw on students’ lives as a

way of illuminating both history and

literature, and in turn draw on the

history and literature as a way of illu-

minating students’ lives. In the slavery

and slave resistance unit, mentioned

above, we read an excerpt from Freder-

ick Douglass’ autobiography in which

a teenage Douglass defies and physi-

cally confronts his overseer (Narra-

tive of the Life of Frederick Douglass,

pp. 68-75.) We discuss the conditions

in Douglass’ life that propelled him

into this confrontation, and growing

out of the discussion ask students to

write about a time in their lives when

they stood up for what was right. The

assignment gives a framework for stu-

dents’ writing but offers them lots of

room to move, and as with the other

assignments described, this one adjusts

to a student’s skill level. Some students

may be able to write a personally prob-

ing, metaphorical piece while others

may struggle to write a couple para-

graphs—but the assignment offers all

students a point of entry.

The read-around celebrates the

diversity of students’ experience, and

in some cases their bravery or self-sac-

rifice: Nate writes about confronting a

racist and abusive police officer, Steph-

anie about attending an anti-nuclear

power demonstration, Josh about chal-

lenging a teacher’s unfairness, Zeneda

about interrupting an incident of

sexual harassment. But the stories also

give us the raw material to reflect on

when and why people resist, and the

relative effectiveness of some forms of

resistance over others. And we can test

our findings against Frederick Doug-

lass’ experiences.

In a unit on the history and sociol-

ogy of schooling, students write about

an encounter with inequality in educa-

tion, and at a different point, about a

positive learning experience. In a les-

son on the Cherokee Indian Removal,

they write about a time their rights

were violated. After reading a Studs

Terkel interview with C.P. Ellis, who

quit his leadership position in the Klan

and became a civil rights advocate and

union organizer, students write about

a significant change they made in their

lives.

The personal writing and sharing

undercuts a curriculum designed to

inure students to alienated work, as

the assignment also equalizes students’

opportunity for academic success and

theoretical insight. Moreover, it is a

key part of creating a classroom dis-

course that in both form and content

tells each student: You matter; your life

and learning are important here. That’s

another aim of breaking from a curric-

ulum that is traditionally male domi-

nated, and extols the lives of elites over

working people and people of color.

Unless we reorient the content of the

curriculum to better reflect the lives

of all our students, we implicitly tell

young people, “Some of you are better

than others; some of you are destined

for bigger things.”

an explicit Critique of tracking Ultimately, an anti-tracking pedagogy

needs to engage students in an explicit

critique of tracking. As Jeannie Oakes

and others have shown, one of the

byproducts of tracking, even one of

Students discuss a role play.

JA m

E S

W h

ITn E

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn74

An anti-tracking pedagogy needs to engage students in an explicit critique

of tracking. The unequal system of education must be examined.

its aims, is that low-tracked students

blame themselves for their subordinate

position in the scholastic hierarchy;

students come to believe that they are

defective and the system is OK. Conse-

quently, the unequal system of educa-

tion, of which tracking is an important

part, needs a critical classroom exami-

nation so that students can expose and

expel the voices of self-blame and can

overcome whatever doubts they have

about their capacity for academic

achievement. (Also see role play on

tracking, p. 132.)

In our unit on the history and soci-

ology of schooling, students look criti-

cally at their own educations. We start

with today and work backwards in

time to understand the origins of the

structures that now seem as natural as

the seasons. From David Storey’s novel,

Radcliffe, we read a short excerpt that

poignantly describes the unequal treat-

ment received by students of different

class backgrounds and, as mentioned

earlier, ask students to recall an epi-

sode of unequal schooling from their

own lives. We use the novel excerpt

and students’ stories to talk about the

hidden curricula embedded in school

practices—the lessons students absorb

about democracy, hierarchy, power,

solidarity, race, social class, resistance,

etc. Students make observations on

their own educational experiences,

both past and present, and informally

inventory the building’s resources:

Who gets what kinds of equipment,

facilities, class sizes and why? Our stu-

dents’ research is subversive in the best

Paul Chapman’s Schools as Sorters, we

review a 1920 survey (p. 126) conducted

by Stanford University that found high

school students had aspirations that

were too high for the jobs available: Over

60 percent of them wanted professional

careers, whereas fewer than 5 percent of

jobs were in the professions. Concluded

Stanford psychologist William V. Proc-

tor: “For [students’] own best good and

the best good of the nation a great many

of them should be directed toward the

agricultural, mechanical, and industrial

fields.” Could the “problem” of students’

high expectations help explain some

social groups’ commitment to intelli-

gence testing and tracking? My students

react with some anger at this conscious

attempt to deflate children’s dreams.

Providing new information and

ways to question the character of

schooling is a vital component of

untracking any school or classroom.

As I’ve suggested, tracking is not just

a bad idea, but is a practice linked to

the legitimation and maintenance

of deep social inequality. Undercut-

ting the legitimacy of unfair privilege

is thus another necessary piece in an

anti-tracking strategy. As indicated in

the classroom examples provided, the

curriculum can offer students permis-

sion and encouragement to critique

social inequities and to think about

alternatives. Further, introducing into

the classroom a legacy of resistance

to injustice helps nurture an ethos of

hope and possibility. Learning from

individuals and movements working

for democratic social change, both past

and present, provides inspiration that

not only can societies change for the

better, but so can we. Because tracking

rests on a premise that people’s intel-

lectual capabilities and potential for

achievement are fixed, an anti-tracking

curriculum needs to demonstrate a

more hopeful—and realistic—view of

human possibility.

sense of the term as they engage in a

critical inquiry that subverts the appar-

ent legitimacy of a system of privilege

that benefits some at the expense of

others.

We read excerpts of Jean Anyon’s

classic 1980 Journal of Education arti-

cle, “Social Class and the Hidden Cur-

riculum of Work,” which attempts to

demonstrate that schools’ expectations

of students vary depending on the

social position of students’ parents. For

example, through her research Anyon

found that schools in working-class

communities value rote behavior and

following directions; “affluent profes-

sional schools” value creativity and stu-

dent initiative. The article, written for

an academic journal, is a real stretch for

a lot of students and might stay beyond

their reach if we confined our concep-

tual exploration to reading and discus-

sion. Instead, we test Anyon’s theory

by traveling to a wealthier, suburban

school to make observations on class-

room and school dynamics. We return

to compare these to their observations

of our own Jefferson High, a school in

the center of a predominantly African-

American, working-class community.

Their firsthand experience makes the-

ory student-friendly, and allows every-

one to participate in the discussion as

we evaluate Anyon’s argument.

We read excerpts from the second

chapter of Jeannie Oakes’ Keeping Track

on the history of tracking and a chap-

ter on the history of the SAT test, “The

Cult of Mental Measurement,” from

David Owens’ None of the Above. From

Rethinking My ClassRooM 75

grades and equity At the end of the first quarter Linda

and I taught together, Alphonso came

to complain about his grade. “I don’t

think I deserve a C,” he argued. “Maybe

I can’t write as well as Katy. But she

came in writing like that, and I’ve

worked really hard. Compare what I’m

doing now to what I wrote when the

year began. I think I deserve at least a

B.” Alphonso’s complaint illustrates a

dilemma of evaluating or, more pre-

cisely, grading students in an untracked

class. Alphonso was right: Katy knew

more history, wrote with more detail

and clarity, and had a firmer grasp of

course concepts. But Alphonso had

worked hard, made important strides

in his writing and comprehension, and

regularly shared his insights with the

class. Still, were we to grade on a curve

or based on some fixed standard of

achievement, a C would have been fair,

even generous. However, we had told

the class we wouldn’t grade this way,

but that their grades would be based

on effort, openness, growth, consis-

tency of written and oral participation,

respect for one another, as well as clar-

ity of analysis. Thus we gladly changed

Alphonso’s grade and confessed our

mistake.

“Fair grading” is an oxymoron and

I’d prefer not to give letter grades at

all. I attended an ungraded college,

Antioch, where professors wrote stu-

dents end-of-the-term letters indicat-

ing academic strengths and areas need-

ing work. Students responded with

self-evaluations that commented on

teachers’ assessments. It all seemed to

make more sense. Of course, Antioch

professors didn’t see 150 students a day.

Nor were they ordered by school or

state authorities to sum up a student’s

performance with a single letter grade.

An anti-tracking pedagogy needs a

system of student evaluation that does

not reward students based primarily on

the knowledge with which they begin

a class. A system of fixed criteria from

the outset benefits some and penalizes

others largely on the basis of class, race,

gender, or nationality. An untracked

class needs an egalitarian evaluation

system that lets all students know they

can succeed based on what they do in

class, not on what they have or have not

accomplished in the past.

Linda and I do not assign letter

grades on individual assignments dur-

ing the term. Instead, we write com-

ments on students’ papers indicating

our evaluation and keep track of in-

class participation and completion of

written work. Students maintain fold-

ers of their work and at the end of each

term write extensive self-evaluations

analyzing all aspects of their achieve-

ment in class and present a case for a

particular letter grade. Linda and I read

their evaluations, review their folders,

discuss their overall progress and con-

ference with students. Only then do we

assign letter grades.

As in Alphonso’s case, sometimes we

blow it. But students are always free to

challenge us, call our criteria into ques-

tion, and draw our attention to factors

we may have overlooked. Every year we

tell students about Alphonso to under-

score our fallibility and to encourage

their vigilance.

Ours is obviously not the only way

to grade. But whatever system teach-

ers adopt should derive from a broader

anti-tracking philosophy and strategy.

In evaluation, as with everything else,

we must be bound by considerations of

equity, not tradition or efficiency.

an anti-tracking Pedagogy An anti-tracking pedagogy is more than

just a collection of good teaching ideas

strung together in a classroom with

kids of different social backgrounds

and educational histories. That may be

a step in the right direction, but we still

need to ask: Towards what? Is it enough

to offer quality education in a hetero-

geneous setting, as some untracking

proponents suggest? I don’t think so.

Once out of school, our students will

still be “tracked” by jobs that require

little decision-making and initiative,

by high unemployment, by racism and

sexism. We can’t truly untrack schools

without untracking society. Thus an

anti-tracking pedagogy should equip

educators and students to recognize

and combat all inequity. Its organiz-

ing principle should be justice—in the

classroom, in school, and in society at

large.n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Some of the anti-tracking lessons men-

tioned here, and others, are described in

greater detail in his curricula Strangers

in Their Own Country and The Power

in Our Hands. The Power in Our Hands

is available from Rethinking Schools,

www.rethinkingschools.org, 800-669-4192.

http://www.TheWorksite.org

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn76

listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need a map to understand you. somebody need directions to move around you. listen, woman, you not a noplace anonymous girl; mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body!

Lucille Clifton is the former poet laureate of Maryland. She has been the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland since 1991. (See p. 212 for teaching ideas.)

what the mirror said

by lucille Clifton

S u

S a

n L

in a

R u

g g

Le S

teaChing iDeas Drop in to any large teachers convention and you’re likely to find hun- dreds of publishers selling textbooks, manuals, and software which they insist will promote foolproof teaching techniques. You are unlikely to find resources to help you confront the corporate and political forces that shape students’ attitudes and beliefs.

This chapter explores practical ways young people can critique power- ful influences such as racism, sexism, and homophobia—and celebrate struggles to reclaim their full humanity.

PART THRee

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn78

endangered species, numbers, or styl-

ized graphics. I decided to save the

money I spent on such games and use

it toward my own picture collection.

In order to make this project more

real, let me go through the steps of col-

lecting and using the photos.

First, I’ve developed three basic

sizes of photos: 5 x 7, 7.5 x 8.5, and

7.5 x 11 inches (a full-page picture

from National Geographic, for exam-

ple). The smaller photos lend them-

selves to games such as concentration

and rummy, while the bigger ones are

good for sorting and counting games.

Second, I try to collect two of each.

I then mount the photos on mat board

and cover with clear contact paper.

While two copies are essential for

games such as concentration, rummy

and puzzle-type games can be done

with single copies.

Third, I try to organize the pictures

For many years, I separated my political work and my education work. Politics was something I did before and after work. Education

was what I did at my job at the daycare

center.

One of the benefits of the women’s

movement and educational awareness

around multiculturalism is that they

helped me bridge those worlds and

better understand the politics of our

everyday lives.

I gravitated toward pictures because

I’m a visually oriented person and

because young children are particu-

larly sensitive to pictures: During the

time they struggle to understand first

the spoken word and then the writ-

ten word, they spend their lives “read-

ing” images to understand the world.

Through visual images, I wanted to

integrate cultural diversity and chal-

lenge the dehumanizing images that

children receive.

At first I thought about using visual

displays such as bulletin boards. But I

found such displays unbearably pas-

sive. I wanted to create something the

kids could play with, something that

would become a part of their every-

day activities. I began collecting pic-

tures—from magazines, rummage-sale

books, photographs taken by myself

of the children’s families, newspapers,

discarded library books—you name it.

Then I used those photos and pictures

to make games that were the same kind

of games the kids already knew and

enjoyed: bingo, lotto, rummy, mem-

ory/matching games.

Catalogs are filled with such card

games, generally using zoo animals,

using Pictures to Combat bias by ellen wolpert

around various subjects: families, hous-

ing, sports, work, African Americans,

Native Americans, women, food, trans-

portation, ways of carrying things, and

so forth. The more photos I collect, the

better I am able to mix and match and

develop a variety of possibilities.

Here’s an example of how I use

the picture cards for a concentra-

tion/memory game using pictures of

Native Americans. For a good game

of concentration with young children,

it is best to have two copies of at least

10 different images. I go through my

card collection and pick out 10 sets

of pictures that counteract the usual

stereotypes of Native Americans, for

example, wearing feathers and living in

teepees. Some of the pictures I have: a

young girl playing football, a man get-

ting on a subway in New York, a man

in a pin-striped suit who heads a cor-

poration, a family playing lacrosse, a

Teachers can make “picture cards” to use in anti-bias activities and games.

Teaching ideas 79

young boy watching TV in a Seminole

chikee, some kids who had set up a

lemonade stand, and so forth. (For this

collection, I was greatly helped by cop-

ies of National Geographic that showed

Native Americans in contemporary

situations.)

I don’t permanently separate my

collection into discrete groups. For

instance, I also use some of the Native

American photos in a concentration

game with other themes. I might, for

instance, use the picture of the man

and the New York subway during a

game with a transportation theme, or

the picture of the girl playing football

in a sports theme.

The most important thing is to use

the cards to spark discussion. I find

this is particularly easy during some

of the sorting games, such as a form of

rummy.

To make the rummy game, I use

about 40 different images. I deal out

three to a player, with a draw pile and

a discard pile. The idea is to find some-

thing in common on three different

cards. The players can determine the

common attributes—whether it’s food,

men taking care of babies, women

workers, people protesting injustice,

housing, and so forth. As we play the

game, I try to get the kids talking about

what is in the picture and how they

determined the common attribute.

This not only develops specific lan-

guage skills, but also forces the children

to focus on what is in the picture.

Because I concentrate on images

that counter bias, this also indirectly

challenges stereotypes. But I also inter-

ject comments. For example, one of my

children once kept referring to “sitting

Indian style” whenever I asked children

to sit in a circle on the floor. When we

played with my Native American cards,

I specifically pointed out cards showing

Native Americans sitting on couches,

chairs, and so forth.

It’s important that teachers create

They also provide a way for children to

readily connect their family lives with

their learning.

Pictures alone won’t transform a

classroom. But they can become a key

element in a classroom that encour-

ages tolerance, understanding, and

self-respect. As children play with the

pictures—as their own images are

reflected back at them in positive ways,

as their ideas and analytical think-

ing are encouraged, as they begin to

understand that diversity exists every-

where—they will begin to develop

pride, self-confidence, and respect for

others.n

Ellen Wolpert is the coordinator of the

Cambridge Community Partnerships for

Children, in Cambridge, Mass.

activities that elicit children’s com-

ments in order to pick up on stereo-

types and assumptions mentioned in

casual conversations. I use those every-

day comments as the basis for a game.

For instance, if a boy repeatedly men-

tions that girls can’t play baseball, I

might pull out pictures that show girls

playing sports.

Similarly, when the movie Aladdin

came out, I decided to collect photos

of Arabs doing various things, whether

an Arab father reading to his daughter,

or an Arab doctor, or an Arab business-

man in a “Western” suit. I used these

cards to counter the movie’s stereo-

types of Arabs as hook-nosed, knife-

wielding, turban-wearing, Jafar-like

“bad guys.”

Finally, I think it’s important to add

your own photographs to such col-

lections. I’ve taken pictures of kids on

the playground, taking special care to

show girls playing sports and climbing,

and boys playing with dolls or playing

“dress-up.” I’ve also encouraged chil-

dren to bring in pictures, which is par-

ticularly useful when we do a unit on

families. I have found that such photos

are the most “real” to kids and the most

valuable part of my picture collection.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn80

In the Oyster program, children

critically examined slides of work

situations, interviewed their parents,

explored probing questions, enter-

tained controversy, invited parents and

other adults into the classroom to talk

(and in one case, sing) about work,

and constructed a display for parents

featuring stories, poems, and drawings

they had created. An understanding

and respect for their parents’ jobs was

combined in the unit with the explora-

tion of legal and historical issues.

Why study work? First, because it

is a central aspect of our lives and our

society. If a goal of education is to teach

students to think critically about how

our society is organized, their study

of work-related issues cannot be lim-

ited to learning the difference between

“goods” and “services,” memorizing

a few names like Samuel Gompers or

George Meany, and soaking up donated

My mother is a cashier. She works at Zayre’s. My mom said to be a good cashier you should be punctual, courteous, broad-

minded, honest and accurate.”

So begins 5th grader Antonia Guz-

man’s account of her mother’s job

at a discount department store. But

Antonia’s account does not stop with

the usual recitation of the skills and

attitudes people need to fit into the

world of work which so often emerge

from classroom units on employment.

Instead, Antonia goes on to explore

her mother’s dreams and reflects

on the importance of her mother’s

contribution:

My mom said that the job she wants

if she could change her job right

away is to become an entrepreneur.

She would like to own a retail busi-

ness like a gift shop. She would like

to be an entrepreneur because she

would like to be her own boss, and

your income is not limited and you

can work at your own pace.

I think my mom’s job is impor-

tant because if there’s no cashier no

one would keep track of the prices

when a customer buys an item or a

product.

Antonia is a student at Oyster Bilin-

gual Elementary School in Washington,

D.C., a public school whose students

come from a wide variety of racial,

ethnic, and economic backgrounds.

Parents and teachers at Oyster orga-

nized a year-long “Program on Work,”

which demonstrated some exciting

approaches to teaching and learning

about work.

my mom’s Job is important by matt witt

corporate propaganda that paints an

incomplete picture of the country’s

economic life.

Second, studying work is a good way

to encourage interaction between stu-

dents, parents, community residents,

and teachers—either by bringing peo-

ple from the community into the class-

room to talk about their work or by

sending students out to investigate.

Third, studying work provides

stimulating subject matter with which

to develop skills such as writing,

interviewing, debating, drawing, and

singing.

The program at Oyster School

began with discussions about work

in each class from 2nd grade through

6th, conducted by teachers and parent

volunteers. To begin with a subject stu-

dents could relate to easily, they were

shown slides of child labor taken in the

U.S. in the early years of this century.

Drawings by students from Oyster Bilingual elementary School.

Teaching ideas 81

“What are these children doing?”

students were asked. When they estab-

lished that the children in the slides

were working—in coal mines, cotton

fields, textile mills, and other indus-

tries—students were asked, “Why are

they working and not in school?”

exploring Child labor Through further discussion, students

discovered that as recently as when

their grandparents were children,

many young people were employed

in child labor. This led to many ques-

tions: “Why did child labor exist? Who

benefited from it, and who opposed it?

What did working people do to get it

outlawed?”

Slides of modern-day child labor in

other countries provoked comments

from students from recent immigrant

families. “They still don’t have any laws

against children having to work,” said a

student who came to the United States

from Guatemala. “Children have to do

a lot of hard work, especially on the

farms.”

Students were then asked whether

children have a right to get an educa-

tion instead of going to work, which

provoked a discussion about who

decides what is a right and what is not.

They were shown slides of people of

different races, ages, and genders, and

were asked whether they thought it

would be legal for an employer looking

to hire someone to pick among those

people based on those differences. They

also saw a slide of a pregnant woman

and were asked whether it would be

legal to fire her if she refused to do a

task that might threaten the health of

her unborn child.

After students gave their views, they

learned that laws establishing what

they considered to be obvious rights

had been passed just since their parents

were born. Asked how they thought

workers got those laws passed, students

drew on what they learned during a

schoolwide program honoring Martin

Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights

Movement.

“Boycotts,” they suggested. “Sit-ins.

Strikes. Marches.”

Historical slides showed some of

these tactics being used, including sit-

down strikes in the 1930s and equal

rights rallies in the 1960s. Rights, stu-

dents learned, are not given but won,

and change with time as new social

movements emerge.

Next, students saw slides of men

doing traditionally “male” jobs—doc-

tor, factory worker, coal miner—and

women doing traditionally “female”

jobs such as secretary, flight attendant,

and homemaker. That prompted a dis-

cussion about whether both men and

women could do those jobs.

The next slides showed men and

women doing the jobs that are stereo-

typed as being only for the opposite

sex. Discussion followed on whether

all people should be able to choose jobs

that suit them, or whether, as a few boys

in each class would argue, “the only

work women should do is at home.”

Another discussion in all classes,

including pre-K, kindergarten, and 1st

grade, was based on slides of various

Oyster parents doing their jobs. Con-

struction workers and housekeepers

are more common among the school’s

families—but the range is wide includ-

ing a lawyer, a reporter, a dancer, a fur-

niture maker, a cab driver, and aides to

government officials. The occupations

were discussed from many points of

view. “What does the person shown

actually do in his or her job? What

would be satisfying about the work,

and what would make it difficult,

stressful, or dangerous? What makes

the job important to society?”

In all classes, students were able to

identify a number of reasons that each

job is valuable to society. In some cases,

that led to new questions, such as, “If

each job is important, why are some

jobs paid more than others?”

what Do you Do at work? When shown slides of homemak-

ers and asked what job these people

were doing, a few students answered,

“They don’t have a job. They just stay

home.” This provoked lively discus-

sions about the duties of homemakers

and both the strains and satisfactions

of childrearing.

With these classroom discussions

as background, students were assigned

to interview their parents or other

adults about their work. “What do you

do while I’m at school? What do you

like about your job? What would you

change if you could?”

What they learned from these inter-

views was as varied as the jobs their

parents did. Many children learned

that what their parents liked most

about their jobs was a chance to meet

or help people, while a common com-

plaint was that customers or employers

did not treat them with respect.

Some of the recent immigrants told

their children they wished they had

jobs like they had had in their native

countries, instead of the less skilled

work they were confined to in the

United States.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn82

Other parents talked about prob-

lems with shift work, mandatory over-

time, and being denied benefits that

were due them.

All classes from pre-K to 6th grade

had discussions about what they had

learned. In the pre-K through 1st grade

classes, a parent brought in a guitar and

sang with the children, “What does your

mama (or papa, grampa, etc.) do? What

does your mama do? What does your

mama do when you’re in school, you’re

in school?” The song would stop as a

student explained what she or he had

found out, and pick up again when it

was time to give someone else a chance.

After all students did drawings and

the second through sixth grade classes

wrote reports or poems using what

they had learned, their work was put

on display at the school and compiled

in a booklet. Parents were invited to the

school one evening to see the display,

get copies of the booklet, and take part

in a community forum about work

along with teachers, students, local

union leaders, and local labor scholars.

Problems and lessons In carrying out the “Program on Work”

teachers and parents at Oyster School

encountered a number of problems.

For example, when the program was

first proposed, some of the white

middle-class parents active in the PTA

objected that “the poorer families are

not going to want the fact that they are

a housekeeper or a janitor plastered all

over the walls.” As it turned out, the

opposite was true: Parents with lower-

status jobs greatly appreciated both the

recognition they received and the open

discussion of issues of equity in the

work world.

Another obstacle was the desire of

some teachers to narrowly define the

program as “career education.” It took

a great deal of discussion to convince

some that the role of the school was to

prepare students not merely to fit into

the world of work as it exists, but to be

able to analyze it and critique it.

In adapting the program for other

schools, certain omissions would have

to be corrected and some program ele-

ments could be developed further. For

example, children of the few parents at

this particular school who were with-

out work were simply told to interview

them about jobs they used to have or

would like to have, or to interview

an older sibling, neighbor, friend, or

worker at the school.

In retrospect, more time should

have been spent in classroom discus-

sion on unemployment, disability,

retirement, and other issues related to

people without work. Students could

have been asked to think of all the rea-

sons why someone might be unem-

ployed or unable to work, to consider

what obligation society has to such

people, if any, and to discuss possible

solutions. Perhaps someone active in

a community organization working

to win expanded jobs programs could

have been invited to talk with students

about the causes of unemployment

and proposed remedies.

Particularly for older students, the

chance to experience or at least observe

one or more jobs would be an obvious

complement to discussions and inter-

views about adults’ views of work. Par-

ents from a fourth grade class at Oyster

demonstrated the potential for “work

experience” activities by arranging for

students to work as teacher’s aides in a

nearby nursery school. When each had

had a turn, the students had a lengthy

discussion about what they had learned,

and prepared an oral report which was

given to the rest of the school during

an assembly.

Workplace visits are also recom-

mended. They are most fruitful if a

worker visits the school first and pre-

pares students to think about the work-

ing conditions they will see, how condi-

tions have changed over the years, how

decisions are made when problems

come up, and so on. Otherwise, such

visits tend to focus almost exclusively

on what tasks a worker performs at his

or her job.

One final suggestion: Schools that

need extra funds for materials, trans-

portation, or other expenses to incor-

porate the world of work into the cur-

riculum might consider asking local

unions for help. They also may be able

to help set up workplace visits.n

Matt Witt was coordinator of Oys-

ter Bilingual School’s “Program on

Work.” He is director of the American

Labor Eduation Center and its website,

www.TheWorksite.org, which provides

downloadable resources.

Parents with lower-status jobs greatly appreciated both the recognition they

received and the open discussion of issues of equity in the work world.

Teaching ideas 83

in the basement they played. “Jam session” he called it, halting only to mend a chord or two.

the house swayed from side to side dancing freely, carelessly while neighbors shut doors and windows.

sometimes i would sneak into his bedroom just to see it, touch it, pluck a string or two.

at night, i dreamed of concerts and demos.

i want to be just like him.

Dyan watson wrote this poem as a student at Jefferson High School in Portland, Ore. She currently is an Assistant Professor of education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of education. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

Father was a musician

by Dyan watson

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn84

As the stories progressed, the atmo-

sphere became one of listening, telling,

and questioning. Kids were involved in

the conversation and learned what was

dear to their parents.

Soon after the story-sharing break-

fast, for example, Gabriel and Brent

were chopping onions in class to make

soup. Gabriel was having difficulty and

Brent showed him his technique to cut

onions, explaining: “This is how I chop

onions. This is how my mom chops

onions and my nana chops onions. This

is how my whole family chops onions.

We’ve been chopping onions like this

since—since the cavemen.”

the Parents’ stories The stories connected the kids to an-

other time in history when people also

faced everyday hardships and difficult

decisions, as some of the kids do now.

While quite a few parents told dra-

matic stories about war and conflicts

from their home countries, others told

stories that showed the heroism of dif-

ficult decisions and everyday struggles.

One parent, Lynne, told how she

wanted to be a dancer and moved from

the West Coast to Boston. She told of

another dancer who encouraged her

and gave her confidence. “I will always

remember her,” Lynne said, “because

she gave me such strength to go after

what I wanted to do.” One student said

of Lynne’s story, “She was her own

hero, because it was a scary thing to

move from California and to become a

dancer and live here, and she did it.”

One parent told of a man saving her

mother’s life when she was hit by a car

in Haiti. The accident occurred during

As part of a yearlong folktale curriculum, I began a study of heroes and heroines with my 1st- and 2nd-grade class. First we brain-

stormed about heroic characters. The

Ninja Turtles and He-Man topped the

list. The children’s concept of heroism

did not include people in their lives.

As a result, I decided to use oral his-

tory and storytelling to highlight the

heroism of people close to them. Chil-

dren need to see models of strength

and courage in their own families and

communities in order to identify such

qualities in themselves. Oral history

and storytelling also are wonderful

ways to include parents in building a

classroom community that respects

differing perspectives and voices.

After making our own definitions of

heroism using storybooks and folktales,

we invited parents to a “story-sharing

breakfast” to talk to us about people

who were heroic in their lives.

To prepare the children, I modeled

an interview where I made a lot of mis-

takes. I interrupted and asked ques-

tions out of the blue. The kids told me

what I did wrong. We then did mini-

interviews where I interviewed another

adult about his or her heroic person.

Then we had our “story-sharing

breakfast.” The parents sat in groups

with children and told stories and

answered questions. The images of all

the characters in the stories filled the

room. One grandmother talked of how

she stowed away on a ship to Europe in

World War II to be a foreign correspon-

dent. A man told how he delivered eggs

early each day to put himself through

college while raising his family.

there’s more to heroes than he-man by marcie Osinsky

curfew at a time of political unrest, and

the driver did not stop. An ambulance

was called but did not come. People

were afraid the woman might die.

“Then a man walked to her, grabbed

her and put her on his shoulder,” the

parent said. “He carried her to the hos-

pital. If he had not carried my mother,

I would not have a mother right now.

That man was not afraid to get killed

on the street.” The kids were upset after

hearing the story. They asked, “Why

couldn’t you go out in the street? Who

would shoot you? Why would you get

shot by police if you had not done any-

thing wrong?”

As we continued, I began to see

how stories help connect the listener

to a different time, place, and cultural

context, giving the children a sense

of belonging to a larger history. After

learning that she had family roots in

Africa and hearing more stories about

the continent, Darlene said, “Oh yeah, I

been to Africa, with my ancestors.”

Through the project, I discovered

the power of storytelling not only to

create a curriculum respecting diverse

perspectives but to allow parents and

children to help shape that curriculum

so that it reflects their realities.

The stories from our breakfast

became an important part of life at our

school. We illustrated and transcribed

them and made a book. Throughout

the year, the book was read over and

over again by the kids and parents.n

Marcie Osinsky works with the Boston

Teacher Residency Program in the Boston

Public Schools.

Teaching ideas 85

if the court ruled against the govern-

ment. Goldberg’s appeal to the 9th Cir-

cuit Court of Appeals was rejected.

Panner agreed. He ruled against San-

tiago, saying he believed the military

would be harmed more than Santiago

the militar y Recruitment minefield by bill bigelow

miliano Santiago.

Not many of our students know

his name. But they should. San-

tiago joined the Oregon Army National

Guard on June 28, 1996, shortly after

his high school graduation in Hermis-

ton, Ore. He served honorably, became

a sergeant, and was discharged in June

2004, after eight years in the Guard.

But in October of 2004, more than

three months after his discharge, the

government extended Santiago’s ter-

mination date—to December 24, 2031.

Yes, 2031; it’s not a misprint. Santiago’s

unit was ordered to report on Jan.

2, 2005, to Fort Sill, Okla., where it

would join other soldiers being sent to

Afghanistan.

In November 2004, Santiago’s attor-

ney, Steven Goldberg of the National

Lawyers Guild, filed suit in federal court

in Portland, arguing that the military

had no right to order Santiago to active

duty months after he’d been discharged.

During Santiago’s hearing, Matthew

Lepore, the Justice Department attor-

ney, agreed that Santiago’s activa-

tion had come after his discharge. But

Lepore said that because commanders

of Santiago’s unit had been told ear-

lier that under the military’s stop-loss

policy his unit might be mobilized, that

was notification enough.

True, Lepore acknowledged, San-

tiago himself was never notified, but

that made no difference. Lepore argued

that the court was obliged to view this

case through a “deferential lens”—to

assume the military knew what was

best for the military. Judge Owen M.

This poster was designed by Jessica Killops, then a senior at Franklin High School in Portland, Ore. It is based on an image by Charles Moffat.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn86

High school teachers, counsel-

ors, students, and parents everywhere

should know about Santiago’s case.

Think you’re signing up for four years,

or eight years? Think again. Santiago

was 19 when he entered the military.

When his new discharge date rolls

around, he’ll be 54—if the military

doesn’t extend it again.

no Child left unrecruited Thanks to a provision in the No

Child Left Behind legislation, mili-

tary recruiters have easy access to high

school students these days. In Port-

land, where I teach, the school board

in 1995 banned organizations that dis-

criminate based on race, sex, or sexual

orientation—including the U.S. mili-

tary—from recruiting in the schools.

NCLB over-turned that ban, requiring

that recruiters have “the same access to

secondary school students as is pro-

vided generally to post-secondary edu-

cational institutions or to prospective

employers of those students.” The law

also requires high schools to provide

the military access to students’ names,

addresses, and telephone numbers—

unless a parent or student contacts the

school to deny permission to release

this information.

It was against the backdrop of the

Santiago ruling and increased recruiter

access to students that Franklin High

School teacher Julie O’Neill began a

short unit on military recruitment

with her senior political science stu-

dents. As I was on leave from teaching,

Julie invited me to collaborate on the

unit.

We began by asking students to

write about their experiences with

military recruiters. I was astounded by

students’ stories. One hundred percent

of O’Neill’s students—three untracked

classes of almost 40 students each—

had been recruited in some manner by

one or another branch of the military.

Julie’s students were typical of the high

school as a whole: largely white and

working-class, with a relatively small

number of Asian Americans, Latinos,

African Americans and Native Ameri-

cans. Recruiters had come into classes

ranging from Foods (“You have to be

in the military to cook for the Presi-

dent, ya know.”), to Oceanography, to

Band, to Weight Training. Recruiters

had visited the Latino Club, played a

key role in the annual Field Day activi-

ties, worked with the student program

that links seniors and freshmen, and

approached students in the halls.

They’d badgered students in malls,

called them repeatedly, emailed them,

visited them at home, bought them

school supplies, drove them around

town, mailed them videos and DVDs,

and invited them to mini-boot camp

weekends. Even students whose par-

ents had asked the school in writing

not to share information with recruit-

ers reported being contacted multiple

times. The recruiters’ techniques were

consistent: find out students’ after-

graduation aspirations and attempt to

convince them that the military was

the way to realize these. Channa’s story

was typical:

My 10th-grade year when I was

weight lifting, they asked me,

“You ever planned on joining the

Marines?” I told them no. He was,

like, “You ever thought about having

the Marines put you through col-

lege?” The Marines called my house

at least twice a week. They asked

me this year if I ever thought about

wrestling for the Marines. I told

him no, but he said, “The Marines

can help put you through college

and pay you to wrestle.” One day I

was waiting in line to get a bus pass.

This Navy guy asked me what I had

planned after high school. I told him

I might kickbox. He said I could

kickbox for the Navy. He handed me

his card and walked away.

The Marines have extraordinary

access to students in Weight Training,

offering a “Marine Challenge” curricu-

lum where students do 13 pull-ups and

bench press half their weight 13 times.

Recruiters yell at students and give

them orders. One student described

being in the weight room, “doing a nor-

mal workout and all of a sudden three

recruiters were at my side counting my

reps. I was like, ‘WHOAAH!!’”

Cynthia’s story showed how recruit-

ers take advantage of the scarcity of col-

lege financial aid in their sales pitches:

A few weeks ago a recruiter called

me, and I wasn’t so much annoyed

that they were soliciting me. I was

disturbed by what the recruiter

revealed to me. They asked if I was

going to college, and I said, “Yes, I

am going to the University of Notre

Dame.” The recruiter paused, then

fired another question. “Wow. That’s

an expensive school. Do you have

money to pay for it?” I replied, “Yes,

they are giving me $30,000 every

year for four years.” Dumbfounded,

the officer said, “Well, the Army can

offer you lots of experiences that

college can’t.” I told him I wasn’t

interested, and the conversation

ended. Yet I was left with the impres-

sion that they prey on kids with

Thanks to no Child Left Behind, military recruiters have easy access to

high school students these days.

Teaching ideas 87

either no plans after high school

and/or no money to pay for college.

A number of students used this

predator and prey metaphor to

describe recruitment experiences. Zus-

sette wrote, “When I see them talking

to high schoolers, they remind me of

a pack of lions going in for the kill.

They try to get them into a corner or

up against a wall. They start to ask

questions like, ‘Have you ever thought

about joining the army?’ ‘How old are

you?’ ‘You know, the army can help pay

for college.’”

The stories also generated grum-

bling from one or two students. Ben

said: “These are so negative. Doesn’t

anyone have a good story about mili-

tary recruiters?” But in his own story,

Ben wrote about how annoyed he was

by recruiters’ pressure: “Recruiters are

extremely pushy and opinionated. I

was promised everything from tuition

to guaranteed jobs to free housing.”

I read all 100-plus recruitment sto-

ries. The more I read, the more over-

whelmed I became by the sense that

today’s students live in a kind of paral-

lel universe where they maneuver daily

through a psychological minefield of

quota-driven recruiters.

And there was another pattern:

Recruiters lie. Claire went with a friend

to the recruitment office to take a math

test. “When she was done with her test,

he told us about how the government

pays for you to go to college and after

you served you still get money. I think

that was the main reason she wanted to

join—that and they told her that she

wouldn’t have to go to Iraq. How do

they know?”

They don’t; it was a lie. In a valu-

able article, “AWOL in America,” in the

March 2005 issue of Harper’s, Kathy

Dobie reports that the G.I. Rights Hot-

line has “heard hundreds of stories

involving recruiters’ lies.” As Dobie

reports, “One of the most common lies

told by recruiters is that it’s easy to get

out of the military if you change your

mind. But once they arrive at train-

ing, the recruits are told there’s no exit,

period—and if you try to leave, you’ll

be court-martialed and serve ten years

in the brig, you’ll never be able to get a

good job or a bank loan, and this will

follow you around like a felony convic-

tion.” It’s not true, but as Dobie specu-

lates, the threats are likely effective in

keeping some unhappy soldiers from

trying to get out. In fact, the expecta-

tion that recruiters make promises

they can’t back up is acknowledged in

the enlistment contract that prospec-

tive soldiers must sign. More on that

extraordinary document later.

Fahrenheit 9/11 One of the striking segments in Michael

Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11

is the few minutes the film spends with

Marine recruiters Staff Sgt. Dale Kort-

man and Sgt. Raymond Plouhar (later

killed in Iraq) as they troll for pros-

pects in the Courtland Mall in Flint,

Mich. Julie and I showed this segment

in class so students could reflect on a

number of the techniques that military

recruiters employ to snare recruits.

Recruiters’ choice of the Courtland

Mall in Flint instead of the suburban

Genesee Valley Mall is emblematic of

recruiters’ choices around the country

when they concentrate on high schools

in working-class neighborhoods—like

Portland’s Franklin High School—but

appear less frequently at high schools

in more elite neighborhoods.

We wanted the Fahrenheit 9/11 seg-

ment to reinforce students’ own obser-

vations that recruiters probe for an

individual’s career goal and then link

that to a future in the military, as in this

exchange:

Sgt. Dale Kortman: Gents! You know

we’re looking at ya, right! You guys

ever thinking about joining up?

John Kingston: I thought about

going to college and playing

basketball.

Sgt. Kortman: OK, OK. You any

good?

Kingston: Yeah. Especially basketball.

Sgt. Kortman: Good. You can play

ball for the Marine Corps, as well,

you know, travel around the world,

get on the Marine Corps basketball

team. Um, David Robinson was in

the military as well …

Kingston: Oh, was he?

Sgt. Kortman: So, yeah, so, you can

definitely hook it up so.

Never mind that Robinson was in

the Navy, not the Marines, went to the

elite Naval Academy at Annapolis, and

is about 7 feet tall. Moore concludes

the segment with a poignant com-

ment from a young black man, Mar-

tres Brown: “[O]ne would love to have

that chance to experience college life,

you know, stuff young people can do

without having the risk of dying in the

process.”

Students were unfazed, chuckling at

the recruiters’ techniques they recog-

nized. Frankly, I think the segment was

more startling to me than to the stu-

dents. They experience this all the time;

A number of students used the predator and prey metaphor to describe

recruitment experiences.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn88

I see it in the movies. But it did reinforce

our conversations about their recruit-

ment stories. One student remarked,

“It seemed the recruiters were hunting

their prey.” And another: “One of the

things I notice is that they target people

who have low self-esteem.” This may

or may not be true, but in discussions

students agreed that recruiters seem

to concentrate on individuals who do

not have the highest grades. Interest-

ingly, students also agreed that young

women are more heavily recruited than

young men.

In the segment from the DVD, Sgt.

Plouhar comments to Moore, “It’s bet-

ter to get them when they’re ones and

twos. And work on them that way.” His

observation underscores the impor-

tance of a critical examination of

recruitment practices. Recruiters seek

to isolate people in order to “work on

them.” Anything that promotes ques-

tioning is the enemy of recruiters.

By contrast, a study of recruitment

is best engaged in collectively, as we

share stories, look for patterns, patch

together insights, and nurture habits of

skepticism.

Dream life of the Culture Julie had asked students to bring in

recruitment brochures, posters, videos,

and DVDs that they’d received, so that

we could use these to evaluate some

of the propaganda techniques used

by military recruiters. I’d gone to the

local recruitment station to get some

more posters and ended up a target of

recruitment myself—an all-expenses

paid several-day educators’ trip to San

Diego to learn more about the Marines.

The recruiter, Sgt. Héctor Torres, listed

that we really want.” Julie and I asked

students to pay attention to the deeper

appeal in the recruitment materials.

We wrote on the board, “What are the

dreams that these ads speak to? What

are they trying to ‘sell’ young people on

a deep level?”

As a whole class, we practiced on

a poster that shows a Marine who

appears to be part human and part

three-dimensional blueprint—very

scientific and machine-like, holding

an assault rifle. Students had wonder-

ful insights, finding more dimensions

to the ad than I’d considered. They

talked about the power that it offers

largely powerless high school students,

compared it to movies like The Matrix

and to video games they were famil-

iar with, and pointed out that as part

machine it promised indestructibility.

As one student commented, “It says, ‘I

can stand up for myself and no one will

hurt me.’”

We divided students into ten groups,

and asked each group to go to an

assigned poster or brochure displayed

around the classroom. We asked them

to take notes on the questions we raised

and to make any additional observa-

tions on the materials. After students

spent about four or five minutes at one

station, we asked them to move to the

next poster and repeated this so that

each group was able to view and dis-

cuss five of the ten recruitment materi-

als. It was a lively activity, and the stu-

dents seemed to enjoy peeling back the

layers of meaning in the ads.

Afterward, we discussed some of

their insights. “This Marine poster is

like an invitation to all the weak kids

who get picked on: You can defend

yourself when you’re a Marine. The men

are so quick in the picture, it’s actually

blurred.” One of the ads showed young

men grimacing as they did pull-ups,

with the caption: “Pain is weakness

leaving your body.” One student com-

mented, “This one is saying that the

all the Portland teachers and counsel-

ors who’d taken him up on this offer.

“We’ll put you up in a nice hotel on

the beach.” He was sincere, charming,

and relentless. I got a taste of how good

these guys are.

We taped recruitment posters and

brochures around the room in ten “sta-

tions,” and labeled these with Post-it

notes one through ten. I introduced

the activity by talking a bit about the

history of propaganda and advertising.

A number of 11th-grade global studies

classes at Franklin watch the excellent

video The Ad and the Ego, probably the

best classroom resource on the history

of advertising in the United States. I

reminded students that The Ad and the

Ego points out that advertisers’ assess-

ment of human motivation has radi-

cally shifted since advertising became a

major U.S. industry in the 1920s. Then,

typical ads were filled with text. Adver-

tisers saw humans as essentially ratio-

nal beings, who, if presented with suf-

ficient evidence, could be convinced to

buy their product. Thus an ad for, say,

Pepsodent, would include lots of infor-

mation on the product, why it’s good,

bad things that could happen if it’s not

used, and how to use it. But not any

longer. Now, advertisers regard indi-

viduals as moved more by image and

emotion and less by argument.

I shared with students a quote from

University of Massachusetts professor

Sut Jhally in The Ad and the Ego: “Adver-

tisers don’t really talk about things,

they talk about these things [products]

in relationship to other things which

are important to us. So advertising, I

think, is the dream life of the culture,

because what it reflects is the things

Anything that promotes questioning is the enemy of recruiters.

Teaching ideas 89

Marines will help you rise above pain.

You can get away from a bad or abusive

childhood and get past it.”

We followed up by viewing a short

promotional video from the National

Guard. (By the way, these are easy

to come by as recruiters hand them

out like candy to students.) It prom-

ises teamwork—“There is no ‘I’ in

‘team’”—and ticks off all the qualities

that someone will acquire or develop

in the Guard: loyalty, respect, duty, self-

less service, honor, integrity, personal

courage, and education. As one student

pointed out afterward, “It looks like so

much fun, it’s not even a job. Like all

your dreams can come true. Like sum-

mer camp for the government.”

the ‘Contract’ It took me weeks to locate a copy

of the enlistment contract that recruits

sign when entering the military.

[Download a PDF at www.rethink-

ingschools.org.] Recruiters don’t let

prospects take it home, they don’t let

teachers have copies, they don’t let par-

ents have copies. No wonder. It’s a scary

document. Ask Emiliano Santiago.

For some of our students, this

document will be the most important

contract they sign in their entire lives.

Joining the military is a life-altering

10 Points to Consider before signing a military enlistment agreement From www.unitedforpeace.org

1. Do not make a hasty decision by enlisting the first time you see a recruiter or when you are upset. a recruiter is a salesperson who will give only a positive, one- sided picture of life in the military. Don’t make this important decision when you are depressed, hard up for work, confused or unsure about your future, or pressured by your family. This decision affects many years of your life; don’t make it lightly. 2. Take a witness with you when you speak with a recruiter. There is a lot of information to take in. A friend can take notes and help you ask questions. 3. Talk to veterans. veterans can give you their view of military life, good and bad. 4. Consider your moral feelings about going to war. the mission of the military is to prepare for and wage war. If you cannot in good conscience engage in war or in killing, you should not consider enlisting. If you become opposed to war after you join, you have the right to seek a discharge, but it is a long, difficult, and uncertain process. 5. Get a copy of the enlistment agreement. Read the fine print carefully, especially the part about what the military can order you to do. You do have a right to take this home, look it over, and ask others about it. 6. There is no “period of adjustment” during which you may request and receive an immediate honorable dis-charge. Once you have left for basic training, you must fulfill the full number of years (usually eight, with some of these in the reserves) on your enlistment contract. You cannot leave of your own free will. The military, however, may decide you are “unsuitable” and discharge you without your consent. 7. Get all your recruiter’s promises in writing, but also remember that the military can change the terms (such

as pay, job, or benefits) of your work. Though there are no guarantees, a written statement may offer you (as a service member) some protection if promises are not met. however, the contract is more binding on you than on the military. You are ultimately responsible for information on the form, so don’t tell lies, even if pressured. 8. There are no job guarantees in the military. the military is not required to keep you in the job you trained for on a full-time or permanent basis. In fact, most recruiters were involuntarily reassigned to their jobs. Placements are mostly dependent on what the military perceives it needs. most military jobs are in areas that account for only a small percentage of civilian jobs. 9. Military personnel cannot exercise all of the civil liberties enjoyed by civilians. You do not have the same constitutional rights. Your rights to free speech, assembly, petition, and exercise of individual expression (such as clothing or hairstyle) are restricted. You must follow all orders given to you, whether you agree with them and consider them right or fair. 10. Many opportunities exist for you to serve your community and enhance your skills. Before you decide to enlist, check out other options that would help you “be all you can be.” Travel, education, money for school, job training, and adventure can all be found in other ways. Your local community may even have opportunities that you hadn’t considered.

For more information, check out The G.I. Rights Hotline at 800-

394-9544, www.girightshotline.org or The National Network

Opposing the Militarization of Youth, http://nnomy.org.

http://www.unitedforpeace.org

http://www.girightshotline.org

http://nnomy.org

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn90

decision, and one that the government

urges—indeed bullies—young people

to make before they’re deemed mature

enough even to buy a bottle of beer. A

critical examination of this document

should be part of the core curriculum

in every high school in the United

States. It’s not hyperbole to say that this

study is a matter of life and death.

The “Enlistment/Reenlistment

Document—Armed Forces of the

United States”—its official title—is

anything but straightforward. In fact,

its interpretation was at the center of

the Santiago case that went before the

9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In small

groups, we distributed colored high-

lighters to students and asked them to

mark passages that they found vague,

disturbing, or confusing. We also asked

students to circle the four items in the

document that they thought were the

most important for an individual con-

sidering joining the military, and to

come up with six questions about the

enlistment document.

When we regrouped for discussion,

we went page by page. On page 1, Sec-

tion 8a deals with the delayed entry/

enlistment program, which applies to

many of our students who join even

before they leave high school. Recruits

agree to “keep my recruiter informed of

any changes in my physical or depen-

dency status, moral qualifications, and

mailing address.” Students wondered

about the definition of moral qualifi-

cation. Did this mean one’s religious

affiliation, sexual orientation?

Section 8c implicitly acknowledges

that some recruiters may have made

false promises—like when Claire’s

can the Army focus so much on honor,

but not agree to honor agreements?”

As we were teaching this unit, Steven

Goldberg, Emiliano Santiago’s attorney,

offered a workshop for Portland teach-

ers during a districtwide inservice day.

In a room full of veteran social studies

teachers, Goldberg opened: “So, are we

at war?” It wasn’t merely an academic

question. Section 9c says: “In the event

of war, my enlistment in the Armed

Forces continues until six (6) months

after the war ends. …” So one’s length

of service in the military turns on the

issue of whether the United States is at

war. Some teachers argued that Con-

gress has not declared war since 1941;

so, no, we’re not at war. Others said that

President Bush had pronounced a War

on Terrorism, for which Congress voted

funds, so that did constitute “war.” And

U.S. soldiers are dying in combat in

Afghanistan and Iraq, so aren’t these

wars—in fact, if not in title? If 40 teach-

ers with advanced degrees couldn’t

agree on such a key question, how could

one expect an 18-year-old to interpret

this part of the document?

shoot a bird Following our examination of the

Enlistment Document, we asked stu-

dents to offer several pieces of advice

to prospective recruits based on their

reading of the enlistment contract. A

few pieces of their advice:

n Read the contract thoroughly.

n Read the Uniform Code of Mili-

tary Justice.

n Don’t sign up for the military

because you’re mad at your parents;

you might never see them again.

n Take a friend to the recruiters.

n Take a lawyer.

n Don’t sign unless you’re 100 per-

cent sure, 100 percent of the time.

Although from the beginning of

the unit we’d emphasized that this was

not a study of the war, or even of mili-

tary service, some students naturally

friend was told that she wouldn’t be sent

to Iraq. It reads: “The agreements in this

section and attached annex(es) are all

the promises made to me by the Gov-

ernment. ANYTHING ELSE ANYONE

HAS PROMISED ME IS NOT VALID

AND WILL NOT BE HONORED.”

[emphasis in original] Section 8c has a

ring of full disclosure, and implies that

if a recruit does get something in writ-

ing then it will be honored.

Section 9 tells recruits: “Many laws,

regulations, and military customs will

govern my conduct and require me to

do things a civilian does not have to do.”

The section states that a recruit will be

subject to laws “which I cannot change

but which Congress can change at any

time.” Reading this section prompted

one student to ask, “How can one sign

a contract that is always changing?”

Arguably the most important part of

the contract is section 9b— it makes all

promises in the document irrelevant:

Laws and regulations that govern

military personnel may change

without notice to me. Such changes

may affect my status, pay, allow-

ances, benefits, and responsibilities

as a member of the Armed Forces

REGARDLESS of the provisions of

this enlistment/reenlistment docu-

ment. [emphasis in original]

Congress must pass laws, but reg-

ulations are military matters, and

changes in these could nullify other

parts of the document. One student

said, “Anything they promise you is BS.

Look at it.” Another added: “All this

needs to say is, ‘You’re the military’s.

Sign there.’” Another wondered: “How

It took me weeks to locate a copy of the enlistment contract.

no wonder. It’s a scary document.

Teaching ideas 91

had a hard time uncoupling recruit-

ment from military service itself—as

revealed in this piece of advice from

Jasmina, a young woman who had suf-

fered through war in Bosnia: “Shoot

a bird, and then think about whether

you can kill a human.”

We distributed a list of 10 pieces

of advice from United for Peace &

Justice (UFPJ), the organization that

sponsors the G.I. Rights Hotline. And

we asked students to compare the 10

points with the advice they suggested.

Much of students’ advice echoed the 10

points, including: take a witness when

talking with recruiters, carefully read

a copy of the enlistment agreement,

and don’t make a hasty decision when

you’re upset. To some of us the items in

the UFPJ document might seem to be

common sense, but these bits of wis-

dom may be vital as students make key

choices about their futures.

Phony memo In class, we had not yet talked about the

Santiago case. Julie had a brilliant idea

to introduce it. She wrote up a phony

memo from the principal full of dire

language about how “early data indicate

that Franklin is falling far behind pro-

jected goals,” and is in danger of being

labeled a failing school under No Child

Left Behind. Thus, the memo read,

Franklin’s school year will be extended

an extra month and graduation will be

postponed to June 30. “I apologize for

any inconvenience this may cause, but

take comfort in the shared vision of

Portland Public Schools and Franklin

High School to educate all its children,”

blah, blah, blah. It was pitch-perfect

memo-speak. Julie put it on the prin-

cipal’s letterhead (with permission),

used his signature stamp, and asked a

colleague, Jim Dyal, to feign agitation

and deliver the document to her. When

he arrived at the door, Julie pretended

that she was too busy to deal with it

and when Dyal persisted, she asked a

student to read it aloud to the class.

Students bought the charade and

were dumbfounded. I took notes as

they voiced their anger at this month-

long extension of their school year:

“They can’t do that, I have plans.”

“Can I sue for the plane ticket I

bought?”

“Let’s walk out. Who’s down?”

“Can they do that? This will put

so much stress on seniors going to

college.”

“That’s the administration’s prob-

lem. It’s not our problem.”

“That’s not fair. We’ve had to make

plans for the summer. Can they legally

do that?”

It was only when Julie put a trans-

parency of the “memo” on the overhead

and asked students to list their argu-

ments against graduation postpone-

ment that they realized it was a hoax.

We distributed an article on the

Santiago case. His enlistment had been

extended 27 years. Their school year

had been—momentarily—extended

27 days. Julie wanted to give students

a small dose of what it would feel like

to have one’s expectation of freedom

ruptured. A number of students were a

bit sheepish when they compared their

outrage at a delayed graduation with

how Santiago must feel as he faces a

much greater, and more perilous, delay

in his discharge.

We wanted students to understand

the government’s argument in the San-

tiago case, as it’s a position that anyone

considering enlistment should be aware

of. Steven Goldberg had faxed us a part

of the U.S. government’s brief defending

its cancellation of Santiago’s discharge.

It is grounded in the government’s

interpretation of the “contract” between

the government and an enlistee. Here’s

a key passage from the brief filed with

the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

Enlistment in the armed forces does

not constitute merely a bargain

between two parties, but effects a

change of status by which “the citi-

zen becomes a soldier”: “no breach

of the contract destroys the new

status or relieves . . . the obligations

which its existence imposes.” Bell

v. United States, 366 U.S. 393, 402

(1961) (quoting In re Grimley, 17

U.S. 147, 151-152 (1890)).

In other words, it doesn’t make any

difference if the government violated

the enlistment agreement with San-

tiago regarding his date of release from

military service. Once he signed that

contract, he no longer was merely a cit-

izen but was a soldier, and when you’re

a soldier you’re subject to military rule

and laws governing the military.

advertising the truth For the final assignment in the unit,

Julie asked students to design truth-

in-advertising pieces about military

enlistment. Each had to have a specific

target audience, include a clear mes-

sage drawing on something studied

in class (for example: the Santiago

case, the enlistment contract, students’

recruitment stories, additional enlist-

ment/military stories that students

read, United for Peace & Justice’s 10

points). She required them to be visu-

ally effective, to be publishable, to pro-

vide sources—and to be truthful.

A number of students patterned

their alternative ads after actual mili-

tary recruitment ads or brochures and

downloaded images from military

How students react to the lure of the uniform depends, in part, on our curriculum.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn92

websites. Many looked professional

and had to be read to recognize the sat-

ire, as in Garrett Ross’s ad for the U.S.

Army Reserves:

When it comes to strength &

security

… No, no, don’t bother reading that

fine print. It’s just legal gibberish.

Just sign there. Don’t worry, we’ll

take care of this stuff. We’ve got law-

yers and crap like that. Y’ever shoot

a gun, kid? It’s really cool.

Emily Beloof ’s brochure kept the

Army’s original language on the cover:

There is another girl inside of

you. When you wanted to stop,

she pushed you harder. When you

needed rest, she ran farther. She

knows no bounds and tests all of the

limits. She is stronger than you allow

yourself to be. There is a girl inside

of you who always wanted to run

with the big dogs. She will not settle

until she has become the best she

can be. There is another girl inside

you …

Open the brochure, and Emily’s text

takes a deeper look at “the girl inside

of you”:

Can she go the distance when her

orders contradict her morals or

ethics or what she knows to be right

and good? Is she willing to live with

broken promises? The Army can

change your contract at any time

without your permission. Be aware.

Know what you do when you join

up. She needs your direction. When

she considers the military, make sure

you ask a few questions.

On the Internet, Jessica Killops

found a startling image by Charles

Moffat of a woman being gagged by an

American flag. She incorporated this

into a poster denouncing militarism as

an attack on women (see p. 85). With-

literally save someone’s life. That’s what

we were after.

If we don’t help students nurture

this skeptical sensibility about military

recruitment and enlistment, then our

hidden curriculum is “Do as you’re

told,” “Trust the authorities,” “Govern-

ment knows best.” This is profoundly

undemocratic. It’s a curriculum of

ignorance. How we teach about vital

issues like recruitment says something

about the kind of world we want to help

create: Do we want people to be active,

questioning, and engaged, or simply to

be consumers of other people’s plans?

In a recent segment of PBS’ News

Hour with Jim Lehrer, Emiliano Santi-

ago’s mother said that as a high school

junior Santiago had been “lured by the

uniform of the recruiters.” How stu-

dents react to the lure of the uniform,

finding “the other girl inside you,” or

any other recruitment ploy depends,

in part, on our curriculum. As military

authorities find it increasingly difficult

to convince youngsters to enlist, they

have begun to send even more recruit-

ers into the field and to authorize larger

payments to those who will sign up.

We owe it to our students to help them

critically evaluate the hard-sell and the

lavish promises.n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

out a doubt, Jessica’s statistics that 90

percent of recent women veterans had

experienced sexual harassment of some

kind in the military, and almost one

third of these reported being raped, sent

shock waves through the classroom.

First-time effort This was a first-time effort for both of

us, so there are some things we would

do differently. Ultimately, the fullest

evaluation of military service needs

to be grounded in an examination of

what the military is actually doing.

There are essential critical tools stu-

dents can develop from a unit like this,

but it would be more powerful were

it connected to a broader look at the

role of the U.S. military in the world,

particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In fact, in our final activity, asking stu-

dents to discuss their alternative ads

in small groups, the discussions that

I heard centered on why the United

States is involved in Iraq. What’s on

students’ minds is not just recruitment,

but the military itself and the Iraq war.

As implied in Ben’s earlier com-

ment about wanting to hear a “good

story” about military service, a few stu-

dents thought that by raising questions

about the military we were beating up

on the United States. They worried that

we were attacking decisions that their

family members had made, or even

challenging their future career choices.

These students thought we should have

featured stories of vets who had enjoyed

and benefited from their service. I can

understand how our critical stance

could have felt “one-sided” to some stu-

dents. But our aim was not “balance.”

This was not a unit on “here’s some bad

stuff about the military and here’s some

good stuff.” During their senior year

of high school, students are massively

assaulted by military propaganda. Much

is dishonest, much is manipulative.

Helping students develop the capacity

to question recruitment materials could

Teaching ideas 93

Coping with tV: some lesson ideas by bob Peterson

One thousand and ninety-five hours!” Elizabeth shook her head in disbelief as she an- nounced to the class the amount of

time she would “have for herself ” each

year if she reduced her TV watching

from five to two hours a day.

“That’s over 45 days of time!”

added Dennis, as he quickly figured it

out on the calculator. The class brain-

stormed what a kid could do with that

much time—learn to juggle or to play

a musical instrument, read scores of

books, write their own book, get good

at a sport. Of course, several in the class

proudly proclaimed that if they had

that much extra time, they’d do what

they liked best to do—watch TV.

For years I chose to ignore TV, on

the one hand blaming it for many of

my students’ problems but on the other

feeling it was beyond my control. Yet I

came to realize that because of TV’s

negative impact on children, we must

teach children how to cope with televi-

sion. At La Escuela Fratney, the kinder-

garten through 5th grade school where

I teach, the staff decided to tackle

the problem head on and sponsor an

annual No-TV Week. Our goal was not

only to decrease the amount students

watch television but to increase stu-

dents’ skills in critically analyzing tele-

vision and other media.

limiting the habit Students need to recognize that TV

watching can develop into an addic-

tion. Students often are familiar with

the word “addiction” and link it to

drugs. The anti-TV addiction commer-

cials available on video from the Media

Foundation are useful for sparking dis-

cussion of TV addiction (see resources,

next page). The commercials show

entranced children watching television,

and explain how the child is addicted.

In follow-up discussions, students can

explore the meaning of addiction, dif-

ferent types, and how people overcome

their addiction.

Statistics can be helpful. According

to Nielsen Inc., children on the average

watch about 24 to 28 hours of televi-

sion per week. The average 5-year-old

will have spent 5,000 hours in front of

the TV before entering kindergarten,

more time than he or she will spend in

conversation with his or her parents for

the rest of their lives and longer than it

would take to get a college degree.

Part of Fratney’s success at reduc-

ing kids’ TV watching was because

we worked closely with our students’

families. No-TV Week is not aimed just

at students and staff but also at fam-

ily members. During the week, every-

one—staff, students, and family mem-

bers—are asked to voluntarily pledge

not to watch TV.

To prepare students for the week,

teachers try to raise the students’

awareness of how much time they

spend watching television. Students

keep a weeklong log of the TV they

watch, including the names and times

of the programs.

Some of the teachers then have each

child tabulate the number of hours

they watched TV, making comparisons

and reflecting on the differences. Some

classes rank their favorite shows and

discuss why they are popular. For older

students, the No-TV Week can be tied

to math lessons. The students figure

out the average hours of TV watched

daily, weekly, annually, or from the

time they were 5 years old to age 18.

Some classes prepare “No-TV Week

Survival Kits” with alternative home

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn94

activities such as playing games, going

on a bicycle ride, making cookies, or

reading a book. One year my class coor-

dinated a schoolwide campaign to come

up with 500 things to do instead of

watching TV. Another year my 5th grad-

ers went to each class and surveyed the

students about the types of media/com-

munication devices in their homes—

from TVs to computers, from phones to

video games. They tallied the data, fig-

ured out the percentages, and made bar

graphs to display the survey’s results.

Because many children have diffi-

culty conceptualizing “life before TV,” I

have children interview a family mem-

ber or friend who grew up without

television. Questions include: How did

your life change after you got a televi-

sion set? What did you do instead of

watching TV?

Parent response to No-TV Week

has ranged from wildly enthusiastic,

to highly supportive, to nonchalant.

Although most of the families fall in

the middle, there are a number who tell

wonderful stories about how the week

forced them to reconsider their televi-

sion habits. One parent, for example,

explained how previously her family

had always watched TV during din-

ner. While she didn’t like the habit, she

wasn’t sure how to change it. After the

No-TV Week, she said, she felt confi-

dent enough to ban the television dur-

ing dinner and call for family conversa-

tion instead. Another parent said that

after the week, she started a practice of

telling her kids at breakfast several times

a week that it would be a No-TV Day. A

third parent said her children even ask

for No-TV evenings because they like to

play games with Mom and Dad.

Critique After the first No-TV week, parents sug-

gested we put more emphasis on help-

ing children critique and analyze tele-

vision. They were concerned not only

about the shows but the commercials.

The teachers started by focusing on

commercials. On the average, children

see 20,000 TV commercials a year—

over 350,000 by the time they are 18,

according to Action on Children’s Tele-

vision. One of my homework assign-

ments asks students to “Add up the Ads”

and to keep track of all the TV ads they

saw in one night—both the number

and the minutes. This gives the children

an understanding of how commer-

cials saturate our lives and gets them

to begin thinking how the television

industry rests on advertising dollars.

For one lesson plan on commercials,

teachers videotaped certain commer-

cials and later watched them with their

students. Teachers posed the question,

“What messages are sent by the com-

mercial and why?” They also explained

the difference between implicit and

explicit messages. After watching and

discussing various commercials, stu-

dents wrote about the ads’ explicit and

implicit messages. As Maria noted,

“You seem to be always happy if you

eat that cereal.” John concluded, “There

always are pretty ladies next to new

cars. It must be so men come in to look

at them.”

TV shows can be critiqued in the

same way. I have taped segments of

cartoons and sit-coms to show in class.

We analyze the messages and ask: How

are problems solved? Who does most

of the talking? What race, gender, and

age are the characters in the shows—or

commercials? How many instances of

violence does one observe? How many

put-downs are there? As a follow-

up homework assignment, students

interview a family member about the

positive and negative messages of TV

shows. One parent answered, “Chil-

dren tend to believe that violence is

the way to solve problems like in vio-

lent TV shows.” Another responded,

“TV has a bad effect because it absorbs

much of the brain.”

How much of our kids’ brains TV

will “absorb” is an open question. But

media literacy projects like our No-TV

Week present the question for discus-

sion and allow collective reflection on

one of the most powerful influences on

our children’s lives.n

Bob Peterson ([email protected]) teaches

at La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee and is

an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine.

no-tV Resources commercialfreechildhood.org This national coalition promotes the national screen-free week each April. Includes fact sheets, resources, and teaching ideas.

www.whitedot.org A thoughtful collection of articles about Tv and its effect on children.

www.adbusters.org Produces an excellent print magazine and the Jammers video/DvD (“The Production of meaning”) that includes

startling “commercials” about Tv addiction and overconsumption.

Winn, marie, Unplugging the Plug-In Drug (new York: Penguin Books, 1987). gives a detailed description of how to run a no-Tv campaign.

Lappé, Frances moore and family, What to Do After You Turn Off the TV (new York: Ballantine Books, 1989). hundreds of great ideas.

http://commercialfreechildhood.org

http://www.whitedot.org

http://www.adbusters.org

Teaching ideas 95

Alice is 11. She walks down the school halls with her arm around her best friend, Susan. During lunch, they sit on the floor

holding hands or combing each oth-

er’s hair. Lately, Alice has been called

“dyke,” and boys have been told not to

be her friend.

Brian refuses to take part in a fight on

his block. As he makes his way home, he

hears cries of “faggot” and “sissy.” Sud-

denly he begins to run, realizing that the

other children may now attack him.

Carl is gifted musically; he would

like to join the elementary school cho-

rus. Although he hesitates for several

weeks, the music teacher persuades

him to join. One morning soon after,

he enters the classroom tense and

angry after chorus, muttering that sev-

eral boys have called him “gay.”

Some children play a “game” called

“Smear the Queer,” in which one child

suddenly attacks another, knocking

him to the ground. The attacker shouts

“Fag!” and then runs away.

Homophobic name-calling is per-

vasive. Even 1st graders are now using

such terms as “faggot” to ridicule oth-

ers, and such name-calling is increas-

ingly common in the older grades.

Homophobic name-calling is devas-

tating to young people experiencing

homosexual feelings. For youngsters

who are not gay, such name-calling

creates or reinforces hostility towards

the gay and lesbian population. And it

forces all children to follow strict sex-

role behaviors to avoid ridicule.

Because homosexuality is such a

charged issue, teachers rarely confront

children who use homophobic name-

calling to humiliate and infuriate other

children. Many teachers do not real-

ize that this sort of name-calling can

be dealt with in much the same way as

other kinds of bigotry and stereotyping.

Teaching children to be critical of

oppression is teaching true morality,

and teachers have the right, indeed the

obligation, to alert their students to all

forms of oppression. Educating chil-

dren not to be homophobic is one way

to show the difference between oppres-

sive and non-oppressive behavior.

Challenging homophobic name-

calling by teaching children nonjudg-

mental facts about homosexuality and

by correcting myths is also intrinsically

connected to anti-sexist educational

values, since homophobia is used to

reinforce rigid sex roles. Furthermore,

if adults criticize other forms of name-

calling but ignore antigay remarks,

children are quick to conclude that

homophobia is acceptable.

Boys are far more likely to be the

object of homophobic name-calling

than girls, perhaps because sex roles

for boys remain, to some extent, more

rigidly defined. A boy involved in a tra-

ditional “female-only” activity such as

sewing or cooking risks out-and-out

contempt from his peers, as well as the

possibility of being called “faggot” or

“sissy.” Girls are more able to partici-

pate in activities that have traditionally

been for boys, such as sports or shop,

without loss of peer approval.

At the late elementary and junior

high school levels, physical affection

between girls is far more acceptable

than between boys, but a girl will be

called a “dyke” if she does not express,

by junior high, a real interest in pleas-

ing boys or in participating with other

girls in boy-centered discussions.

As an elementary school teacher, I

have made an awareness of oppression

and of the concept of “majority” and

“minority” a focus of current events,

history, and social studies. Throughout

the year we discuss those who are not

in the majority in this country: Native

Americans, Puerto Ricans, blacks,

Chicanos, disabled people, older peo-

ple, and many others. We also discuss

women, a generally powerless majority.

If oppression is being discussed, it is

impossible to ignore lesbians and gay

men as a group that faces discrimina-

tion. Children in the middle grades

have a strong sense of justice, and they

can understand the basic injustice of

people being abused because they are

different from the majority. They can

also identify with the powerlessness

of oppressed groups because children

themselves are often a verbally and

sometimes a physically abused group.

types of name-Calling Group-biased name-calling can be

handled in a variety of ways. Sometimes

children do not truly understand why

a word is offensive. If a teacher sim-

ply takes the time to tell the class that

what Do we say when we hear ‘Faggot’? by leonore gordon

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn96

a particular word insults or demeans

a group of people, children will often

stop using the word. (Occasionally,

children do not even know what a term

means. One New York City 10-year-old

who frequently called others “faggot”

told me that the word meant “female

dog.” A 12-year-old said that a lesbian

is a “Spanish Jew.”)

Discussions about the meaning of

homophobic words can often be quite

consciousness-raising. When I hear a

child use the word faggot, I explain that

a “faggot,” literally, is a stick used for

kindling. I also explain that gay people

used to be burned in medieval times

simply for being gay, and they had to

wear a bundle of sticks on their shirts

to indicate that they were about to be

burned. (At times, gay men were used

as the kindling to burn women accused

of witchcraft.) After the discussion that

ensues from this revelation, I make it

clear to my students that the word is

not to be used again in my classroom,

and it rarely is.

When I talk about the words “les-

bian” and “gay men,” there is always a

stir of discomfort, so I ask what those

words mean. I am also usually told

that a gay man is an “effeminate” man.

We discuss the stereotyping inherent

in that myth, as well as the fact that

“effeminate” means “behaving like a

woman,” and the class begins to realize

that “behaving like a woman” is viewed

negatively.

When asked what it really means to

be called a “faggot” and why it is insult-

ing for a boy to be called “gay,” students

will often respond that saying a boy is

like a girl is the worst insult imaginable.

At this point, girls are likely to sense

that something unjust has been touched

upon, and they will often take up their

own defense, while simultaneously hav-

ing their own consciousness raised.

Before we go on with the lesson plan,

I usually attempt to reach a consensus

on definitions. Here are some that have

seemed acceptable: “Someone who

loves someone of the same sex, but can

be close to people of the opposite sex

if they want to” and “Someone who

romantically loves someone of the same

sex.” We added the word “romantically”

in one class after a boy commented in

a confused tone, “But I love my father

...” When discussing definitions, it is

important to tell children that gays

and lesbians are as different from one

another as are heterosexual men and

women. There is no such thing as a

“typical” lesbian or gay man.

imagining names When we continue with the lesson plan

and students are asked to imagine being

called names as they walk with a close

friend of the same sex, they describe

feeling “different,” “dumb,” “weird,”

“afraid,” and “ embarrassed.” (One very

different response was, “I’d feel loved,

because the main thing would be walk-

ing with someone I loved.”) When

asked how they would feel as one of the

name-callers, children usually admit

that they “would feel like part of the

group.”

Suggested responses to homophobic

attacks have included, “It’s my choice,”

“We like each other, and for your infor-

mation, we’re not homosexual,” “I’m

not ashamed,” “I’m just as different as

you are,” “I don’t care,” and “So what!”

I have also used the music of Holly

Near to teach about oppression. Songs

are an effective tool in reaching chil-

dren, who seem to retain information

presented in this mode quite easily.

Near sings about the oppression of

many different groups and her songs

help students make linkages between

their struggles.

Another way to combat homopho-

bia—particularly for older students—

is to invite a speaker from a gay orga-

nization to talk to the class. Listening

to a gay or lesbian who is also a living,

breathing human being—someone

who has parents, siblings, and looks

a little nervous in front of a group—

is often a decisive factor in breaking

down homophobic stereotypes.

Homophobic attitudes can also be

countered in discussions about sex

roles. Students can be asked, “What

does a boy have to do to ‘act like a

girl?’” (and vice versa). The stereotypic

behaviors that are mentioned can usu-

ally be quickly discounted by asking

children to consider their own home

lives. Many children, particularly those

with single or divorced parents, have

seen their mothers working and their

fathers cleaning the house.

Another classroom activity is to ask

students to look in any standard dic-

tionary or thesaurus for the definitions

of “male” and “female,” “masculine”

and “feminine,” “husband,” “wife,” etc.

The definitions are often so blatantly

offensive and stereotypic that they cre-

ate a small sensation when read aloud,

thus challenging children to rethink

their own definitions.

Discussing homophobic concepts

is one thing; enduring homophobic

name-calling is an entirely different

matter. The pressure to conform is

especially overwhelming within the

school/peer structure, and it is vital

that teachers try to instill the cour-

age needed to function independently

when one is the object of ridicule.

I attempt to teach my students to be

willing to defend not only their own

rights but the rights of others. Because

name-calling is so common among

children, and because it embodies the

bigotry learned from adults, it is a good

place for educators to begin.n

Leonore Gordon is a poet, teacher, and

family therapist.

This article is adapted from The Bulletin

of the Council on Interracial Books for

Children, Vol. 14, Nos. 3 and 4.

Teaching ideas 97

each September the reaction in my 4th-grade classroom is pre-dictable: “Worms? Gross! Why can’t we have a real classroom pet, like

a rabbit or a guinea pig?”

Rabbits, guinea pigs, turtles, and

other more conventional pets are fine,

but there are many reasons why I pre-

fer setting up a redworm compost bin

in my classroom each year. Worms

require much less daily care and they

provide endless opportunities for

learning about cycles, systems, decom-

position, food, soil, science inquiry,

and basic ecological connections.

More important, I find that hav-

ing a worm bin helps children develop

empathy, combat stereotypes, and gain

respect for all forms of life on earth.

Our classroom “vermicomposting

system,” which is simply a five-gallon

plastic box with a lid and holes drilled

in the bottom, sits off the floor a few

inches over another lid that collects

drips. The bin provides a home for

more than 1,000 California redworms,

a variety of earthworm that can be

ordered online from a number of dif-

ferent worm farms (see resource list) or

purchased at a local plant nursery.

During the first week or two of

school, the students and I prepare the

bin for the worms and make predictions

about what will happen in the worm bin.

I ask students what facts about worms

they already know, and I make a chart

for the wall. I also write down what they

are interested in finding out. Inevitably,

someone states that worms can be cut in

half to make two new worms; I respond

by saying I have heard cutting worms

kills them, and we agree to write the

child’s statement instead in the question

can see and smell, how they eat, and if

they have teeth. They generate other

thoughtful questions like, “How do the

worms find the food if they don’t have

eyes?” and “Can you tell the difference

between a male and a female worm?” I

add their questions to our wall chart.

At this point, we also discuss respect.

I ask them what they already know about

respecting people and how that trans-

lates to respecting other living things. I

tell the students that worms are sensitive

to noise, vibrations, and bright light. We

talk about how the worms will be living

in our classroom community and how

we should respect them. I ask students

how they think the worms should be

handled and together we make a com-

mitment to hold them gently. Most

of the children are curious about the

worms, and their initial reactions range

from revulsion to fascination.

Once everyone has had a chance to

observe the worms, to hold one if they

wish, and to comment, we carefully

place them in the worm bin and gently

column of the chart. Later I will bring

in books that teach the children that, in

fact, cutting worms in half results in the

death of the worm.

The day I bring the worms to school

we sit in a circle and shred enough news-

paper to fill the box. Then we add water,

mixing with our hands until it feels as

moist as a damp sponge. This serves

as bedding for the worms and also as

a source of carbon. In front of the stu-

dents I create the first nitrogen-rich food

supply—a “worm sandwich”—with

moldy bread, wilted spinach, cucum-

ber peels, old bananas, coffee grounds,

apple cores, and anything else suitable

for a compost pile. Later, the students

will bring their own fruit and vegeta-

ble compost from home or supply the

worms with leftover lunch scraps, but

at the beginning I model what is appro-

priate for the worms to eat.

Adding the worm sandwich to the

bin is a dramatic prelude to introduc-

ing the redworms. The children won-

der out loud whether or not the worms

learning from worms by Rachel Cloues

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn98

cover them with the newspaper bed-

ding. In six years of having worms in

my classroom, I have never observed a

student mistreating a worm.

Most of my students come from

low-income families and live in apart-

ment buildings. They are the children

of immigrants—and often immi-

grants themselves—from Mexico and

Central America. Although many of

them have spent scattered time in rural

farming communities, and their par-

ents and grandparents have perhaps

even farmed, I find that they usually

have little experience with gardening,

composting, or observing insects and

invertebrates in the soil.

I find that the worms in our class-

room model healthy eating habits,

which is important because my stu-

dents eat a lot of cheap fast-food meals.

Worms thrive on fresh fruits and vege-

tables. I teach the students that we must

avoid putting sugary, salty, and fatty

foods in the worm bin because they are

not particularly healthy for the worms.

Redworms work quickly, and over

the course of the first few weeks of

school they eat the newspaper bed-

ding and food scraps we provide and

convert them to a dark, nutrient-rich,

and odorless compost (this is called

“vermicompost,” or “worm castings”).

The children are amazed when the first

worm cocoons appear—tiny but visible

lemon-colored globes, half the size of a

grain of rice. With patience, we begin

to examine baby worms hatching from

the egg cases.

When we add food to the worm bin

I bring up the concept of recycling. We

begin the conversation, which will last

all year, on what recycling means both

for people and in the natural world.

Cycles, in general, are an important cur-

ricular theme in 4th grade, and we look

critically and in depth at the process of

recycling commodities. We examine the

water cycle and life cycles of familiar

animals and plants, including humans.

There are many connections to our

worm bin and endless opportunities

for comparing and contrasting cycles.

Changing attitudes At the beginning of the year many stu-

dents are reluctant to touch the worms

or even look closely at them, but by

June the children have come to respect,

care for, and sometimes even love our

classroom worms. I find that the worms

provide an ideal opportunity for teach-

ing about animal stereotypes. Like

snakes, spiders, or bats, worms have a

negative image. At first, many children

refer to the worms as “gross,” “ugly,”

“disgusting,” and “slimy.” But after they

learn about the hard work worms do in

the natural environment, they come to

appreciate them.

“Did you know,” I ask my students,

“that earthworms are constantly dig-

ging through and eating dead plant

material, like leaves, so that all of that

stuff doesn’t pile up and rot around us

outside?” I also tell them how the vermi-

compost is full of nutrients for the soil,

and we can even add it to our classroom

plants or schoolyard vegetation. One

student wrote about the worm bin:

When we first got the worms I

thought ICKY and I also thought

that it was going to be stinky and

slimy! But my teacher proved me

wrong. She said that [the worm bin]

was not smelly or gooey or mushy.

She also said that it was damp and

a decomposing habitat. So now we

still think it is strange but cool at the

same time!

On our classroom wall, the students

post a colorful construction paper mural

they made that shows worms in their

underground tunnels. The students are

quick to explain to visitors that outside

worms dig tunnels underground, allow-

ing water and air to reach the roots of

trees and other plants. The children have

examined different components of soil

like sand, gravel, clay, and decomposing

plant material, and they have learned

about minerals. They demonstrate a

new framework for thinking about soil,

what makes it healthy, how it supports

life on our planet, and the critical role

worms play in that process by breaking

down organic matter.

In this era of intense testing and

increased desk work in public schools,

as well as excessive television and video

watching at home, it is becoming more

and more difficult to endow students

with any ecological understanding or

sense of place. In my classroom I try to

integrate these concepts into the cur-

riculum as much as possible; I worry

that if they are left out, we may end up

with a generation of kids completely

disconnected from the natural world,

and from each other. There is incred-

ible opportunity for hands-on learning

about ecology when a worm bin is part

of a classroom. It naturally motivates

Resources on worms Children’s books: Worms Eat My Garbage, by mary Appelhof. Worms Eat Our Garbage, also by mary Appelhof. classroom teaching guide for all ages with reproducible worksheets and activity ideas. The Worm Café: Mid Scale Vermicomposting of Lunchroom Wastes, by Binet Payne.

Wriggling Worms, by Wendy Pfeffer.

Vermicomposting for kids: www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/worms.htm

Redworm suppliers: Earth Angel Worm & garden; www.buyworms.com, 888-BuY WORmS www.happydranch.com www.wormswrangler.com

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/worms.htm

http://www.buyworms.com

http://www.happydranch.com

http://www.wormswrangler.com

Teaching ideas 99

children to be interested in science and

to think critically.

A book by Mary Appelhof, Worms

Eat Our Garbage, is a wonderful class-

room resource for all ages with non-

harmful worm experiments, observa-

tion ideas, and reproducible worksheets.

But I incorporate our worm bin into

lessons ranging from science and math

(how does one measure a worm?), to

nutrition and health, to language arts.

A challenging assignment is to ask stu-

dents to describe in detail what they see,

smell, and hear when they observe the

worm bin closely. A group of students

one year wrote, “The worm bin smells

like soil, wet wood, the ground after it

rains, and pine cones.”

Foss and science ethics My worm curriculum contrasts in some

important ways with the packaged sci-

ence curricula supplied by the school

district. For example, the Foss 2002

edition of the Insects curriculum aims

to teach 1st and 2nd graders about the

life cycles of mealworms, waxworms,

milkweed bugs, silkworms, and butter-

flies. The curriculum instructs teachers

to order the insects from a science sup-

ply company, create habitats for them in

the classroom, teach students about the

respective life cycles, and then discreetly

kill the insects at the end of the unit.

In the “Plan for the End of the Life

Cycle” instructions, the teacher’s guide

states: “The humane way to end the

cycle of waxworms is to put the culture

in a freezer overnight and then dispose

of the medium in the trash.” While I

understand that the curriculum and

the instructions within are intended

to be an easy method for busy teach-

ers to teach students science concepts,

I believe educators have a responsibil-

ity to teach more authentically. It is

hypocritical to pretend to establish a

“real” life cycle for students to observe,

and then to put an end to that cycle

artificially. Not only do students and

teachers gain a false impression of the

terested in that possibility could easily

find a family or co-worker to adopt the

worms, even someone who lives in an

apartment. Another benefit of raising

worms is that the resulting compost

provides an outstanding natural fertil-

izer for classroom plants or a school or

community garden plot. I have even

sent vermicompost home with students

in resealable bags, with a note to par-

ents explaining its use for houseplants.

Although a weekly farmers market is

set up within a mile of the school, none

of my students’ families shop there. The

local, organic produce is too expensive.

With our worm castings from the class-

room bin, we have been able to start our

own vegetable seedlings at school. Last

year, for the first time, we began a small

classroom garden in some available soil

in the courtyard. In the springtime, we

harvested and ate organic snap peas,

radishes, carrots, and broccoli. The

farmers market may still be too expen-

sive for my students’ families, but they

have gained an awareness of how food

can be grown, and what “organic”

means. They have begun to learn about

sustainable agriculture.

I have found that a worm bin is a

simple and powerful learning tool.

Balanced vermicomposting in the

classroom requires that teachers and

students work together as a team.

Along with my students, I find myself

challenged to think deeply about the

connections between our daily lives—

especially what we eat—and the earth

that provides our food. The worms

help my students examine stereotypes,

biases, and fears, as well as to confront

their own actions and how they affect

the planet. Each year, the students stop

asking for a pet rabbit or guinea pig.

Instead, they put their ears close to the

worm bin and listen carefully to hear

the worms eating.n

Rachel Cloues teaches 4th grade at Sanchez

Elementary in San Francisco.

life cycle of that insect, they learn that

the lives of insects are disposable. The

unspoken result of the lesson is that the

teacher, in fact, controls the life cycle.

The Foss unit on painted lady but-

terflies is also disturbing, for a differ-

ent reason. The teacher’s guide makes

a weak attempt at addressing the prob-

lem of introducing nonnative species

to an environment, but it then instructs

the teacher to do just that:

After a month the [butterflies] will

die, not because of any ill effects

caused by captivity, but because

that is their normal life span. Even

though it is never advisable to

release study organisms into the

environment, if a painted lady

butterfly ‘escapes,’ it will not be an

environmental disaster—painted

ladies are already well established

throughout the country.

I recently learned that most species

of earthworm are not native to the tem-

perate deciduous forests of the North-

eastern and Midwestern United States;

the native worm population was killed

off by glaciers during the Ice Age. Euro-

pean species were later brought over by

settlers and have, in fact, been harmful

to the forests in that part of the coun-

try—especially to some maple trees.

This could be an interesting and impor-

tant issue to bring to the attention

of students, particularly in the states

where invasive worms are affecting for-

ests. The causes and effects of nonnative

species introduced to new ecosystems

can be explored in any bioregion, and

certainly could be incorporated into a

unit of study about earthworms.

Within the classroom, a worm

bin is a harmless model for studying

many kinds of life cycles, including

plant, worm, and a diverse variety of

decomposer organisms. The worms

continue to live year after year, produc-

ing egg cases and dying in the worm

bin. I always take my bin home for the

summer months, but someone unin-

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn100

This activity is about power. Set in an ima Grade LevelMiddle school to adult. Materials Needed

One large machine-like object, e.g., a

TV or an overhead projector.

Time Required

One class period (at least 45 minutes)

to “play,” and time for a follow-up

discussion.

Procedure

1. Close the door and pull the blinds

in the classroom. Tell students to imag-

ine that we are going to have to live in

this classroom for the rest of our lives

(many groans). Explain that there is

no soil for farming but we are in luck

because we have a machine that pro-

duces food—organic goodies. Correct

yourself, and point out that actually

you own the machine. Put the projector

or whatever machine you’ve selected in

the front of the classroom.

2. Tell students that you need people

to work for you producing organic

goodies. Workers will receive money

to buy enough food to live on—those

not working will find it hard to survive.

Ask for volunteers who want to work,

eat, and survive. (On those occasions

when additional coercion is necessary,

we tell students that to receive credit

for the activity they must not starve.)

Choose only half the class as workers.

The other half will be unemployed. Sit

the two on opposite sides of the room,

one group facing the other.

3. Now explain the economics of your

society. Put the “Organic Goodie Econ-

eleven (11) goodies a day. All workers

are paid $6.00 a day. A goodie costs $1.

One dollar is deducted from the pay

of each worker to make small welfare

payments to the unemployed. So, after

taxes, a worker can buy five goodies a

day, enough to survive. Explain that as

the owner, you of course deserve more

because it’s your machine, and without

your machine everyone would starve.

omy” chart (see below) on the board.

(You might want to have the chart up

earlier, covered with a map or a screen.)

Explain that five organic good-

ies a day are necessary to survive in a

fairly healthy manner. Those receiving

less, the non-workers, will gradually

get sick and starve. Go over the chart

with students: Each worker produces

the Organic goodie simulation by bill bigelow and norm Diamond

FR E

D W

R Ig

h T/u

E n

E W

Teaching ideas 101

4. Show the unemployed that, as the

chart indicates, they only receive $2 a

day in welfare payments. This means

they can only buy two goodies a day—

they are slowly starving to death. They

desperately need work.

5. Make sure each student under-

stands his or her position. Now the

“game” begins. Your goal is to increase

your profits—that’s all you’re after. The

way you can do this is through cut-

ting wages. Note: No money or goodies

are actually exchanged. We generally

begin by telling students to imagine

that a number of weeks have elapsed

and then ask members of each group

how they have been eating, how they’re

feeling. (By the way, everyone could be

employed to produce goodies—eleven

a day, as mentioned—but we don’t tell

that to students unless they ask.)

6. There is no “correct” order in which

to proceed, but here are some tech-

niques that have worked for us:

n Ask which of the unemployed

people wants to work. Offer someone

$5.50 a day—less than other workers

but more than the $2 they’re getting

now in welfare payments. After you

have a taker, go to the workers and ask

who is willing to accept $5.50. Fire the

first person who refuses to accept the

lower wage and send him or her across

the room to sit with the unemployed.

Hire the unemployed person who was

willing to accept the lower wage. Con-

tinue this procedure, trying to drive

down wages.

n Occasionally you might ask work-

ers to repeat after you, “I am a happy

worker.” Fire those who refuse and hire

someone who is unemployed.

n We often make derogatory com-

ments about the “welfare bums” and

invite workers to do the same. (Later we

can talk about why the people were on

welfare, and who was the real bum.)

n Anyone who mentions “union” or

striking or anything disruptive should

be fired immediately. Get all workers to

sign “yellow dog” contracts promising

never to join a union as long as they

work for you.

n Sometimes we hire a foreman (a

spy), for a little more money, who will

turn in “subversive” workers. Occasion-

ally we whisper something in a worker’s

ear, to encourage suspicion and divi-

sion among workers. Someone usu-

ally threatens to take over the machine.

When this happens we hire a police-

man or two to protect it. We explain

that she or he is here to protect “all our

property equally, not just my machine.”

Having someone physically protect the

machine also alerts students to the fact

that they could take it over.

n It’s important to keep work-

ers and unemployed from uniting to

strike, or worse, to take control of your

machine. You can offer privileges to

people to prevent them from seeing

their common interests—differential

wages, shorter work days, perhaps even

profit sharing.

n If they are successful in uniting

and stopping production, you have a

couple of options: 1. You can wait them

out, indicating your surplus, and how

quickly they will starve (use the chart

to remind them how much you have

left over everyday); or 2. Give in to their

wage demands and a little later raise the

price of organic goodies. After all, you

can justify your need for more income

to meet your higher costs.

n Sometimes we announce that

every three minutes an unemployed

person will die of starvation. This

Organic goodie economy Production = 11 x number of workers

Per Day Workers Unemployed Owner

Wages $6 x no. workers nothing nothing Taxes –$1 x no. workers +$2 x no. unemployed –$1 x no. unemployed (see note) Consumption 5 Organic goodies x 2 x no. unemployed 6 Organic goodies no. workers Surplus nothing nothing 4 x no. workers, minus 6 for daily consumption

Example: If there were 10 workers and 10 unemployed, a total of 110 goodies would be produced. After taxes, the workers would be able to consume 50. From welfare payments, the unemployed would consume 20, leaving a total of 40 for the owner—34 after consuming his or her six. Note: Workers’ and owner’s tax needs to provide $2 to each unemployed person (taxes paid in goodies).

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn102

emphasizes to the entire class that

should they fail to act there will be

consequences.

7. The game is unpredictable, and a

range of things has happened while

playing it. What always happens, how-

ever, is that people try to get organized.

The game ends when students have had

ample opportunity to get together—

successfully or otherwise. Participants

may be totally demoralized or they

may have taken over the machine and

decided to run it collectively.

8. For homework, we ask students to

write on the experience. Questions

might include: What did you person-

ally do to try to stop my efforts to

divide people? How effective were you?

Were there actions you considered,

but didn’t take? Why not? If we were

to do this simulation again, what dif-

ferent actions would you take? We also

ask students to comment on the Fred

Wright cartoon (see p. 100), and how it

relates to our activity.

Additional discussion and/or writing

questions include:

n What methods did I use to try

to keep people from getting together

to oppose me? When was I successful?

When unsuccessful?

n At which points were you most

successful in getting together? When

were you least successful?

n What kept you from immediately

calling a meeting and demanding equal

treatment, or simply walking over to

the machine and taking it over? Here

we try to get at students’ preconcep-

tions about people’s capacity to stick

together. Did they think that efforts

to unite all workers and unemployed

would eventually be betrayed? Why?

We want to explore with students what

in their lives would leave them hopeful

or skeptical. Have they had experiences

that convinced them that people could

unite and act together for important

goals?

n As the owner, what kind of atti-

tudes would I want you to have about

your ability to work together as a uni-

fied group? What attitude would I want

you to have about property rights?

About respect for authority?

As a follow-up activity, sometimes we

ask students to think of a time when

they were able to work successfully with

others toward a common objective. We

ask them to write this up as a story. We

then share our stories in class and take

notes on the circumstances that allow

people to unite—creating what we call

a “collective text,” the wisdom we can

draw from each other’s lives.

Does all this sound too compli-

cated? It’s not. A number of teachers

have told us, “I didn’t want to do that

activity because I wasn’t sure I could

remember everything, and I didn’t

know if it would work.” As they dis-

cover: It works.n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine. Norm Diamond is

active on education and labor issues in

Portland, Ore., where he taught at the

Pacific Northwest Labor College, an

institution of higher education geared

toward workers and their families.

This article is adapted from Bigelow and

Diamond’s The Power in Our Hands: A

Curriculum on the History of Work and

Workers in the United States (Monthly

Review Press, 1988), available from

Rethinking Schools, 800-669-4192 or www.

rethinkingschools.org. The inspiration

for this lesson came from Mike Messner’s

article “Bubblegum and Surplus Value,”

The Insurgent Sociologist, 6 #4 (Summer

1976): 51-56.

This article is reprinted by permission of

Monthly Review Foundation.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/math

Teaching ideas 103

who don’t get any during the simula-

tion (optional).

n Worksheets (optional) for stu-

dents to write down their estimates

(available at www.rethinkingschools.

org/math).

tion and Wealth” table (p. 104).

n Six “negotiator” signs with yarn

to hang around students’ necks.

n Writing paper and pens or

pencils.

n Additional cookies for students

world Poverty and world Resources by susan hersh and bob Peterson

An important part of a person’s understanding of global issues is the recognition of the dra- matic inequalities between nations and

social classes within countries. Math

is an essential tool for acquiring this

understanding.

The purpose of this activity is to

demonstrate graphically the vast dif-

ferences in wealth between different

areas of the world. It combines math,

geography, writing, and social studies.

We remind students of some of the

things we learned about colonialism,

such as how great quantities of silver

and gold were stolen from the Americas

and taken to Europe. We also explain

that current relations between countries

and international organizations, such

as the World Trade Organization, also

affect how much wealth countries pos-

sess. We make sure that students know

the following terms: resources, GNP,

wealth, distribution, income, power,

and colonialism. (Additional teaching

ideas that help set the context for this

lesson can be found in Rethinking Glo-

balization. See Resources, p. 226.)

Materials Needed

n 11” x 17” world maps for each

student or pair of students.

n 50 chips (25 of one color and 25

of another) for each map.

n 25 slips of paper with “I was

born in [name of continent, based on

chart].”

n 25 chocolate chip cookies.

n World map laid out on playground,

or signs with names of continents and

yarn to distinguish boundaries.

n Transparency of “World Popula-

A D

B u

S TE

R S

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn104

Suggested Procedure

1. Give each student or pair of stu-

dents a world map. Have them identify

the continents and other places you

have been studying.

2. Ask students how many people they

think are in the world. After students

have guessed, show them an almanac

or a website with a current estimate.

Ask: If we represent all the people in

the world with 25 chips, how many

people is each chip worth? (For 6.5

billion people, for example, each chip

would represent 260 million people.)

3. Give 25 chips to each student/group

and have them stack them on the con-

tinents, based on where they think

people live. Have students write down

their estimates using the worksheets

mentioned in the materials list or on

a piece of paper. Discuss student esti-

mates and then tell them the accurate

figures. Have them rearrange their

chips to reflect the facts. Ask students

what the differing stacks of chips tell

them about the world’s population.

nents—these will be useful in the fol-

low-up discussion and will indicate

possibilities for future lessons.)

7. Have students go to an area that you

have designated to represent that conti-

nent. (Playground maps work great for

this.) After students are in their areas,

remind them that they each represent

about 260 million people and that

you are going to distribute the world’s

wealth. Have each continent/group

designate one person to be a “traveling

negotiator” and distribute a traveling

negotiator sign to those people.

8. Explain that once the bag of

resources is passed out to a represen-

tative from each continent, each group

needs to sit in a circle and discuss their

situation. Tell the students there will be

a cross-continent negotiation session,

then a time for the traveling negotiators

to return to their home base to discuss

their negotiations with the rest of their

group, and finally a time for any trad-

ing or donating of resources. Students

on each continent are to talk about how

4. Explain that you are now going to

give them another 25 chips of a dif-

ferent color and that they represent

all the wealth produced in the world

(the monetary worth of all the goods

and services produced every year, from

health care to automobiles). Each chip

therefore represents 1/25 of the world’s

total amount of goods and services

produced. Tell the students to put the

chips on the continents to indicate

their estimate of who gets this wealth.

5. Discuss student estimates and

record them on the chalkboard. Have

students reflect on the sizes of the two

different sets of chip stacks, represent-

ing population and resources. Collect

the chips.

6. Tell students you are going to dem-

onstrate how population and wealth

are distributed by continent. Have each

student pick an “I was born in…” slip

from a container labeled “chance of

birth.” Students may not trade slips.

(As you distribute the slips, listen for

stereotypical reactions to the conti-

world Population and wealth Africa

Asia

Oceania

Europe

U.S. and Canada

Latin America

World Total

Sources: World population figures are from the U.N. Population Division, www.un.org/esa/population, based on estimates from July 2005. GNP figures are from the World Bank, quoted in the Universal Almanac, 1994. GNP is the total national output of goods and services. Percentage of world wealth is an estimate based on total GNP.

For the purposes of this chart, one third of Russia’s GNP is attributed to Asia and two thirds to Europe. Latin America includes Mexico, the Caribbean Islands, and South America.

% of World GNP

1.8

25.5

1.6

34.2

31.8

5.1

100.0

Population (in millions)

906

3,905

728

331

561

6,465

% of World Population

14.0

60.4

0.5

11.3

5.1

8.7

100.0

# of Students (in a class of 25)

Wealth (GNP) (in billions of dollars)

495.4

7,172.6

442.4

9,606.3

8,933.6

1,430.7

28,081.0

# of Treats (out of 25)

0.5

24.5

http://www.un.org/esa/population

Teaching ideas 105

many resources they have compared

to people of other continents and to

discuss ways they might negotiate to

increase their resources. They may

plead and/or promise. (Note: Every

continent, except North America, will

have at least one “stay-at-home negoti-

ator” and one traveling negotiator. The

North American person can stay put or

travel throughout the world. Also note

that because Mexico is by most defini-

tions part of North America, I explain

to the students that for the purpose of

this simulation we will be using “Latin

America,” which includes South Amer-

ica, Central America, and Mexico;

instead of “North America,” we will use

“United States/Canada.”)

9. Use a popular treat—such as choco-

late chip cookies—and distribute them

according to the percentages noted in

the chart. Announce the number of

treats you are giving to each continent

as you do so. Provide a paper bag for

each continent to keep their treats in.

As you dramatically place each of the

resources into the bag, remind students

they are not to eat the treats until after

the negotiation session.

10. Announce that the negotiation ses-

sion is to begin. Only traveling negotia-

tors may move to a different continent.

When they come, they should sit in a

circle with the stay-at-home negotiators

and discuss the distribution of wealth

and what should be done about it.

11. After five or 10 minutes, tell all

traveling negotiators to return to their

home continents. Each group should

then discuss the negotiations. After a

few minutes, announce that the trading

session may begin, and if a continent

wishes to trade or donate resources,

they may. After that, instruct the people

holding the resource bags to distribute

the resources to people in their group.

12. Give each continental group tag

board and markers. Tell them to make

Follow-Up Activities

A few days after this simulation, “Ten

Chairs of Inequality” (included in

Rethinking Mathematics) is a useful

activity to help students understand

that wealth is also unequally distrib-

uted in individual countries.

Students also can do follow-up

research on related topics, such as: the

role colonialism played in the wealth

disparity; how current policies of U.S.

corporations and the U.S. government

affect people in poorer nations; the

role of groups such as the WTO and

the International Monetary Fund; and

what different organizations and poli-

ticians are doing about world poverty.

(Refer to the list of “Organizations and

Websites for Global Justice” in Rethink-

ing Globalization. See Resources, p.

226.)

Three notes of caution with this

activity: First, as with any simulation

(or role play) this should be under-

stood to be just that—a simulation.

We can in no way reenact the violence

of poverty and hunger that kills tens

of thousands of children daily. We are

providing a mere glimpse. Second,

while Africa and other areas south of

the equator do not have lots of wealth

as defined by GNP, those areas have

great human and natural resources

and this fact should not be lost on the

students. Finally, in this simulation we

seek to describe rather than to explain

current power and wealth arrange-

ments. They can, however, be powerful

tools in motivating students to want to

figure out the answer to the essential

question: Why?n

Susan Hersh developed this lesson while

teaching 5th grade at La Escuela Fratney

in Milwaukee.

Bob Peterson ([email protected]) teaches

5th grade at La Escuela Fratney in Mil-

waukee and is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

some signs that describe what they

think of the way the resources were

distributed.

13. Bring students back together for

a whole-class discussion. Have each

group share their posters and per-

spectives. Show students the informa-

tion from the world wealth chart via

a transparency or handout. Connect

their emotions and feelings of fair-

ness to the information on the chart.

(At this time, a teacher might give out

additional treats to those students who

did not get any.)

Questions Worth Posing if the Stu-

dents Don’t Ask Them Themselves

n How did the distribution of

wealth get to be so unequal?

n What does the inequality of

wealth mean in terms of the kinds of

lives people lead?

n Who do you think decides how

wealth is distributed?

n Should wealth be distributed

equally?

n Do you think that, within a par-

ticular continent or nation, wealth is

distributed fairly?

n How does the unequal distribu-

tion of wealth affect the power that

groups of people hold?

n Within our community, is wealth

distributed fairly?

n What can be done about the

unequal way wealth is distributed?

n Who can we talk with to find out

more information about these matters?

If your students have studied colo-

nialism, ask them what role they think

colonialism played in creating this

inequality.

After the discussion, have students

write about their feelings, what they

learned, what questions they continue

to have, and what they might want to

do about world poverty. Some stu-

dents might also make wall posters

that graphically depict the inequality

of wealth.

mailto:wayne.wk.au%40gmail.com?subject=

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn106

In our classrooms, we may not often think of technology as a tool for teaching for social justice. But in my experience of teaching middle school

mathematics, I’ve found that technol-

ogy can be a powerful asset.

Although I am a university-based

mathematics educator, I regularly teach

at Rivera school, located in a Mexican

immigrant community in Chicago.

The following are examples of how my

students and I have used technology to

investigate racial profiling and to ana-

lyze the relationship of family income

level to scores on standardized tests.

In particular, I want to show the

potential of using graphing calculators

with students. (A graphing calculator

is basically a hand-held computer that

can do sophisticated mathematics, dis-

play various types of graphs and create

tables from data, and perform various

types of statistical analyses. While they

are still too expensive for many stu-

dents, many high school and middle

school math departments have them.)

Mathematics plays a central role

in understanding racial profiling. The

essence of profiling is proportion and

expected value: A higher proportion

of African Americans (or Arabs/Arab

Americans today) are stopped and

searched than would be expected given

their percentage in the population—

assuming random (i.e., fair) searches

or stops.

Driving while black In 2001, I did a project with my 7th-

grade class called, “Driving While

Black/Driving While Brown: A Mathe-

matics Project About Racial Profiling.” I

by the theoretical probability (for

example, 1/6 of 10,000 is about 1,667,

and we had quite close to that number

of sevens). These gradually converging

“shapes” helped students realize that

the greater the number of “trials,” the

closer to the theoretical probability the

results should be.

Students learned important mathe-

matical ideas about probability through

considering actual data about “ran-

dom” traffic stops and compared these

to the theoretical probability, what we

should “expect.” Graphing calculators

can easily simulate large numbers of

random “traffic stops,” since they have

a built-in “random” number generator.

Without calculators, one can still do

the simulation, albeit with fewer rep-

etitions and more effort. I had students

pick cubes from a bag (without look-

ing) where three of 100 were brown

(Latino), and the rest white (because

in that part of Illinois, three per-

cent of the drivers were Latino.) Each

group’s record of 100 picks simulated

how many Latinos should have been

stopped out of 100 random stops. We

then combined all the groups’ data and

had a larger number that came fairly

close to 3 percent, although individual

groups’ data ranged from 2 percent to 7

percent. But in real life, the percentage

of Latinos actually stopped was about

21 percent. Students saw through

their own simulations that what they

“expected” was not what the Illinois

State Police actually did.

At the end of the project, students

had a range of responses, but most

reached the conclusion that the dispro-

portionate number of traffic stops for

gave students data about percentages of

stops of Latino drivers and the percent

of Latino drivers in Illinois. This was a

difficult project conceptually because

students had little experience with the

mathematical ideas of expectation.

In mathematics, expected value is

based on theoretical probability. If 30

percent of drivers are Latino, we would

expect that 30 percent of random stops

would be of Latinos—but only in the

long run. This does not mean that if

police made 10 stops and five were of

Latinos something is necessarily out of

line, but it does mean that if they made

10,000 stops and 5,000 were of Latinos,

something is definitely wrong.

Technology comes in handy to show

how actual results tend to converge with

theoretical probability as the number

of events increases. I used a graphing

calculator in class to demonstrate this

on a graph called a histogram, which

can visually display the results of prob-

ability events. I used a simple computer

program (written for the calculator)

that simulates a dice-tossing situation.

If you throw two dice, the probability

of throwing a seven is 1/6, while the

probability of throwing a two is 1/36.

However, if you toss two dice and do

this just six times, there is good chance

(about 1 in 3) that you won’t even get

one seven!

With the calculator and program,

I simulated 10 tosses, then 100, 1,000,

and finally 10,000, and we looked at

each resulting histogram (shown on

an overhead projector that displays the

calculator screen). As the number of

tosses increased, the histogram began

to take on the “ideal” shape as predicted

math, sats, and Racial Profiling by eric gutstein

Teaching ideas 107

Latinos was related to racial discrimi-

nation. A fairly typical response was:

I learned that police are probably

really being racial because there

should be Latino people between a

range of 1-5 percent, and no, their

range is 21 percent Latino people

and also I learned that mathemat-

ics is useful for many things in life,

math is not just something you do,

it’s something you should use in life.

But not everyone saw it that way.

One student commented:

Police are maybe just stopping

people because they might look sus-

picious, drunk, or something. They

don’t just stop you for anything.

I think that this project was not

accurate to prove anything. I mean

what is it proving, it is not accurate

in the cubes.

In hindsight, a weakness in the proj-

ect was that although students under-

stood that the data showed something

was amiss, we spent insufficient time

discussing and analyzing the complexi-

ties of racism. What did emerge was

students’ sense of justice (“Why do they

make random stops? … just because of

their race and their color?”) and sense

of agency, as well as perhaps a sense

of naivete (“And Latinos shouldn’t

let them [police], they should go to a

police department and tell how that

person was harassed just because of a

racial color”).

bias in sat scores This issue of the complexity of the

social issues also surfaced in an earlier

project I did with an 8th-grade class

in 1998-99. In this project, students

investigated the relationship between

race, gender, and family income and

ACT and SAT scores (see table). We

were studying data analysis and creat-

ing scatterplots, a type of graph one can

use to visually inspect the correlation

of two variables (e.g., test scores and

family income). Students had to create

a scatterplot from data that I down-

loaded from FairTest’s web site (www.

fairtest.org). We did not use graphing

calculators for two reasons—individual

scores and income levels were not avail-

able (the FairTest data aggregated the

1,127,021 students who took the test in

1997 by income level ranges of $10,000

or $20,000) and at the time, Rivera

had no graphing calculators (they have

since bought a classroom set). But if

individual data were available and

we had calculators, I would have had

groups of students input 500 pairs of

data and inspect the graphs. At Rivera,

due to circumstances, students made

hand plots.

For the SAT, the raw data them-

selves make the correlation pretty clear

(since the data set is so small), but the

graphs students created made it even

clearer to them. SAT scores go up in

an almost lockstep correlation with

family income. Students, who also saw

Mexican Americans near the bottom

of the listed racial groups and males

above females, had plenty of ques-

tions. In Part 2 of the project, I had

students write letters to Educational

Testing Service (ETS) about the data,

asking any questions and making any

points they wanted to. Their responses

ranged, but many asked pointed (and

sometimes confused) questions about

inequality and about the interrelation-

ships of race and class. Samples from

two letters follow:

Both the SATs and the ACTs had a

low score if their income was low. I

think this really isn’t giving anyone

a chance. You see, what if you have a

really smart student that only [has]

an income of $9,000, would he/she

1997 sat scores by Race Total Test-Takers = 1.1 million (1997 data)

Verbal Math Total American Indian or Alaskan native 475 475 950 Asian, Asian Amer., or Pacific Is. 496 560 1056 Black or African American 434 423 857 mexican American 451 458 909 Puerto Rican 454 447 901 hispanic/Latino 466 468 934 White 526 526 1052 Other 512 514 1026

males 507 530 1037 Females 503 494 997 All Test-Takers 505 511 1016

less than $10,000/year 428 448 873 $10,000 - $20,000/year 454 464 918 $20,000 - $30,000/year 480 492 972 $30,000 - $40,000/year 496 497 993 $40,000 - $50,000/year 507 508 1015 $50,000 - $60,000/year 515 518 1033 $60,000 - $70,000/year 522 526 1048 $80,000 - $100,000/year 540 544 1084 more than $100,000/year 559 571 1130

Source: 1997 Profile of College-Bound Seniors, College Board

http://www.fairtest.org

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn108

not get much of an education? Is

it just a stereotype or do you give a

better education to people that pay

more? If this is true, I hope you can

make a change.

I have noticed that the people and

genders who have been “oppressed”

are doing worse than the “whites.” I

have noticed that many books used

at my curriculum (8th grade) have

not been related to me in any way

because I’m a Mexican-American.

I don’t believe that they relate to

anyone except “whites.” For some

reason I believe that’s the reason, but

not the whole reason. … Minori-

ties—when you hear that word, what

does it mean? It means poor African

Americans, Mexican Americans,

Puerto Ricans and other poor non-

white people. You don’t hear a lot

about poor whites and minorities!

You hear about rich whites. So who

do you think has the high scores

with the high salaries? Who? Why?

This story would not be complete

without raising a few other issues.

For three full class periods, we sat in a

circle, and students read and discussed

their letters with each other. This was

difficult and emotional, since students

saw themselves at the bottom of the

data. But this was an honors class, and

students were strongly college oriented.

They wanted an answer to their key

question: Why are we on the bottom?

I tried to help them understand that

there were multiple, interconnected rea-

sons: that schools in general and the tests

in particular did not value (nor assess)

their “cultural capital”—their home

language, culture, ways of communicat-

ing, and experiences—but were instead

geared to that of white, middle-class

families. We talked about how schools

in wealthier areas usually had more

resources, smaller classes, more experi-

enced teachers, and more challenging

curricula, and that in the United States,

With every single thing about math

that I learned came something else.

Sometimes I learned more of other

things instead of math. I learned to

think of fairness, injustices and so

forth everywhere I see numbers dis-

torted in the world. Now my mind is

opened to so many new things. I’m

more independent and aware. I have

learned to be strong in every way

you can think of it.

These examples may serve as food

for thought as we consider how tech-

nology and mathematics—neither of

which many of us immediately link

to social justice—can be used to help

students read the world and begin to

make sense of things like racism and

classism. Clearly, initial explorations

should not serve as final explanations,

as these are complex issues that even

adults are often trying to make sense of

and connect to other aspects of society.

They cry out for further and ongoing

investigations, to be returned to again

and again. But the possibilities exist to

help young people develop the orien-

tation to seek ever-deeper answers to

these types of questions, and we can

take advantage of available technology

and turn it to uses for social justice.

Students, as young people and as they

become adults, can and will raise their

own voices in the world. Ultimately, it

is how we structure society—for what

purposes and in whose interests—that

determines how science and technol-

ogy are used.n

Eric Gutstein teaches in the College of

Education at the University of Illinois-

Chicago and is active in Teachers for

Social Justice (Chicago). He would like

to acknowledge the work of Marilyn

Frankenstein regarding math and social

justice.

the overall educational opportunities

for urban students of color tended to be

inferior to those of white students.

But some of these ideas were

abstract to students who rarely experi-

enced other communities or cultures,

and we did not end the discussion with

a definitive answer—nor was that my

intent.

And different students reached

various levels of awareness, including

some who tended to explain away what

appeared to other students to be unjust

situations (e.g., espousing the view that

immigrants expected to be at the bot-

tom in a new country to justify why

Mexicans so often wound up with the

jobs no one else wanted.)

Read the world Paulo Freire, the noted Brazilian edu-

cator, stressed the idea of teaching stu-

dents to not only read but to “read the

world.” In my lessons, I did not try to

answer their questions about the world

(nor could I always do so), because

my focus was more on helping them

develop the orientation to raise ques-

tions and critique rather than satisfy-

ing them with answers. But in this case,

their reading of the world had the real

potential to paralyze and demoral-

ize them. This raises a question about

the relationship of students reading

the world to their self-perceptions and

points out our responsibilities when we

attempt to teach for social justice. That

is, how do we help students develop a

sense of agency, confidence, and deter-

mination while at the same time help-

ing them learn about concrete examples

of racism, classism, and injustice that

may be outside their immediate experi-

ence? There is no room to address this

here, but I leave readers with a com-

ment from a student I taught for close

to two years as she reflected on what

she had learned at the end of our time

together:

Teaching ideas 109

If you write that big, you’re never gonna be able to get them all up there,” said Sondra, voicing her third critique of my teaching in five minutes.

With that, I deposited the chalk in her

hand.

“Take over,” I said.

“Oh, my fault, Ms. Ellwood,” she

apologized.

“No, really, go for it. I want you to.”

She looked doubtful, not sure

whether she was being admonished.

“Try it. I think you’d be great.”

After a minute or so of this back-and-

forth, Sondra stood up, and I moved to

a seat near the back of the room.

We had just read “Little Things Are

Big,” by Jesús Colón, in my fifth-hour

American Ethnic Literature class. (See

p. 113.) Set in New York during the

1950s, the short story is about a young,

black Puerto Rican fighting an internal

battle as he tries to decide whether he

should offer to help a white woman

loaded with luggage and children as she

disembarks from the subway. “Courtesy

is a characteristic of the Puerto Rican,”

the protagonist reports. “And here I

was—a Puerto Rican—hours past mid-

night, a valise, two white children, and a

white lady with a baby on her arm pal-

pably needing someone to help her at

least until she descended the long, con-

crete stairs.” But he holds back, afraid

that this white woman might misin-

terpret the intentions of a black man

approaching her in a deserted sub way

so late at night. Later he is tortured by

his choice: “I failed myself to myself,”

things, or other students tried to inter-

vene, Sondra said firmly, “This is my

class.” She refused to recognize me unless

I raised my hand like everyone else. At

one point, when I forgot and simply

spoke out my opinion, she did such a

magnificent job of ignoring me that

Ernesto took pity: “That’s OK, Ms. Ell-

wood. Tell me what you want to say, and

I’ll say it,” he offered magnanimously.

It was a fine discussion. We talked

about what the author meant to con-

vey, how the characters must have felt,

whether it could hap pen today, where

racism comes from, and both the obvi-

ous and subtle ways racial preju dice

still affects our lives. We struggled with

some tough questions. One student

said he could do anything if he tried

he muses. He vows that if he ever again

faces such a situation, he will offer aid

no matter how it may be re ceived.

I asked each student to write down

three questions for discussion and had

just begun to list their questions on the

board under two cat egories: “plot/fact

questions” and “thought/opinion ques-

tions,” when I handed Sondra the chalk.

Once up, Sondra took firm com-

mand of the class. She abandoned my

approach. “Anthony, just tell me your

best question,” she said. Then rather

than putting it on the board, she posed

it to the class for immediate discussion.

When it seemed as if a topic had been

plumbed, she moved to the next student

and asked again only for that student’s

best question. Whenever I tried to direct

the Day sondra took Over helping students become self-directed

by Cynthia m. ellwood

S k

JO LD

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn110

dent-led discussion seemed almost to

occur spontaneously, through some

quirk of chemistry and circumstance,

I had been trying to make this happen

from the beginning of the year. (We

were to study Mythology and Folklore

the first semester, followed by Ameri-

can Ethnic Litera ture the second.) I

had articulated three goals at the begin-

ning of this course. First, I wanted my

students to see themselves as learn-

ers, people who felt invested in and

responsible for the learning (their own

and others’) in the classroom. Second,

I wanted them to see literature as open

to interpretation, and I hoped to train

them to “unpack” a piece of literature.

Third, I wanted them to learn to engage

in “academic discourse,” which I define

briefly as arguing using evidence.

That day, my fifth hour seemed to

fulfill all three goals as they had never

done before. We had had many good

discussions before, but never ones that

were so clearly directed by the students

themselves.

no accident That the events that day were not sim-

ply happenstance set off by an interac-

tion between Sondra and me was later

reinforced when I formalized in my

eighth hour the student leadership that

had seemed to arise spontaneously in

fifth hour. I explained that I wanted

them to run this discussion and we

appointed a student facilitator. The

eighth hour discussion had a different

rhythm and elaborated on different

themes than in fifth hour. And with-

out Sondra’s commanding leadership, I

had to exercise more self-discipline to

keep from controlling the discussion

while still attempting to pose issues

that might push students to dig deeper

and think harder. But as in the earlier

class, my eighth hour students willingly

assumed responsibility for the discus-

sion and, I felt, moved toward particu-

larly thoughtful analyses of the short

hard enough, so racism wasn’t an issue.

“Well, you’re just blaming a person that

doesn’t make it, then, just saying they

didn’t try hard enough when it might

be because of racism,” another coun-

tered. We agreed that it was important

to be lieve in yourself and never give up.

But we also agreed that inequality was

real. Were these ideas contradictory?

The students didn’t reach consensus on

that one, but I think we had a chance to

talk and think hard about an issue that

struck a deep chord.

As I listened and participated, I also

learned. I was reminded that my stu-

dents must hold fiercely to the convic-

tion that they can “make it.” The easy

money of drug sales, the instant power

of gang affiliation, the adoring needi-

ness of a new baby are not trivial temp-

tations if a young person—impatient

to “become some one” as most teen-

agers are—has trouble be lieving the

American dream. I’ve always tried to

present them with examples of people

who strove for their dreams, who acted

heroically in everyday life, who fought

oppression and pur sued high ideals

individually and collectively.

I’ve also encouraged students to

critically examine our world and the

problems we confront. Yet, while I’d

always thought of this social critique

as empowering, I realized as I listened

to the discussion that day that for some

of my students, such analysis might be

feeding feelings of hopelessness and

despair. The connection I made that day

(or rather my students made for me)

was subtle but important. In the future

I’ll try to confront this tension more

directly: How do you maintain hope if

you see the world as troubled and even

systematically unfair? I’ll be more care-

ful to match our analysis of problems

with an immediate exploration of the

large and small steps people can take,

and are taking, toward their solution.

That Monday in April was a triumph

for me. For while this penetrating, stu-

story and related themes in our lives.

In the final months of the school year,

both classes continued to build, albeit

unevenly and imperfectly, on the abili-

ties students showed that day.

Nor was this triumph the result of

finally hitting upon the magic recipe,

the perfect approach. I knew it couldn’t

have happened in the first month of

class; we had all learned a lot to bring us

to this point. I set about trying to ana-

lyze what exactly had worked to bring

about the fulfillment of my goals, and

how I might learn from it to become a

better teacher.

laying the groundwork From the first day, I had attempted to

train students in my three rules of “aca-

demic discourse.” Whether you’re dis-

cussing or writing, I said over and over,

you must: (1) have a point (in an essay,

this main point is called a thesis), (2)

provide evidence to back it up, and (3)

anchor your point (in discussion that

usually meant drawing an explicit con-

nection between your point and what

had already been said; in an es say one

often anchored one’s thesis with refer-

ence to another written piece or to

“common wisdom.”) We had practiced

these skills end lessly over the year and

had made substantial progress before

what I call “the day Sondra took over.”

I had also constantly worked to

confront students with serious, open-

ended questions. As I see it, the main

reason for studying literature is to dis-

cover more about humanity and one-

self. And the main reason we learn to

write is to be able to express our con-

victions powerful ly. That means that

moral controversies, searching ques-

tions, and even deeply personal dilem-

mas are not only admissible in my

classroom, they are central. So I had

attempted, with everything we studied,

to bring these kinds of questions to the

fore, and especially to forge a connec-

tion between the daily concerns of my

Teaching ideas 111

students and age-old human questions,

between their individual experiences

and uni versal experience.

During the first semester, in

Mythology and Folklore, we tried to

identify the values implicit in Greek

literature and compare Greek beliefs

with our own views about fate, the role

of women, family relationships, reli-

gion, right and wrong. We recalled how

fantasies—myths—appeared to us as

children and argued about whether

children should be scared into obedi-

ence with threats of the boogie man,

or taught to be good with the prom-

ise of presents from Santa. We identi-

fied archetypes—themes, symbols and

story lines that come up again and

again in the stories of cultures sepa-

rated by time and distance—and tried

to figure out why they recur.

As I look back, I can see that the

groundwork we laid in the first semes-

ter and the first part of the second

semester contributed to that moment

in April when Sondra took over the

class and my students began taking

greater responsibility for their own

learning. At the end of the first semes-

ter I had asked each student to evalu-

ate the class in the form of an anony-

mous “letter to a friend” describing the

course. While many letters complained

that the course demanded too much

writing, al most every letter noted that

students were ex pected to think hard

and formulate their own opinions. A

typical comment was: “The fact that

we are able to discuss our own point of

view rather than always having to lis-

ten to the teacher’s point of view … is a

very posi tive and important part of this

class.” Anoth er said simply, “She’ll ask

you your opinion whether you want to

give it or not.” A third student wrote,

“You read stories to dig deep into

what the characters are thinking and

how they are alike and different from

today’s world.”

As I reread these papers today, I see

that by the end of the first semester we

had not re solved the issue of who was

responsible for the success of the class,

the teacher or the stu dents. Some stu-

dents saw it as my re sponsibility to keep

the class exciting at all times: “But some-

times this class is so boring. Sometimes

you have to pep us up or some thing.

Like writing paragraphs—I hate it!”

Another at least recognized how

demanding the teacher’s role was:

The most important aspect of all

is the leader (or the teacher). She

has to prepare her self for weeks in

order to make the class inter esting

and not bore the whole class. What

I’m trying to say is you need to have

GANAS [Spanish for ‘desire’] in

order to make the class interesting.

One seemed possibly to be expressing

am bivalence about whose responsibility

the class was. This student wrote crypti-

cally: “I’ve learned that the teacher can

influence how you act in class or what

you learn in class is up to you.”

giving students Responsibility For all our circle discussions, essays,

dramatizations, group work, free-

writes, sur veys, debates, mock “Oprah

shows,” more dis cussions, and more

essays—and in spite of the tremen-

dous progress we had made in the first

semester and the beginning of the sec-

ond—it was not until Sondra took over

the class in April that I felt my goals

were met. By late March, I had been

feeling exhausted, and yet I felt I wasn’t

demanding enough of my students.

It seemed like the burden of learning

fell more heavily on me than on them!

Students knew they were expected to

articulate their views, but the responsi-

bility for posing provocative ques tions

and guiding the discussion to thought-

ful conclusions seemed to fall entirely

on my shoulders. I wrote in my journal

during the March spring break:

They [students] still don’t get the

purpose of academic discourse to

the point of feeling truly invested

in the process. They engage in it

be cause they like me and want to

please me, or because I’ve managed

to awaken their interest by coming

up with an angle that speaks to their

concerns, or to get a good grade,

or when they’re feeling generally

agreeable. But the class is still heavily

teacher-propelled.

In my more cynical moments, I felt

as if I were up there performing like

a maniac to win their engagement or

running myself ragged to contrive situ-

ations that led them to “discover mean-

ing for themselves” only to have them

view our analytic dialogues as “conver-

sating,” as a student put it once.

My friend Grace listened to my

whining and then said simply, “Why

did you participate in high school?”

She was right. Somehow I hoped that

I could teach my students to pick up

a piece of literature and plumb it on

their own, to find for themselves the

universal themes, the ideas that speak

to their experience—just for the pure

joy of learning. Yet I didn’t do that in

high school, or even consistently in col-

lege. I participated to get a good grade,

because I liked the teacher, because the

teacher or a particular text raised issues

I found interesting or useful.

while this penetrating, student- led discussion seemed to occur

spontaneously, I had been trying to make it happen all year.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn112

Finally: the breakthrough So how did it happen that one week later

(the week after spring break), Sondra

stepped to the front of the class, and I

saw my students take more responsibil-

ity for raising questions and directing

discussion? I think it happened, first,

because we had laid the groundwork

in previous months. Second, an article

by Grant Wiggins entitled “Enabling

Students to Be (Thoughtful) Work-

ers” offered some useful suggestions

at a key time. A friend showed me the

article in February, and I went back to

it over spring break as I pondered how

to make my class less teacher-centered.

Wiggins says we should organize

our courses—regardless of the subject

area—around “essential questions.”

Instead of thinking about what content

we want students to cover, we ought

to identify large, overarching, higher-

order questions which “go to the heart

of the discipline” and which are open-

ended enough to allow students to pur-

sue their own answers. In this scheme,

“the textbook, rather than providing the

logic of the syllabus, becomes a refer-

ence book for posing and solving prob-

lems.” I realized that Wiggins’ “essential

questions” were much like the ques-

tions I posed again and again to my stu-

dents. I organized my courses around

major themes or problems, which I pre-

sented at the beginning of every semes-

ter. And as we explored those themes I

constantly confronted my students with

open-ended questions designed to help

them formulate their own understand-

ings of the larger issues.

But I realized as I read Wiggins that I

was asking most of the questions. Hav-

ing students pose questions was part of

my repertoire, something we did some-

times, the way I sometimes gave surveys

to awaken their prior understanding

of an issue or the way we sometimes

staged debates to get students involved

in articulating their opinions. Wiggins

ture, essays, films, and other resources

that I felt would be fertile ground for

thought; and even as I sat in a discus-

sion as “just another participant,” I was

constantly trying to pose questions and

bring up issues that would focus the

discussion and deepen students’ think-

ing. I do, however, learn constantly

from my students. They have helped me

to see things from entirely new angles

and have introduced questions that set

me off on personal searches extend-

ing beyond the end of any particular

school year. As I’ve learned about their

views and experiences, the questions I

pose to them and the way I pose them

have also changed.

At times students may assume full,

responsible, eager control over their

own learning. My experiences this

year suggest that I should see such

moments as goals and triumphs but

not the absolute measure of success.

My day-to-day job is to try to provide

the training, skills, atmosphere, and

conditions that will enable us to share

the responsibility more and to change

places from time to time—a job that

remains exhausting.

We have not abandoned our roles

as teacher and students. But I believe

my students and I have learned more

by changing the parameters of those

roles.n

Cynthia Ellwood is a principal in the

Milwaukee Public Schools.

suggested that “students write down

at least three ques tions for each les-

son and reading.” While students pos-

ing questions was an occasional part

of my class, Wiggins was suggesting

it should be a routine assignment for

every reading.

Starting the first day after spring

break, I asked students to write ques-

tions about everything we looked at

in the class. (I found, incidentally, that

grading these questions is not difficult.

Students and I were clear on the cri-

teria for a “good” question: It was one

that was open-ended—having no right

answer—meaty, and thought provok-

ing. Such questions were easily recog-

nizable, though not easy to produce. I

gave C’s for producing three relevant

questions that showed a student had

done the reading and A’s when they

produced two or more truly thought-

provoking questions.) The following

Monday we had our breakthrough,

when Sondra took over the class.

Qualifying Conclusions Of course, to say that Sondra “took

over the class” that Monday in April or

the students “took responsibility” for

posing questions and running discus-

sions from that day forward stretches

the truth. In fact, I never once relin-

quished control over the class—even

on the few occasions when I sat on the

sidelines and steadfastly refused to take

part in a discussion. Though we played

at changing roles on that day and sub-

sequently, I never stopped being the

teacher and the authority.

Nor do I think giving up my author-

ity is something worth striving for. I

believe I have things to teach my stu-

dents—I actively trained them to argue

with evidence orally and in essay form.

For example, I organized the course

around themes which my experience

tells me are “big ideas” they will encoun-

ter in college and adult life generally; I

tracked down and introduced litera-

Teaching ideas 113

they reached the end of the steep long

concrete stairs of the Atlantic Avenue

station?

Courtesy is a characteristic of the

Puerto Rican. And here I was—a Puerto

Rican—hours past midnight, a valise,

two white children, and a white lady

with a baby on her arm palpably need-

ing somebody to help her at least until

she descended the long concrete stairs.

But how could I, a Negro and a

Puerto Rican, approach this white lady

who very likely might have preconceived

prejudices against Negroes and every-

body with foreign accents, in a deserted

subway station very late at night?

What would she say? What would be

the first reaction of this white American

woman, perhaps coming from a small

town, with a valise, two children, and a

baby on her right arm? Would she say:

Yes, of course, you may help me. Or

would she think that I was just trying

to get too familiar? Or would she think

worse than that perhaps? What would

I do if she let out a scream as I went

toward her to offer my help?

Was I misjudging her? So many slan-

ders are written every day in the daily

press against the Negroes and Puerto

Ricans. I hesitated for a long, long

minute. The ancestral manners that

the most illiterate Puerto Rican passes

on from father to son were struggling

inside me. Here was I, way past mid-

night, face to face with a situation that

could very well explode into an out-

burst of prejudices and chauvinistic

conditioning of the “divide and rule”

policy of present day society.

It was a long minute. I passed on by

It was very late at night on the eve of Memorial Day. She came into the subway at the 34th Street Pennsylva- nia Station. I am still trying to remem-

ber how she managed to push herself

in with a baby on her right arm, a valise

in her left hand, and two children, a

boy and girl about 3 and 5 years old,

trailing after her. She was a nice look-

ing white lady in her early 20s.

At Nevins Street, Brooklyn, we saw

her preparing to get off at the the next

station—Atlantic Avenue—which hap-

pened to be the place where I too had

to get off. Just as it was a problem for

her to get on, it was going to be a prob-

lem for her to get off the subway with

two small children to be taken care of,

a baby on her right arm and a medium

sized valise in her left hand.

And there I was, also preparing to get

off at Atlantic Avenue, with no bundles

to take care of—not even the custom-

ary book under my arm without which

I feel that I am not completely dressed.

As the train was entering the Atlan-

tic Avenue station, some white man

stood up from his seat and helped her

out, placing the children on the long,

deserted platform. There were only

two adult persons on the long platform

some time after midnight on the eve of

last Memorial Day.

I could perceive the steep, long con-

crete stairs going down to the Long

Island Railroad or into the street.

Should I offer my help as the American

white man did at the subway door plac-

ing the two children outside the subway

car? Should I take care of the girl and

the boy, take them by their hands until

little things are big

by Jesús Colón

her as if I saw nothing. As if I was insen-

sitive to her need. Like a rude animal

walking on two legs, I just moved on

half running by the long subway plat-

form leaving the children and the valise

and her with the baby on her arm. I

took the steps of the long concrete stairs

in twos until I reached the street above

and the cold air slapped my warm face.

This is what racism and prejudice

and chauvinism and official artificial

divisions can do to people and a nation!

Perhaps the lady was not prejudiced

after all. Or not prejudiced enough

to scream at the coming of a Negro

toward her in a solitary subway station

a few hours past midnight.

If you were not that prejudiced, I

failed you, dear lady. I know that there is

a chance in a million that you will read

these lines. I am willing to take that mil-

lionth chance. If you were not that prej-

udiced, I failed you, lady, I failed you,

children. I failed myself to myself.

I buried my courtesy early on

Memorial Day morning. But here is a

promise that I make to myself here and

now; if I am ever faced with an occa-

sion like that again, I am going to offer

my help regardless of how the offer is

going to be received.

Then I will have my courtesy with

me again. n

Jesús Colón (1901-1974) was a social

activist who wrote about the Puerto Rican

community in New York.

Reprinted with permission from

International Publishers, New York, from

the book A Puerto Rican in New York and

Other Sketches, 1982.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn114

As teachers know, some class-room materials invariably work, no matter the group of students. Barefoot Gen is one of them.

Barefoot Gen, a Japanese animation

full-length feature, tells the story of

Gen (pronounced with a hard “G”), a

young boy who, along with his mother,

survives the bombing of Hiroshima.

The story chronicles their struggles

as they try to rebuild their lives from

the bomb’s ashes. It is based on the crit-

ically acclaimed, semi-autobiographi-

cal Japanese comic book series Hadashi

no Gen, by Keiji Nakazawa. Both the

comic strip and the feature film oppose

the Japanese government’s actions dur-

ing World War II and include criticism

of the intense poverty and suffering

forced onto the Japanese people by

their government’s war effort.

The film’s critical eye points to one

of the lessons I want students to draw

from Barefoot Gen: that it is important

to scrutinize the relationship between

the people of a country and the actions

of their government—ours included. I

want my students to understand that

as thinking human beings, we have

the right to disagree and protest when

a government’s actions are not in the

interests of humanity, as Gen’s father

does or as many U.S. people do in con-

demning the bombing of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki.

I also find the film useful to help stu-

dents look beyond the demonized and

often racist images of the Japanese, par-

ticularly in the context of World War II,

haiku and hiroshima teaching about the atomic bomb

by wayne au

Teaching ideas 115

losing loved ones or fighting to survive

in a harsh world. Across race, gender,

and nationality, students consistently

exhibit emotional empathy with Gen.

I like to follow the discussion with

the class using the traditional Japanese

poetry forms of haiku and tanka to

express their responses to the film. This

works best if these can be assigned the

same day as watching the movie. First

we read aloud some haiku and tanka

written by survivors of the bombings

from White Flash/Black Rain: Women

of Japan Relive the Bomb (Milkweed

Editions, 1995).

Reality

is this and only this—

the one bone

I place in the bent and burned

small school lunch tin.

—Shoda Shinoe

grabbing sand

beneath the flaming sky

is to be alive

—Kingyo Humiko

looking for her mother

the girl still has strength

to turn over corpses

—Shibata Moriyo

After discussing the imagery and

themes of the haiku and tanka examples,

I describe the syllabic requirements of

these traditional Japanese forms. Haiku

requires three lines, with five, seven, and

five syllables in each line respectively,

totaling 17 syllables. With five lines,

tanka similarly requires five, seven, five,

seven, and seven syllables respectively,

totaling 31 syllables. The examples are

translated from Japanese, so they do not

make good syllabic models in English,

but their content is powerful enough for

students to get the idea.

From there, we write. Expressing

emotions through poetry is hard work,

and trying to make poetry fit into a

limited syllable space is even harder.

Fortunately, because haiku and tanka

and see actual people living, dying, and

protesting their government’s actions.

High school students enjoy the dis-

arming and playful nature of Barefoot

Gen’s cartoon medium. Some students

are familiar with the film genre of Jap-

anese animation, or anime, which has

gained popularity in the United States.

The film’s effect is hardly playful,

however, and students quickly realize

that this is a serious film with charac-

ter development, plot, and real emo-

tion. Its animation allows the intense

imagery of the atomic explosion and

its aftermath to take shape on screen,

in front of our eyes.

The atomic detonation of the bomb

named “Little Boy” over the city of

Hiroshima killed almost 120,000 civil-

ians and 20,000 military personnel.

The explosion reached into the millions

of degrees centigrade and obliterated

an area of 13 square kilometers. Three

days later, “Fat Man” was dropped on

Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people. These

astounding numbers do not include the

estimated 130,000 who died within five

days of the bombings or those who sur-

vived the initial explosion but suffered

or died from long-term genetic damage

and radiation sickness. [(In offering stu-

dents a broader context for the events of

August 1945, I’ve found historian How-

ard Zinn’s work especially valuable. See

the chapter “Just and Unjust Wars” from

his book Declarations of Independence

(HarperPerennial, 1990) and his article

“The Bombs of August,” in The Progres-

sive magazine, August 2000.]

The images in Barefoot Gen are pow-

erful and devastating to watch. Thank-

fully, the film ends on an upbeat note

of survival, because like Gen, humanity

can and will triumph over devastation.

For the post-film discussion, I mainly

ask students to share their feelings and

thoughts about the movie. Some say

that they’ve never cried watching a car-

toon before, and most remark that they

can relate to Gen’s personal struggles of

are relatively short compared to essays

or other writing assignments, students

don’t feel too intimidated and, however

frustrating, have fun fitting their words

into the puzzle that the traditional

forms present. Students’ writing has

been outstanding, demonstrating their

abilities to empathize with the Japanese

people who suffered the bombing.

screams the sound of souls

being devoured, banished

from all existence

—Joseph Tauti

red sky floats above

starts to drip the blackness down

towards the drying deathbed

now scorched by the liquid fire

bleak chariots move the dead

—Amanda O’Conner

Little children scream

They look for their families

which they will not find

—Shanique Johnson

Understandably, the feeling of dread

and despair evident in the student

examples underscores the immense

human suffering. Dropping an atomic

bomb on real, live people is serious,

and it is important that students recog-

nize this fact.

In the end, the mushroom clouds

left by “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” tow-

ered over more than just the two cit-

ies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those

explosions cast their shadows over Asia

and Europe, signaling to the rest of

the world, especially the Soviet Union,

that the United States was indeed the

dominant global military power with

the devastating firepower to back it up.

More important, and more frighten-

ing, U.S. officials were willing to use

that firepower. n

Wayne Au ([email protected]) is

an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine

and is an assistant professor of education

at the University of Washington, Bothell

Campus.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn116

students as textbook Detectives an exercise in uncovering bias

by bill bigelow and bob Peterson

Many school districts rely on textbook series to shape curri-cula in social studies, science, math, and other subjects. Such texts

may have useful background informa-

tion, photos, maps, and graphs. But

often they contain harmful biases and

omissions. Thus, textbooks can be valu-

able resources to help sharpen students’

critical reading and analytical skills. We

include the lesson described below as an

example of teaching critical literacy—

offering students some tools to question

basic assumptions of the material they

read, to “talk back” to their texts.

Grade Level: 5–12

Procedure

1. For background information on

the causes and consequences of the

U.S. war with Mexico, see the tea party

activity in Bill Bigelow’s The Line

Between Us: Teaching About the Bor-

der and Mexican Immigration; Chap-

ter 8, “We Take Nothing by Conquest,

Thank God,” from Howard Zinn’s A

People’s History of the United States,

also included in The Line Between Us;

Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror

(Chapter 7: “Foreigners in Their Native

Land”); and Elizabeth Martínez’s 500

Años del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of

Chicano History in Pictures. Also see

the interview with Howard Zinn on pp.

179–185 in this volume. Useful first-

person accounts of participants can be

found in Milton Meltzer’s Bound for

the Rio Grande. As a follow-up activity

you might use Henry David Thoreau’s

essay “On Civil Disobedience.”

3. Distribute to students the selection

from Glencoe McGraw-Hill’s American

Odyssey, “Thinking Deeply” questions,

and map of territory that Mexico lost

to the United States—all on the follow-

ing page.

American Odyssey is a high school

text. Although the main focus is the

20th century, the book includes 249

pre-20th century pages. Note that the

two-paragraph section reproduced at

right is the book’s entire discussion of

the U.S.-Mexico War. (As an alterna-

tive to using the excerpt provided, ask

students to use their own textbooks, or

distribute several different texts so they

can compare coverage.)

4. Divide students into small groups

and ask them to read the textbook

excerpt, discuss the questions and

answer them in writing.

5. Bring students back together to

share their insights. Be sure to ask the

bigger “why” questions, such as:

n Why do you think this textbook

leaves out important information?

n Why do you think some school

districts use textbooks that present

such an incomplete story?

n Why is it important when text-

books fail to tell students about indi-

viduals and movements in history that

opposed government policies?

Also ask:

n How do you think books like

these affect the way students think

about wars the United States has been

involved in?

n How do the books affect the way

students view the world today, for

example, “illegal” immigration from

Mexico to the United States? (Our stu-

dents are often surprised to learn that

Texas, California, New Mexico, Ari-

zona, etc. were once Mexican territory,

and were acquired by the United States

through deceit and invasion. For some,

this puts the legitimacy of the border

and the issue of so-called illegal aliens

in a new light.)

n In the Glencoe McGraw-Hill text,

the entire section on the U.S.-Mexico

War consists of two paragraphs. What

message does that send to readers about

the importance of this period?

6. Allow students to act on what they

find. They might write letters to a text-

book company or a school district text-

book selection committee, rewrite sec-

tions of the text or write critiques to be

left in the book for the following year’s

students, and/or lead workshops with

other students and young children

about the biases they uncovered.

Note: While the “Thinking Deeply”

questions here are aimed at critiquing

representations of the U.S. war with

Mexico, this format can be used with

virtually any textbook account of any

historical period, or with children’s

literature. For example, in examining

stories or descriptions of the “discov-

ery” of America, elementary students

could be asked: How many times does

Columbus talk? How many times do

we get to know what he is thinking?

How many times do the Native people

have names? How many times do the

Teaching ideas 117

M E X I C O

U N I T E D S TAT E S

CALIFORNIA

NEVADA UTAH

WYOMING

ARIZONA

TEXAS

COLORADO KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

NEW MEXICO

Texas

Claimed by Texas

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Gadsden Purchase

Native people talk? How many times do

we get to know what the Native people

are thinking? Or on the high school

level, students might be encouraged to

ask: What kinds of things do you learn

about Columbus, his background, why

he’s sailing west and what he wants?

What do you learn about the Taíno

people he encounters in the Caribbean?

Whom does the book get you to root

for and how does it accomplish that?

(For example, are the books horrified at

the treatment of the Taínos or thrilled

that Columbus makes it to the “New

World”?)

Thinking Deeply

1. What do you learn about the causes

of the war with Mexico? What doesn’t

the book tell you about the causes?

2. What does the textbook tell about

opposition to U.S. involvement in the

war?

3. What does the textbook include

about the lives and thoughts of African

Americans, Mexicans, or women?

4. What questions do you have about

the U.S. war with Mexico that are not

addressed in this textbook passage? n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Bob Peterson ([email protected]) teaches

5th grade at La Escuela Fratney in Mil-

waukee and is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

In 1836 when Texas declared its independence from mexico, white Southerners hoped to acquire Texas as a new slave state. northerners feared that the admission of Texas to the union would not only increase the South’s power in congress but would also embroil the united States in a war with mexico. nevertheless by 1845 enough politicians were caught up in the fervor of westward expansion—believing that it was the destiny of the nation to reach from shore to shore—that white Southern politicians were able to prevail in getting Texas admitted to the union as the 28th state. mexico was outraged at this action. After a border skirmish between American troops and mexican troops, the united

States declared war on mexico in may 1846.

On Feb. 2, 1848, after almost two years of fighting, the nations ended the war by signing the Treaty of guadalupe hidalgo. This treaty gave the united States vast new regions that today include california, Arizona, new mexico, utah, nevada, and parts of colorado and Wyoming. The fear that these territories would organize into states intensified the sectional conflict between the north and the South. many northerners opposed the extension of slavery even into the newly acquired lands that lay south of the line established by the missouri compromise. From Glencoe McGraw–Hill’s American Odyssey.

war with mexico

A map of territory Mexico lost to the United States.

http://store.nea.org/NEABookstore/control/main

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn118

what Can teachers Do about sexual harassment? by ellen bravo and larry miller

Theresa was the only girl in the met-

alworking class. When a teacher asked

her how things were going with the boys,

Theresa replied, “Oh, it’s much better.

They don’t grab my breasts and butt any-

more. They just call me all those names.”

* * *

Paula hated walking past Leon and

his friends. They would grab themselves

and say things like, “Come on, now, you

know you want it.” Some of her friends

yelled comments back, but Paula never

knew what to say.

* * *

Anton took the long way to class. He

didn’t want to pass a certain group of

girls who always made fun of him for

being a virgin.

* * *

The 8th-grade girls didn’t like the

way the teacher would fondle their hair

and then let his hand skim across their

bodies. But because this had been going

on for awhile, they were afraid to tell

their parents. And they didn’t know who

to tell at school.

T hese are just a few of the types of sexual harassment problems in our schools. Despite the head- lines and well-publicized court cases,

most administrators have focused little

attention on the problem. But teachers

don’t have to wait for a directive that

may be years in coming; we can take

action right now in our classrooms.

Sexual harassment isn’t the only

problem kids face in school and for

many, it’s not the worst problem. But

it’s an area where a lot of confusion

exists—confusion that’s been culti-

vated by many people in authority who

have trivialized the issue, criticized

those who have raised it, and distorted

proposed solutions.

For high school students, the situ-

ation is further complicated by ado-

lescence. If being preoccupied with

sex makes someone a harasser, most

teenagers would have to plead guilty.

Where’s the line between appropri-

ate and inappropriate behavior—and

who’s drawing it?

Last year, when Larry Miller did a

seven-day unit on sexual harassment,

students afterward remarked that it was

one of the highlights of the school year.

He found that developing a unit on sex-

ual harassment has several advantages:

n The students love it. Students

repeatedly said throughout the year,

“Why can’t class always be as interest-

ing?” Sexual harassment is also a subject

on which students are eager to talk and

have a great deal to say. What adoles-

cent hasn’t spent an inordinate amount

of time contemplating the complexities

of intimate relations?

n The students need it. Most stu-

dents don’t understand the issue of

sexual harassment and have lots of

misconceptions. They need guidance

and support to help figure out what is

and isn’t appropriate behavior.

n The students benefit from it. The

benefits occur on a number of different

levels. First, a sexual harassment unit

empowers those individual girls and

boys who may have been harassed. (For

boys, it’s almost always for being gay or

not “manly” enough.) Such students

urgently need validation that harass-

ment is wrong, that they’re not crazy,

and that they’re not at fault. They need

to hear that someone in authority cares

about the problem and isn’t blaming

them or dismissing their pain.

Second, it makes clear that harass-

ment is unacceptable behavior—thus

helping to create a classroom culture

in which students will have a stronger

understanding that their rights will be

respected and defended, regardless of

whether they have ever been harassed.

While it is essential to go beyond deal-

ing with harassment on a classroom-

by-classroom basis, individual discus-

sions of the issue are often an essential

first step (see article p. 121).

Third, it helps clear up confusion

among boys who think they’ll be in

trouble for flirting or consensual jok-

ing. Larry found that while many boys

initially felt hostile and suspicious dur-

ing the unit (they feared the unit would

demonize all boys and portray all girls

as innocent victims), such attitudes

changed when they found the focus

was on inappropriate behavior and not

on boys in general.

Fourth, it helps raise broader rela-

tionship and gender issues that the stu-

dents need to talk about. One incident

underscored this point to Larry. After

the unit, a 16-year-old male student

came up to him one day and asked to

talk privately. It turned out the student

had a common but simple biological

question about sex—but had no adult

male he felt comfortable talking to.

Teaching ideas 119

a good Curriculum A good curriculum makes clear that

while most harassers are male, most

males are not harassers. It also encour-

ages students to intervene when

harassment occurs, to speak out not as

champions of the “poor victims” but as

people offended by such behavior.

At its minimum, the curricu-

lum should have three goals. First, it

must help the majority of students to

understand why harassment is wrong.

Second, it must help the harassers to

stop their behavior. Third, in what is

a more complex issue, it must address

larger issues of gender stereotypes and

power. Students need to understand

that sexual harassment is part of a con-

tinuum of sexual misconduct that has

to do with domination rather than sex.

This takes the issue out of the battle-

of-the-sexes mode and helps students

better understand patterns of sexual

discrimination.

It is also essential to deal with the

perspective that those who challenge

sexual harassment are merely whin-

ing “victims” rather than people with

a legitimate anger. Some critics argue

that sexual harassment awareness train-

ing contributes to a nation of “victims.”

Like any unit dealing with situations of

oppression, the curriculum’s purpose

is not to create a sense of hopelessness

but of understanding and power—the

knowledge that each of us is important

and deserves to be treated with dignity.

We don’t prevent or stop harassment

by ignoring it any more than we do by

condoning it. In fact, ignoring sexual

harassment sends a powerful message

that no one cares. This “hidden cur-

riculum” can leave girls with a sense of

powerlessness and, in essence, teaches

girls to accept sexual inequality.

teaching techniques Obviously, good teaching is central to

the unit’s success. Teachers can use a

variety of techniques, from videos to

role plays, small-group discussions,

and student essays. It is useful to begin

with a “safe” lesson idea that encour-

ages students to share their feelings,

such as an anonymous survey asking

students both their definition of sexual

harassment and whether they have ever

been harassed.

It’s a good idea to include at least

one lesson plan that helps students dis-

tinguish between flirting and harass-

ment. (See sample plan, p. 121). In

helping students distinguish between

the two, Larry found that two ques-

tions were essential: Was the behavior

unwelcome? Did the behavior make

the recipient feel uncomfortable? If

the answer is “yes” to the questions, the

line is usually crossed between flirting

and harassment.

Role plays and scenarios are a par-

ticularly useful technique. In his unit,

Larry took a male and a female student

that he knew were mature enough to

act out what was, from their own expe-

riences, the difference between flirta-

tion and harassment. For example,

the young man would look the girl up

and down, make comments such as,

“Hey, you want some of this,” or grab

the need for Districtwide Changes classroom lessons are the core of any sexual harassment policy. But classroom activities are not enough. To effectively combat sexual harassment, there must be schoolwide and districtwide changes. All school and district staff should receive the training necessary to help create a school and district climate where sexual harassment is dealt with quickly and forcefully. Some of the essential components to help create such a climate include: n Commitment from the top. A clear acknowledgment that sexual harassment is a problem and won’t be tolerated. n Policy. Procedures need to be clear and familiar. Information should be distributed to each student in a way that will get their attention. n Definition. The policy should describe, concisely and with specific examples, what sexual harassment is and what kinds of behavior are prohibited. n Complaint procedures. Students and school personnel should be given several channels for reporting a complaint and a timetable for its handling. The policy should make clear that due process will be observed.

n Discipline. The policy should specify what the consequences are for engaging in prohibited behavior. n Protection. Those reporting harassment need assurances that there will be no retaliation. n Confidentiality. Every step should be taken to preserve confidentiality for those involved. The procedures should include a telephone number students can call if they want to discuss the situation anonymously with a trained professional. n Investigations. Impartial and well-trained investigators should be provided to pursue any formal complaints. n Education. All students, teachers, and staff should receive training. n Healing. Those who have been harassed may need access to trained professionals or a support group to help them heal. n Assessment. Schools should monitor their progress and step up education and intervention if necessary.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn120

most students were unaware of before

the unit, he wrote, “Sometimes you can

handle sexual harassment by ignor-

ing it or asking the person to stop it,

especially when it is name-calling,

rumors, light touching, or gestures. If

it continues you need to go to someone

in authority, either a teacher, parent,

boss, or head of the department. If it

still continues you need to keep taking

action and not let them get away with

it. Don’t be afraid to talk to other stu-

dents or co-workers about it. Perhaps it

is happening to them too and you could

build a better case against that person.

Sexual harassment should be an impor-

tant issue in all communities. Looking

the other way and doing nothing about

it is saying that sexual harassment is

OK.” n

Ellen Bravo is former director of 9to5,

National Association of Working Women.

She teaches women’s studies at the

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,

including a graduate-level course on sexual

harassment. Her most recent publication is

Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism

Is Good for Families, Businesses and the

Nation (Feminist Press, 2007).

Larry Miller taught high school in

Milwaukee Public Schools for 15 years. He

is administrator of W.E.B. DuBois High

School, a small public school focusing on

communications technology, and is an

editor of Rethinking Schools magazine.

factor in determining what’s right and

wrong.

In doing such scenarios, it is impor-

tant that at least one deal with the most

evident form of harassment: the use

of abusive words such as “bitch” and

“whore.” In the discussion following

such a scenario in Larry’s class, one

female student reflected a common

view that, “If a girl is not a ‘whore’ then

she should be tough enough not to be

offended by these words.”

Her view sparked a lively debate.

A number of both young men and

women shot back with comments such

as, “We shouldn’t have to put up with

that kind of nonsense.”

The power of the unit was most

clear in the summary essays written by

Larry’s students. Many of the students

came to clearly understand not only the

difference between flirting and harass-

ment, but the issue’s importance.

Reflecting on flirting and harass-

ment, Jamela wrote in her summary

essay: “Flirting and sexual harassment

are two different things. Flirting is

when two people are joking and kid-

ding around and none of them mind.

But sexual harassment is when two

people might be joking around and

kidding around and one goes too far.

Another form may be when two people

are talking or playing and one of them

touches the other in a way they don’t

like, or grabs the other in a way they

don’t like.”

Jason, meanwhile, focused on the

many responses to sexual harassment.

Articulating a range of responses that

himself in his private parts. The girl

would respond, “Go away, boy, I don’t

need that crap.” It was clear from the

class’s response to the role plays that

the students, whether or not they could

articulate it, often knew the difference

between flirting and harassment.

Scenarios, in which the teacher

describes a situation and asks for stu-

dents’ responses, are a useful way to

open up discussion. Larry developed the

following activities and also used some

from the resources listed on this page.

In one scenario, boys “rate” girls

as they walk past them in the hallway

(“She’s a 10”; “She’s so ugly she’d be

pretty if she were a dog”). During a

discussion of such “ratings,” some boys

argued that rating girls can be a com-

pliment. “It’s just ugly girls who are

offended,” one said.

Some girls had a different view. “I

don’t care what I’m rated; it makes me

uncomfortable,” Betty replied. “I don’t

like it.” Other girls backed her up and

made the point that such ratings are

degrading and make a woman feel less

than a human being. Larry found that

such conversations were much-needed.

Whether or not every student took

Betty’s comments to heart, her point

was made.

Another scenario focused on how

boys “eye” girls. James, for instance,

argued that he can look at anything he

wants. “These are my eyes,” he insisted.

But another student responded, “If I

feel disrespected, then you’re out of

order”—picking up on a common stu-

dent concern with “respect” as a key

It was clear from the role plays that the students, whether or not they could articulate it, often knew the difference

between flirting and harassment.

Teaching ideas 121

Objectives

To raise student awareness about the

kinds of sexual harassment which take

place all the time; to discern the fluid,

subjective line between flirting and sex-

ual harassment; to encourage open stu-

dent discussion of a complicated topic.

Preparation

n Prepare three lists with headings

and subheadings either on the black-

board or on big sheets of newsprint

(these sheets may provide great refer-

ence points in later lessons). The titles

of the first three lists should read “Ver-

bal or Written,” “Gestures,” and “Physi-

cal.” Under each heading write the two

subheadings “Flirting” and “Harass-

ment.” During the discussion, antici-

pate creating a third subheading on

each of the three lists titled “Depends.”

At this point, the three lists should be

titled like this:

Verbal or Written Flirting Harassment

Gestures Flirting Harassment

Physical

Flirting Harassment

n Decide beforehand if you will

allow students to use profanity or if they

should speak in euphemisms. Another

alternative is for students to write their

answers on paper and hand these lists

to you to decide what to record on the

main lists.

ment. Before we begin, I want to state

from the outset that we’re not here to

demonize or blame boys. Many of us

may never be either targets of harass-

ment or perpetrators. But all of us

are witnesses and bystanders who see

harassment happening, and we need

to learn to say, “Hey, cut it out, that’s

not funny!” or “What would you do

if this were your sister, your mom, or

your brother?” So, we’re not just trying

to change boys and men. We’re trying

to change all of us—so we’ll have the

courage to actively respond when we

see sexual harassment go on.

“You are the best anthropologists of

your own culture—and ‘subcultures’

(cliques, who you ‘hang’ with). All the

time you are observing other kids’

n If possible, ask students to arrange

their chairs in a circle.

n Decide upon ground rules; e.g.,

1. Everyone must listen when some-

one is speaking.

2. Don’t get personal by mention-

ing anyone’s name when telling about

a specific incident.

3. Ask students to determine other

rules, such as “What’s said here, stays

here.”

n Encourage younger students, in

particular, to be in their most “mature”

behavior mode.

Introduction

“This activity is pretty simple and fun.

We’re going to talk about the difference

between flirting and sexual harass-

Flirting vs. sexual harassment teaching the difference

by nan stein and lisa sjostrom

S u

S a

n Lin

a R u

g g

Le S

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn122

n Do girls sexually harass other

girls?

n Who harasses boys?

Troubleshooting

Discussion often gets heated and stu-

dents can raise many challenging ques-

tions. Here are some typical questions

and scenarios, along with suggested

responses.

1. Boys raise the argument that girls

are asking to be harassed by the way

they dress.

“All of our opinions about tempta-

tion are shaped by the times we live in.

Did you know that in Puritanical New

England in the 1600s if a woman wore

a dress and her ankles or wrists showed,

men would walk on the other side of

the street and turn their eyes away in

horror? They believed the Devil was

tempting them.”

“Sometimes we—both males and

females—do dress to look and feel

good about ourselves. Yes, we may

want attention, but that doesn’t mean

we want to be harassed. ”

2. Students ask: “But how do we know

which is which? We won’t be able to say

anything to one another!”

“We’re figuring this out all the

time—silently. You don’t ever go up

to someone and say, “Hi, can we flirt

now?” This is why we need to keep talk-

ing and openly discussing our inten-

tions, feelings, and interpretations of

each other’s words and behaviors.”

3. Students ask about other hassles

which don’t fall under the category of

sexual harassment.

n Crank calls: “Against the law. It

is a crime under both state and fed-

eral laws for anyone to make obscene

or harassing phone calls. Look in the

front section of the telephone book—

it’s spelled out there, and tells you to

call the phone company if these calls

persist.”

n Knocking books out of someone’s

friend or a stranger, or upon his or her

tone of voice. Write these dependent

variables right on the three lists.

n If one behavior falls under both

“Flirting” and “Harassment,” note this

by drawing an arrow from one column

to the other like this:

Verbal or Written

Flirting Harassment

You look nice ➼ nice ass Like your hair ’ho

Depends on:

tone of voice how they look at you

Gestures

Flirting Harassment

blowing kiss ➼ grabbing crotch waving lip licking

Depends on:

friend or stranger how old they are

who else is around

Physical

Flirting Harassment

hugs ➼ pinching holding hands grabbing

Depends on:

friend or stranger where you are

Questions to Raise Afterward

After students have completed the

activity, the following discussion ques-

tions can help them make sense of the

lists.

n Why do people define sexual

harassment differently?

n If sexual harassment is illegal,

how come it goes on?

n Who allows sexual harassment to

go on?

n What are some common forms of

sexual harassment that often go unno-

ticed in schools?

behavior in school, and seeing how

behaviors differ depending on where

you are and whether there are adults

around or not—in classrooms, locker

rooms, the cafeteria, the parking lot, the

hallways. In this discussion, I want you

to draw upon what you already know

and see. You are the experts and sophis-

ticated ‘critiquers’ of your subcultures.

“In this exercise, we’re going to talk

about how you all interact with each

other and what you observe, how you

make sense between what is sexual

harassment and what is flirting (‘hang-

ing out,’ ‘getting to know someone’).

“First we’ll focus on verbal and

written exchanges, such as comments

and notes. Then we’ll focus on gestures

like winking, waving, and other ways

you communicate without speaking or

touching. Lastly we’ll consider physical

interactions. For each category, we’ll

talk about examples of flirting and then

instances that cross the line into sexual

harassment. I don’t expect everyone to

agree. What’s most important is that we

start talking. ... Can anyone give me an

example of a comment or a note that’s

flirting and nice?”

Activity

n To avoid confusion, walk students

through the lists one at a time.

n Write down student answers

under the appropriate subheading.

n Encourage students to stay with

specifics they know from a school set-

ting and not stray to hypothetical or

out-of-school situations.

n If one column isn’t being ad-

dressed, ask students specific ques-

tions; e.g., “Can you give me examples

of physical ways people flirt?”

n When students disagree upon the

nature of a particular behavior or com-

ment, ask them what they are basing

their criteria upon and enter this under

the heading “Depends.” For example,

perhaps the nature of a comment

depends upon whether the speaker is a

Teaching ideas 123

Bullyproof: A Teacher’s Guide on Teasing and Bullying for Use with Fourth & Fifth Grade Students. Stein, nan and Lisa Sjostrom. Wellesley college center for Research on Women and national Education Association, 1996. www.wcwonline.org > Our Publications. http://store.nea. org/nEABookstore/control/main.

Classrooms and Courtrooms: Facing Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools. Stein, nan. Teachers college Press, 1999. www.teacherscollegepress.com.

Flirting or Hurting? A Teacher’s Guide on Student-

to-Student Sexual Harassment in Schools (Grades 6–12). Stein, nan and Lisa Sjostrom. national Education Association, 1994. http://store.nea.org/ nEABookstore/control/main.

Gender Violence/Gender Justice: An Interdisciplinary Teaching Guide for Teachers of English, Literature, Social Studies, Psychology, Health, Peer Counseling, and Family and Consumer Sciences (Grades 7–12). Stein, nan and Dominic cappello, with Linda Tubach and Jackson katz. Wellesley centers for Women, 1999. www.wcwonline.org > Our Publications.

Hostile Hallways: Bullying, Teasing, and Sexual Harassment in School. American Association of university Women, 2001. www.aauw.org/research/all.cfm

The 9to5 Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment: Candid Advice from 9to5. Bravo, Ellen and Ellen cassedy. 9to5 national Association of Working Women, 1999. www.9to5.org.

Stop Student Sexual Harassment Now! national Education Association, 1997. www.nea.org/tools/ classroommanagement.html.

sexual harassment Resources

hands: “Someone’s provoking you,

but it isn’t sexual in nature, so it isn’t

covered by federal law. Of course, the

school may have its own rules about

student behavior, like rules against

cheating and fighting. And remember,

something doesn’t have to be illegal for

you to say ‘This is making me uncom-

fortable!’ or ‘You’re acting like a jerk!’”

n Being harassed by a family mem-

ber at home: “Federal laws on sex dis-

crimination and sexual harassment

only apply to two places: one law covers

school and school-sponsored events,

and a second law covers the workplace.

Of course, sexual assault at home or in

the streets is just as serious. So speak

up, say ‘no,’ tell someone you trust and

keep telling until you find someone

who believes you and will help you.”

4. “Can a harasser get sued?”

“Yes and no. Under federal law Title

IX, you bring a complaint against the

school district and ask for monetary

damages. Why? Because it’s the school

district’s responsibility to enforce the

rules and explain what’s legal and illegal

in school. Under law, the school district

has to provide you with an environ-

ment that is safe and equal for learning

for both girls and boys. So, the school

district is responsible for maintaining

a school climate and environment that

is conducive to learning and one which

allows everyone to participate without

fear of sexual harassment. Though an

individual cannot get sued under Title

IX, if the person has done something

that is also criminal (like assault), then

the district attorney may choose to sue

the individual in criminal court.”

5. A student relates an incident of teen

dating violence that occurred away

from the school.

“Violence is a separate category

from sexual harassment. Violence in

teen relationships or domestic violence

is a form of assault and is covered by

criminal law. For that, you need to

make a complaint through the police

and the district attorney.”n

Nan Stein works with the Center for

Research on Women at Wellesley College,

in Wellesley, Mass. Lisa Sjostrom is

director of Helping Kids Thrive, www.

helpingkidsthrive.org.

This article is adapted from Flirting or

Hurting? A Teacher’s Guide on Student-

to-Student Sexual Harassment in Schools

(Grades 6 through 12), published by the

National Education Association (see

below).

http://www.wcwonline.org

http://www.teacherscollegepress.com

http://store.nea.org/NEABookstore/control/main

http://www.wcwonline.org

http://www.aauw.org/research/all.cfm

http://www.9to5.org

http://www.nea.org/tools/ClassroomManagement.html

http://www.helpingkidsthrive.org

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn124

when Lawson Inada, a Japanese-American poet and professor of literature at Southern Ore- gon College, came to my class, we were

in the middle of a unit on the history of

education. One of the poems he pulled

from his book Legends from Camp was

about a classroom experience. When

Lawson read “Rayford’s Song” (see next

page), I realized it was an opportunity

for students to remember and explore

their own history as students.

In “Rayford’s Song,” Inada remem-

bers one of his classrooms in the 1930s

in Fresno, a town in California’s San

Joaquin Valley where many people of

African, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and

Mexican descent worked in the fields

and canneries. “Our classroom was

filled with shades of brown,” he recalls.

Our names were Rayford Butler,

Consuela and Pedro Gonzales, Susie

Chin, and Sam Shimabukuro. We

were a mixture. The only white person

in the room was our teacher. Our

textbooks had pictures and stories

about white kids named Dick and Jane

and their dog, Spot. And the songs

in our songbooks were about Old

Susanah coming ‘round the mountain

and English gardens—songs we

never heard in our neighborhood.

Some of the songs mentioned in the

poem may not be familiar to today’s

students (“Old Black Joe” is a Stephen

Foster song written in 1860 that evokes

nostalgic memories of the days of slav-

ery). Nonetheless, the poem stirs up

strong emotion in students because it

speaks to the process that sometimes

happens in schools of dampening our

hopes and expectations. Many of us

ing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as

background to the poem—or play a

recording.

Reflections on the Poem

n Ask students to write for five or

10 minutes about the poem; they might

want to describe how the poem made

them feel, their reactions to the poem,

or memories that the poem prompted.

There are no wrong answers.

n After students have written, begin

the discussion. Some students might

want to read their responses while oth-

ers might want to use it as a springboard

for their contribution to the class talk.

Student Writing

n Inada speaks of schools silenc-

ing students, but he also speaks more

broadly about whose lives are included

in the curriculum and whose are

excluded. Ask students to write about

a time when their voices were silenced

or they felt their history or stories were

silenced or left out of the classroom.

They might want to write this as a story

or a poem.

Read-Around/Collective Text

n Before students read their papers

out loud, ask them to take notes on their

classmates’ papers. They might note

how people felt about being silenced,

who was silenced, who silenced them,

and how they responded. After all the

students have read who want to read,

ask them to review their notes, think

about the stories/poems, and write

a paragraph or two on the ideas that

emerged from the stories. They might

want to mention specific people’s sto-

ries. See p. 213 for more information

on using read-arounds. n

have experienced the loss of our voices,

our songs, our stories. We’ve been told

that we are not important, our people

are not important, our gender is not

important. Inada’s poem dares to speak

about that silencing.

Following are some ways a teacher

might use the poem in class.

Group Poem

n Ask students to reread the poem

and underline the words, lines, or phrases

that strike them for some reason—per-

haps because these seem important to

the poem, maybe because they like the

sound or because they can relate the line

to something in their lives. (e.g., “Where

did our voices go? … I must correct you.

… One song. … One voice.”)

n Tell students that they are going

to create an oral group poem with

the words, phrases, or lines they’ve

selected. Each student can say his or

her addition to the oral poem when

there is a pause. They might want to

use some of the devices of poetry and

song—repeating a line or word, echo-

ing. Sometimes students like to experi-

ment with the call and response more

typical in sermons. Encourage students

to call out lines or words to form the

new poem, in what might be described

as the literary equivalent of an impro-

visational musical composition. To

give students the idea, have eight or 10

students come in front of the room and

experiment as an example.

Sometimes it takes a few times to

get this going. Have patience. It’s worth

it. As students rewrite and reread the

poem or any written text, they come to

new understandings about the piece.

Sometimes I have students begin sing-

Celebrating the student’s Voice by linda Christensen

Teaching ideas 125

Rayford’s song

by lawson inada

Rayford’s song was Rayford’s song, but it was not his alone, to own.

He had it, though, and kept it to himself as we rowed-rowed-rowed the boat through English country gardens with all the whispering hope we could muster, along with occasional choruses of funiculi-funicula!

Weren’t we a cheery lot — comin’ ‘round the mountain with Susanna, banjos on our knees, rompin’ through the leaves of the third-grade music textbook.

Then Rayford Butler raised his hand. For the first time, actually, in all the weeks he had been in class, and for the only time before he’d leave. Yes, quiet Rayford, silent Rayford, little Rayford, dark Rayford — always in the same overalls — that Rayford, Rayford Butler, raised his hand:

“Miss Gordon, ma’am — we always singing your songs. Could I sing one of my own?”

Pause. We looked at one another; we looked at Rayford Butler; we looked up at Miss Gordon, who said:

“Well, I suppose so, Rayford — if you insist. Go ahead. Just one song. Make it short.”

And Rayford Butler stood up very straight, and in his high voice, sang:

“Suh-whing a-looow suh-wheeeet ah charr-ee-oohh, ah-comin’ for to carr-ee meee ah-hooooome …”

Pause. Classroom, school, schoolyard, neighborhood, the whole world focusing on that one song, one voice which had a light to it, making even Miss Gordon’s white hair shine in the glory of it, glowing in the radiance of the song.

Pause. Rayford Butler sat down. And while the rest of us may have been spellbound, on Miss Gordon’s face was something like a smile, or perhaps a frown:

“Very good, Rayford. However, I must correct you: the word is ‘chariot.’ ‘Chariot.’ And there is no such thing as a ‘chario.’ Do you understand me?”

“But Miss Gordon …”

“I said ‘chariot, chariot.’ Can you pronounce that for me?”

“Yes, Miss Gordon. Chariot.”

“Very good, Rayford, Now, class, before we return to our book, would anyone else care to sing a song of their own?”

Our songs, our songs were there— on tips of tongues, but stuck in throats—songs of love, fun, animals, and valor, songs of other lands, in other languages, but they just wouldn’t come out. Where did our voices go?

Rayford’s song was Rayford’s song, but it was not his alone to own.

“Well, then, class— let’s turn our books to ‘Old Black Joe.’”

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn126

suggestions included writing from the

points of view of an American pilot

who has become critical of his role

in the war, a North Vietnamese man

whose entire family has been killed in a

bombing raid, and a Native American

Marine who was called “blanket ass”

and “squaw” by commanding officers.

The monologue technique gives

structure to the assignment, but the

freedom to write from anyone’s point

of view allows students to mold the

piece to the contours of their lives and

interests.

Jetta chose the point of view of a

Vietnamese prostitute, and wrote in

part:

I sell my body because it’s the only

way to stay alive. They say my

people are disgraceful, but they have

disgraced us. … We are forced to

One of the most important aims of teaching is to prompt stu-dents to empathize with other human beings. This is no easy accom-

plishment in a society that pits people

against each other, offers vastly greater

or lesser amounts of privileges based

on accidents of birth, and rewards

exploitation with wealth and power.

Empathy, or “social imagination,” as

Peter Johnson calls it in The Reading

Teacher, allows students to connect to

“the other” with whom, on the surface,

they may appear to have little in com-

mon. A social imagination encourages

students to construct a more profound

“we” than daily life ordinarily permits.

A social imagination prompts students

to wonder about the social contexts

that provoke hurtful behaviors, rather

than simply to dismiss individuals as

inherently “evil” or “greedy.”

One teaching method we use to pro-

mote empathy, and return to unit after

unit, is the interior monologue. An

interior monologue is simply the imag-

ined thoughts of a character in history,

literature, or life at a specific point in

time. After watching a film, reading

a novel, short story, or essay, or per-

forming improvisation skits, the class

brainstorms particular key moments,

turning points, or critical passages

characters confronted. During a unit

on the Vietnam War, we watch the doc-

umentary Hearts and Minds. The film

weaves interviews with U.S. soldiers

and Vietnamese with newsreel footage

of the war and unexpected scenes of

daily life in the United States. Student

Promoting social imagination through interior monologues by bill bigelow and linda Christensen

sell our bodies. … but who forces

them to pay, to strip the dignity

from someone’s daughter? Do they

not have daughters at home? Do

they not have mothers? Where did

they learn this? What kind of place

teaches this?

In our classroom circle, students

read their pieces aloud and give posi-

tive comments on each other’s work.

Listening to the collection of writings

offers students an intimate portrait of

the social consequences of the war. We

feel, rather than observe from a dis-

tance. These portraits provide us a way

to talk about the film without writing

out typical discussion questions. The

different lives that students imagine

and their different interpretations give

us opportunities to explore the film or

reading more thoroughly.

B A

R B

A R

A m In

E R

Teaching ideas 127

Interior monologues tap other peo-

ple’s pain, but they also tap people’s

hope. After watching The Killing Floor,

about World War I black migration to

Chicago and union organizing in the

stockyards, Debbie wrote an interior

monologue from the point of view of

Frank, a black worker recently arrived

from the South:

I sit and listen to the unfamiliar air

of music drifting in through my

window. Crickets had made music

in the South, but never in a tune

like this one. I want Mattie to hear

this new music. The sound of white

men’s feet on the dirt avoiding our

black bodies on the sidewalk. Oh, to

share the sounds of coins clinking

together as I walk.

As students read their pieces aloud

in the circle, we ask them to take notes

on the “collective text” they create,

to write about the common themes

that emerge, or questions they’re left

with. Or we might pose a particular

question for them to think about. For

example, recently we finished watch-

ing the film, Glory, about a regiment of

African-American soldiers who fought

in the Civil War. We wrote a diction-

ary definition of the word “glory” on

the board and asked students as they

listened to each other’s interior mono-

logues to notice: “Where is the ‘glory’

in the film Glory?” Students’ own writ-

ings and observations became different

points of entry to explore the interest-

ing contradictions in the film and the

events it depicts. For example, Eugene

wrote: “In our class reading it was com-

mented that there was mostly pain and

not much glory. I think that their pain

was their glory, the fact that they were

willing to be martyrs. They were fight-

ing for a freedom that they knew they

would never have, because most of

them would die in the war.”

Empathy and sympathy are quite

different. When Ghantel writes her

As is true anytime we wonder about

other people’s lives, our monologues

are only guesses, at times marred by

stereotype. But the very act of consider-

ing, “How might this person experience

this situation?” develops an important

“habit of the mind” and draws us closer

together. We write the monologues

along with our students and can testify

at the startling insights and compas-

sion that can arise. Usually, we—stu-

dents and teachers—tap into our own

well of pain, pride, sorrow, confusion,

and joy. Although we may never have

experienced war, we know the pain of

losing a family member or friend; we

have experienced the difficulty of mak-

ing a tough decision. Likewise, we have

felt joy. From these shared emotions

we can construct a piece that allows us

to attempt a momentary entrance into

another person’s life.

In our Literature and U.S. History

class, we read “A Jury of Her Peers”

by Susan Glaspell, a 1917 story about

rural women’s lives. In the story, Min-

nie Wright, who lives on an isolated

farm, strangles her husband in desper-

ate retaliation for his strangling her

bird, the creature that brought her the

only piece of joy in an otherwise bleak

life. We suggested students might

begin their monologue or poem with

“Write that I …” Maryanne assumes

the persona of Minnie Wright and tries

to imagine what in her life would lead

her to commit such a horrid crime:

Write that I was young,

tender like the gardenia blossom …

I know that you think

I killed my husband,

my keeper, protector.

I stayed in that house, broken

chairs beneath me, husband on top

pushing his fury through me …

Please don’t forget the bird.

You must tell them about its voice.

It was strangled.

We were strangled.

Color Purple interior monologue from

the point of view of Mr.________,

Celie’s uncaring husband, she shows

empathy; she tries to imagine how he

looks at the world and wonders what

experiences made him who he is. But

she’s not sympathetic; she doesn’t

approve of his behavior. In fact, she

detests him. Interior monologues, by

encouraging students to empathize

with other people, no matter how

despicable, invite kids to probe for the

social causes of human behavior. Peo-

ple are not inherently sexist or racist;

and while interior monologues are not

analytical panaceas, they can be useful

tools in nurturing insight about why

people think and act as they do.

In our experience, success with inte-

rior monologues depends on:

n Drawing on media or writing that

is emotionally powerful.

n Brainstorming character and situ-

ation choices so most students can find

an entry into the assignment.

n Allowing students the freedom

to find their own passion—they might

want to complete the assignment as a

poem, a dialogue poem, from the point

of view of an animal or an object (Min-

nie Wright’s dead bird, for instance).

n Giving students the opportunity

to read their pieces to the entire class.

n Using the collective text of stu-

dents’ writing to launch a discussion of

the bigger picture.

Writing interior monologues won’t

necessarily have students hugging each

other as they sing “We Shall Overcome,”

but they are a worthwhile piece in our

attempt to construct a critical, multi-

cultural curriculum. We want kids to

think deeply about other people—why

they do what they do, why they think

what they think. We want students to

care about each other and the world.

Interior monologues are a good place

to start. n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn128

i am a woman. I am a woman.

i am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.

I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.

i am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight.

I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger.

i am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children.

I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk.

i am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with summers abroad.

I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food.

but then there was a man; But then there was a man;

and he talked about the peasants get- ting richer by my family getting poorer.

And he told me of days that would be better, and he made the days better.

This poem was written by a working-class Chilean woman in 1973, shortly after Chile’s socialist president, Salva- dor Allende, was overthrown. A U.S. missionary translated the work and brought it with her when she was forced to leave Chile. This is to be read by two people, one reading the bold-faced type and one reading the regular type.

two women

we had to eat rice. we had rice.

we had to eat beans! we had beans.

my children were no longer given summer visas to europe.

My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.

and i felt like a peasant. And I felt like a woman.

a peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting life. Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.

and i saw a man. And I saw a man.

and together we began to plot with the hope of the return to freedom.

I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.

someday, the return to freedom. Someday freedom.

and then, But then,

One day, One day,

Teaching ideas 129

The period of rice and beans for the poor woman in the poem occurs after the election of the socialist Salvador Allende as president of Chile. Allende was elected in 1970. He was overthrown in a military coup in September 1973 after a long period of destabilization launched by the wealthy classes and supported by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations such as International Telephone and Telegraph. Along with thousands of others, Allende was killed by the military. The coup, under the leadership of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, launched a period of severe hardship for the working and peasant classes. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

there were planes overhead and guns firing close by.

There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.

i gathered my children and went home. I gathered my children and ran.

and the guns moved farther and farther away.

But the guns moved closer and closer.

and then, they announced that freedom had been restored!

And then they came, young boys really.

they came into my home along with my man.

They came and found my man.

those men whose money was almost gone.

They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.

and we all had drinks to celebrate. And they shot them all.

the most wonderful martinis. They shot my man.

and then they asked us to dance. And they came for me.

me. For me, the woman.

and my sisters. For my sisters.

and then they took us. Then they took us,

they took us to dinner at a small, private club.

They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.

and they treated us to beef. And then they raped us.

it was one course after another. One after another they came after us.

we nearly burst we were so full. Lunging, plunging—sisters bleeding, sisters dying.

it was magnificent to be free again! It was hardly a relief to have survived.

the beans have almost disappeared now. The beans have disappeared.

the rice—i’ve replaced it with chicken or steak.

The rice, I cannot find it.

and the parties continue night after night to make up for all the time wasted.

And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries of my children.

and i feel like a woman again. They say, I am a woman.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn130

Role Plays: show, Don’t tell by bill bigelow

My lecture had put kids to sleep. As I looked out over the classroom, students’ faces had that droopy, how-many-minutes-

’til-the-bell-rings look. “But how can

this be boring?” I silently protested.

“We’re talking about the Vietnam War.”

As students filed out of the classroom,

I shook my head and pledged to find a

way to ignite their interest. I was just a

first-year teacher, but I knew there had

to be a better approach.

Over the years, I’ve concluded that

lectures have their place—but only

when directly linked to activities that

draw students into the intimacy of

social dynamics. For me, the teaching

strategy that most consistently enlight-

ens and brings students to life is the

role play. There are all kinds of role

plays, but the best of these raise criti-

cal questions that require student ini-

tiative and creativity. At times students

may roam the classroom, building alli-

ances with other groups, or debating

whether the U.S. government should

recognize the independence of a united

Vietnam at the end of World War II, or

whether logging should be allowed in

old-growth forests. A good role play

invites students to enter the personas

of contemporary or historical social

groups to learn about issues in their

characters’ lives from the inside out.

I’m talking like the social studies

teacher that I am, but role plays are

valuable in just about every class—sci-

ence, math, English—and at just about

every grade level. Any time there is a

division of opinion on an important

issue, a role play can help students to

understand the source of conflict and

to imagine possible resolutions.

I start with a controversial contem-

porary or historical problem: Should

the Cherokee people be uprooted and

moved west of the Mississippi River?

Should the United States government

build the Dalles Dam on the Colum-

bia River? In a role play on the election

of 1860: Do you favor banning slavery

from the western territories? Should

there be a Palestinian state? Should

nuclear weapons be banned? Who is

to blame for the 1968 massacre at My

Lai? In a music class: Should rock ’n’

roll and rap be regulated by the gov-

ernment? In an English class, students

might represent different community

groups debating whether Standard

English should be spoken at all times

in school. In a science class, students

might examine the ecological com-

plexities of logging old-growth forests

by role-playing the interests of timber

companies, loggers, and environmental

activists, but also the salmon, owls, riv-

ers, and trees themselves. Each group

could propose answers to the question,

Should logging be restricted?

Developing a Role Play Stage one is conceiving substantive

questions like these. Stage two entails

c LE

O P

h O

TO g

R A

P h

Teaching ideas 131

selecting groups that will give voice to

a range of perspectives on a particular

issue. For example, a role play on land

reform in Central America divides stu-

dents into five groups: tenant farmers,

the management of an instant coffee

factory owned by a U.S. company, land-

less peasants, urban unemployed work-

ers, and coffee planters. In the role play,

each group has a somewhat different

perspective on whether there should be

land reform, how much land should be

involved, and who should receive it. As

in real life, strategic alliances between

various groups are possible, and in the

course of the role play students usu-

ally discover these and work together.

The vitality of a role play depends on

ensuring that actual social conflicts

come to life in the classroom.

In a mock U.S. Constitutional Con-

vention, I include roles for groups that

weren’t represented at the real con-

vention. So instead of only lawyers,

financiers, and plantation owners in

attendance, I also invite poor farmers,

workers, and enslaved African Ameri-

cans. Students debate questions from

each group’s standpoint: whether to

abolish slavery and/or the slave trade,

whether to allow debt relief to farmers

by permitting payment “in kind,” and

how political leaders should be cho-

suggestions for a successful Role Play 1. Introduce the role play and give students a sense of why the class is participating, and what the general guidelines will be. Break students into groups, roughly equal in size. It’s vital that the question(s) each group will address are clear and understood by all.

2. Allow students to connect with the roles they’ve been assigned. You might encourage students to read their roles aloud in their small groups. I usually ask students to answer questions in writing based on their role: “how do you make your living? Why do you put up with such rotten working conditions?” Or I might ask them to write interior monologues—their inner thoughts about hopes and fears. Students can read these to each other in the small groups. have each group make a placard so they can see who’s who. You might interview students in front of the class or even bait them devil’s-advocate fashion: “how do you really feel about that poor farmer in that group over there?” As mentioned earlier, be sure that students’ roles are not too prescriptive. I’ve seen many role plays that tell students exactly who they are and what they think. What’s left for the kids? Likewise, some role plays don’t give students enough information to participate thoughtfully: “You are a mexican farmer.” That’s not much to go on. Also, try not to mix up roles by having some economic and some moral, e.g., steel workers and liberals; steel workers may be liberals.

3. It’s the students’ show, but the teacher’s participation is vital. I circulate in the classroom making sure that students understand their roles. I help them think of groups they might want to ally with. I also instigate turmoil: “Do you know what those middle-class people are saying about you immigrants?” It makes for more lively exchanges.

4. Each role should include at least some information that other groups don’t have. This requires students to teach and persuade one another. So they need an opportunity to meet. After they have read and considered their roles and positions on issues, I tell students to choose half of their group to be “traveling negotiators.”

The travelers may only meet and “wheel and deal” with non- travelers, to ensure that the whole class is involved at any given time.

5. It’s important that students have an opportunity to present their points of view and hear from the other groups. I often structure these gatherings as “community meetings” assembled to discuss the burning issue under consideration. As with the small group negotiation sessions, I encourage students to use the information in their roles in their presentations to teach others. I usually play a role myself, sometimes as a partisan. For example, in a role play on whether “mother country” will grant independence to its Asian colony, “Laguna,” I play the colonial governor and chair the assembly. I know some teachers will disagree, but in my experience, it hasn’t been a great idea to have students actually run the meetings, as discussion is often heated and students will jump on each other for seeming to play favorites in whom they recognize. however, at times I’ll conduct a meeting with a simplified version of Roberts’ Rules of Order which offers students a good deal of say-so in the pacing of discussion. In some role plays, a major aim is to give students practice in making decisions without the presence of an authority figure. For example, a role play on the 1912 Lawrence, mass., textile strike, asks students in a large group format to confront strategic and tactical issues on their own: “With thousands of workers out on strike, how will we make decisions? Should our commissaries feed non-striking workers?” In this role play, students simulate the euphoria and frustration that accompanies grassroots democracy.

6. It’s essential to debrief. no activity stands on its own. Before we discuss, I usually ask people to step out of their roles by asking them to write for a few minutes. I might ask them to speculate on what actually happened in history. Sometimes I’ll ask them to critique their own positions to give them permission to distance themselves from the points of view they espoused in the role play debates.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn132

sen. This more representative assembly

allows students to experience some of

the underlying conflicts that were sup-

pressed in the actual Constitutional

Convention.

But a role play wouldn’t work, or at

least wouldn’t work as well, if I sim-

ply said to students, “You play a poor

farmer; you play a plantation owner.”

They’d have nothing to go on beyond

their own preconceptions, often ste-

reotypical, of farmers and plantation

owners. So I have to do some research

in order to provide students with

information on the circumstances in

different social groups’ lives—circum-

stances that would contribute to shap-

ing these groups’ attitudes on a given

issue. Students can do some of this

work, of course, but my experience is

that they need a base to work from.

This is especially true because many of

the groups I want to include in a role

play have been written out of tradi-

tional history books. For example, it’s

not that easy to find information in a

high school library on the problems of

farmers after the American Revolution,

or about the Unemployed Councils of

the 1930s.

That said, involving students in

researching different groups can some-

times make them more engaged in a

role play. Earlier this year, in a some-

what different kind of role play, I told

students that each of them would be

representing members of the Chero-

kee Nation and that the U.S. govern-

ment was proposing to move them off

their land and relocate them hundreds

of miles to the west. I provided a role

sheet with some historical background,

but before beginning the role play we

spent time in the library research-

ing the Cherokee in greater depth. In

class, I played President Andrew Jack-

son at a gathering with the Cherokees.

Although the meeting was imaginary,

I read actual excerpts from Jackson’s

1830 message to Congress on Indian

Removal (The Annals of America, Ency-

clopedia Britannica, Vol. 5, pp. 418-

421). After the speech, students pelted

me with questions and criticisms

based on their research. Following this

exchange, their assignment was to write

a critique of Jackson’s speech.

Role Plays and learning In this and other role plays, amidst the

deal-making, arguing, and oratory, stu-

dents absorb a tremendous amount of

information. But they absorb it in a way

that reveals underlying social conflict

and solidarity, so they can make sense

of that information. In large measure,

the process itself is the product. To

be effective, the results of a role play

needn’t repeat history. Some of our

best debriefing sessions concentrate on

discussing why students made differ-

ent choices than did the actual social

groups they portrayed. Role plays

allow students to see that history is not

inevitable, that had people understood

their interests more clearly, or had they

overcome prejudices that kept them

from making alliances, events might

have turned out very differently. I want

students to see themselves as social

actors, to realize that what they do in

the world matters—they are not sim-

ply objects to be thrown about by some

remote process called History. When

they succeed, role plays can help chip

away at students’ sense of predetermi-

nation, their sense of powerlessness.

In a different version of the Chero-

kee Removal role play, I include plan-

tation owners, Atlanta bankers, the

Andrew Jackson Administration, and

the Cherokee. In this, as in other role

plays, the intent is never to suggest

that all points of view are equally valid.

Andrew Jackson and Southern planta-

tion owners can’t propose stripping

the Cherokee and other Southeastern

Indian nations of their homelands

without resorting to racist arguments.

The role play allows students to see

that. It’s essential that key interests in

a particular issue be represented, not

necessarily so students can hear “all

points of view,” but so they can dis-

sect the relationship between people’s

social conditions and their ideas.

A final note: A role play aims at

nurturing students’ appreciation of

why people in history and the world

today think and behave as they do.

But I never want students to sympa-

thize with individuals who behaved in

hurtful or exploitative ways, that is, to

have some emotional identification or

agreement with these people. In my

experience, kids are able to make the

distinction. This is especially so when

in follow-up discussion we critique

positions espoused by various groups

in a role play, including their own.

In his book A People’s History of the

United States, Howard Zinn critiques

traditional nationalistic approaches to

history:

Nations are not communities and

never have been. The history of any

country, presented as the history of

a family, conceals fierce conflicts of

interest (sometimes exploding, most

often repressed) between conquerors

and conquered, masters and slaves,

capitalists and workers, dominators

and dominated in race and sex. And

in such a world of conflict, a world

of victims and executioners, it is the

job of thinking people, as Albert

Camus suggested, not to be on the

side of the executioners.

Role plays should bring that world

of conflict to life in the classroom and

allow students to explore the under-

lying premises of arguments and to

decide: What is just?n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Teaching ideas 133

what we don’t teach in school can be more important than what we do teach. When we fail to engage students in thinking criti-

cally about their own schooling, the

hidden message is: Don’t analyze the

institutions that shape your lives; don’t

ask who benefits, who suffers, and how

it got to be this way; just shut up and do

as you’re told.

Several years ago, Linda Christensen

and I began teaching a unit on the his-

tory and sociology of schooling. In the

unit, students wrote and shared stories

about their own school lives—both

good learning experiences as well as

times they encountered unfairness or

abuse. We invited students to probe the

hidden curricula in their own classes,

including ours, asking them to reflect

on what they were learning about

authority, bosses and democracy; soli-

darity and resistance, people’s capacity

to stand up for themselves and each

other; knowledge, what kind is valued

and where it comes from; and self-

respect. Our class traveled to a high

school in a wealthy Portland suburb to

compare the hidden curriculum there

with that at Jefferson, a school serving a

predominantly working-class, African-

American community.

Roots of modern schooling To explore some of the historical roots

of the modern high school I wrote a

role play that I hoped would allow stu-

dents to question aspects of schooling

they often take for granted, such as

Underlying the new reforms was a

consensus among leading educators

that social class stratification was here

to stay, and that high schools should

abandon a single academic curriculum

for all students. Charles Eliot of Har-

vard, for example, argued that classes

were “eternal,” with an elite “guiding

class” at the top and on the bottom, a

“thick fundamental layer engaged in

household work, agriculture, mining,

quarrying, and forest work.” Schools,

the educational establishment con-

cluded, must be “realistic” and train

tracking (“ability grouping”), standard-

ized testing, guidance counseling, stu-

dent government, the flag salute, bells,

required courses with patriotic themes,

and extracurricular activities like ath-

letics and the school newspaper. These

now commonplace components of

high school life were introduced in the

early years of the 20th century, a time of

growing union militancy and radical-

ism, and large-scale immigration from

southern and eastern Europe, accom-

panied by vastly increased high school

enrollment.

testing, tracking, and toeing the line a role play on the origins of the modern high school

by bill bigelow

E TTm

A n

n /c

O R

B IS

This role play places some students in the role of Hungarian immigants at the turn of the century. Here, immigrants eat their first Christmas dinner in the U.S.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn134

children for specific roles in the social

hierarchy. Intelligence testing would

allegedly ensure students’ accurate

placement in differentiated curricular

tracks. Simultaneously, as one school

board president complained, “Many

educators have failed to face the big

problem of teaching patriotism. … We

need to teach American children about

American heroes and American ideals.”

Instead of just lecturing about the

profound changes in schools occur-

ring in the early years of the century, I

wanted students to encounter them as

if they were members of different social

classes and ethnic groups, learning of

proposed reforms for the first time.

Through argument and negotiation,

students-as-different-social-groups

would need to decide whether they sup-

ported the then-new reforms in public

education.

In the activity, I portray a gung-ho

superintendent, newly arrived in “Cen-

tral City,” determined to modernize—

i.e., stratify and “Americanize”—the

curriculum. Each student portrays an

individual in one of five social groups:

corporate executives, members of

the Industrial Workers of the World

(IWW), middle-class people, Hungar-

ian immigrants, and black activists.

Everyone is posed a series of ques-

tions about their views on schooling

and is invited to advise the superin-

tendent at a community meeting. In

preparation, each group has a chance

to consult and build alliances with any

of the others. Through participating in

the role play I hoped students might see

firsthand that the school reforms were

not simply benign, value-free changes,

but were deeply political, benefiting

some people at the expense of others.

(See also the section “An Explicit Cri-

tique of Tracking” in “Getting Off the

Track: Stories from an Untracked Class-

room,” p. 68.)

Role Play instructions

Materials Needed

Enough for all students: copies of

“Superintendent’s Statement,” “School

Reform Meeting Questions,” and “Men-

tal Ability Test.” Enough role sheets so

that each student has a role (pp. 138–

140) .

Procedure (Also see “Suggestions for a

Successful Role Play,” p. 131.)

1. Write on the board: “Place: Central

City, U.S.A.; Time: Early 1920s.” Also

list the names of the five social groups.

(Note: “Central City” represents numer-

ous Midwestern and Eastern U.S. cities;

I set the role play in the early 1920s

because this is when standardized test-

ing took off, but the social and educa-

tional trends described in the role play

began earlier, in the beginning years of

the 20th century.)

2. Divide the class into five groups, of

roughly equal numbers. Distribute a

different role sheet to students in each

of the groups: i.e., all the members of

one group portray Hungarian immi-

grants, etc. Ask students to read these

carefully, and, in their role, to think

about the kind of schooling they want

for their children. Encourage them to

mark important sections. After they’ve

finished reading, you might ask them to

write a brief interior monologue—their

inner thoughts—on what kind of edu-

cation they hope for their children; or

they might write on their fears. After-

wards ask them to read these to others

in their group. The goal here is simply

to prompt students to internalize the

information in their role sheets, and to

encourage them to imagine these indi-

viduals as real people. Ask students to

make placards or name cards indicating

their social group.

3. Tell students that Central City has

hired a new superintendent who is

proposing a series of reforms in Cen-

tral City high schools. To each stu-

dent, hand out the “Superintendent’s

Statement” and the “School Reform

Meeting Questions.” As mentioned,

the teacher plays the superintendent.

Before my “speech,” I generally ask a

student to introduce me as Superin-

tendent Quincy P. Aldrich or another

similarly aristocratic sounding name. I

read the statement aloud, with a good

dose of pomp, stopping along the way

to emphasize a point and to make sure

students understand each proposed

reform. (Note that the four tracks—

feebleminded, dull, etc.—come from

a quote by Lewis Terman of Stanford,

who suggested that these categories of

students would never change. I tell stu-

dents that if they don’t like those desig-

nations, perhaps they’d prefer the tracks

suggested by Professor George Strayer

of Teachers College: bright, slow, back-

ward, and deficient. Clearly, I am hop-

ing to provoke students by using these

terms. For public consumption, the

educational elite preferred designations

such as college, general, commercial,

and vocational.) I assure the gathering

that all tracking will be based on scien-

tific evidence and I have a sample test to

prove it. Students always want to see the

test, so at this point I distribute “Mental

Ability Test,” (developed by Lewis Ter-

man, p. 136). “What does knowing the

color of emeralds have to do with your

intelligence?” an inquiring immigrant

or black activist might ask. I encourage

students’ critical questions, but don’t

respond to them all as I want to con-

serve their defiant energy for the com-

munity meeting.

After the superintendent’s proposal

on guidance counseling, I emphasize

that this is especially important consid-

ering the increased number of females

in school these days: “Why, suppose

a girl were to score high on a science

test. It would be senseless to place her

in a chemistry class. There are few if

any female chemists in the country. It

would be more sound to place her in

Teaching ideas 135

n Who do you think “won” in real

life?

n Which of the reforms do you think

were adopted in U.S. schools?

n If a majority of the groups

opposed the superintendent’s plan: If

most of you opposed the reforms, why

were they put into effect? What power

did the different social groups have?

What power didn’t they have?

n Which of the alliances you built

might not have happened in real life?

Why not?

n Which of the superintendent’s

proposals do you see in our school

today? (Note: When Linda Chris-

tensen and I did this role play with our

untracked Literature in U.S. History

class one year, we noticed that students

who had previously been in the top

track “scholars” program recognized

immediately that our school is tracked.

Other students, the majority, who had

not experienced life at the top were

unaware of how stratified our school is.

One girl said, “We’re mixed in here. The

immigrants must have won.”)

n Draw students’ attention to the

five purposes of schooling on the board:

Which of these do you personally find

most appealing? Why?

n Which of these seems closest to the

kind of schooling you’ve had? Which of

these do you think guides the way our

school is set up today?

n What did the “intelligence test”

measure? What didn’t it measure?

n If you haven’t already done so,

it might be valuable to have students

write about their personal experi-

ences with standardized testing and/or

tracking. n

Bill Bigelow ([email protected]) has taught

high school social studies in Portland, Ore.,

since 1978. He is an editor of Rethinking

Schools magazine.

Thanks to Robert Lowe, Sarah McFarlane,

and Deborah Menkart for their help with

this article.

an advanced domestic science course,

which will help prepare her for the

actual challenges she’ll face in her life.”

After my presentation, I tell people that

I don’t want to argue about the reforms

I’ve proposed, that right now all I

want are questions about my speech,

and later, in the community meeting,

they’ll have a chance to argue all they

want. Generally, students in several of

the groups will pay no attention to this

plea and will argue anyway. Again, at

this stage it’s good to get their critical

juices flowing, but not to exhaust their

arguments.

4. In preparation for the community

meeting, in their small groups, students

should discuss the “School Reform

Meeting Questions” and, at least ten-

tatively, decide what they think. These

opinions may change based on their

negotiations with other groups.

5. After they’ve had a while, probably

15 minutes or so, to discuss the ques-

tions, I say something like: “Choose half

your group to be ‘traveling negotiators.’

These people will meet with individuals

in other groups to discuss the questions.

This is your chance to find people who

agree with you about the superinten-

dent’s reforms, or to convince others.

Remember, there is power in numbers;

the more united you are in the commu-

nity meeting, the more likely it is that

the superintendent will be convinced—

or forced—to agree with you. One rule:

travelers can’t meet with other travel-

ers, otherwise people left sitting in their

groups will be left out.”

6. This is the part I enjoy the most. As

students dart around the classroom

arguing points and finding allies, I lis-

ten in (as teacher, not superintendent),

sometimes prodding people to meet

with other groups or raising points

they may not have considered. There is

no “correct” amount of time to give this

phase, but I don’t want students’ enthu-

siasm to wane, so I call a halt before

they’re talked out, perhaps 20 minutes

or so.

7. Students should return to their

small groups to prepare a presenta-

tion, however informal, on the various

questions. I ask each group to choose

a member to write on the board their

response to question 1, on the purpose

of schooling.

8. I seat the entire class in a circle (people

should remain seated with their social

group, each indicated with a placard)

and begin the meeting by asking each

group to respond to the question on the

purpose of schooling. Again, there is no

right and wrong way to run the meet-

ing. The aim is to encourage the most

spirited and democratic participation

possible. As superintendent, I’m able to

provoke people, point out contradic-

tions, and raise questions. By the way,

sometime during the community meet-

ing I remind them that this is only an

advisory meeting, that there is a school

board, elected citywide, to decide edu-

cational policy. I’m just seeking “input.”

We wouldn’t want to give students the

false impression that all social groups

affected by school reform actually had

any say-so.

9. After the meeting, it’s important that

students have a way to distance them-

selves from their roles so the debriefing

discussion is not simply a continuation

of the community meeting. Sometimes

I ask students to write about who they

think “won” in real life, and to think

about how things work in our high

school today, to get clues on whose

vision of schooling prevailed. Students

might write a critique of the superin-

tendent’s position or of the position of

one of the groups, including their own.

Alternatively, they might remain in char-

acter to write an interior monologue on

how they feel about their child’s future

in Central City Schools. Afterwards they

might read these to the class.

10. Discussion questions include:

http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn136

useful background materials Some background materials I’ve found useful include: Paul Davis chapman, Schools as Sorters, new York university Press, 1988 (especially chapter 5, “The use of Intelligence Tests in Schools: california case Studies”). David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, harvard university Press, 1974. Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985, Longman, 1986 (especially chapter 7, “Education and human capital”). Robert S. Lynd and helen m. Lynd, Middletown, harcourt,

Brace, 1929 (especially part III: “Training the Young”). Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, Yale university Press, 2005 (chapter 2, “unlocking the Tradition”). Samuel Bowles and herbert gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, Basic Books, 1976, (chapters 5 and 6, “The Origins of mass Public Education” and “corporate capital and Progressive Education”).

Mental ability test stanford University test 1 inforMation

Draw a line under the ONE word that makes the sentence true, as shown in the sample.

Sample: Our first president was: Adams Jefferson Lincoln Washington 1. Coffee is a kind of bark berry leaf root

2. Sirloin is a cut of beef mutton pork veal

3. Gasoline comes from grains petroleum turpentine seeds

4. Most exports go from Boston San Francisco New Orleans New York

5. The number of pounds in a ton is 1000 2000 3000 4000

6. Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig Paris Verdun Waterloo

7. Emeralds are usually blue green red yellow

8. The optic nerve is for seeing hearing tasting feeling

9. Larceny is a term used in medicine theology law pedagogy

10. Sponges come from animals farms forests mines

ACTIvITY TOOLS

11. Confucius founded the religion of the Persians Italians Chinese Indians

12. The larynx is in the abdomen head throat shoulder

13. The piccolo is used in farming music photography typewriting

14. The kilowatt measures rainfall wind-power electricity water-power

15. The guillotine causes death disease fever sickness

16. A character in David Copperfield is Sinbad Uriah Heep Rebecca Hamlet

17. A windlass is used for boring cutting lifting squeezing

18. A great law-giver of the Hebrews was Abraham David Moses Saul

19. A six-sided figure is called a scholium parallelogram hexagon trapezium

20. A meter is nearest in length to the inch foot yard rod

Teaching ideas 137

superintendent’s statement on Reforming the high schools I’ve inherited a 19th-century school district in a 20th-century city. It’s time for some changes. The following proposals are based on reforms that are sweeping the nation, reforms developed by the finest universities.

up until now we’ve run pretty much on the “common school” system. We’ve assumed that all students are the same, that all should be trained to be President of the united States. Well, my friends, not all our students are going to be President. In 1890, when fewer than 10 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds were in high school, this probably made sense. But by 1920 over a third of all teenagers were in high school, and not all these kids are well-served by such a difficult academic curriculum. nor is our society as a whole well-served by such a system. As the revered Stanford educator, Lewis Terman, reminds us, we have both “gifted and defective” children in school and they need to be taught differently. It’s too bad, but as Ellwood cubberley, Dean of Education at Stanford points out, in our schools we have “many children of the foreign-born who have no aptitude for book learning, and many children of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure.” n Therefore, I propose segregating students into four tracks, each with a different curriculum: Track #1: Feeble- minded; Track #2: Dull; Track #3: Average; and Track #4: Superior. This will allow us to adapt a given course of study to students’ individual needs. As suggested by one california

school administrator, the lower tracks will naturally train students for “definite hand occupations as opposed to brain occupations.” n There will be no guesswork in placing students in different tracks. They will be placed scientifically, on the basis of test scores. A system of guidance counseling will assist students in the interpretation of test scores, and to help them plan a personally rewarding and socially useful occupation. n Lots of the people entering central city schools are immigrants. These immigrants are worrisome for a number of reasons. Instead of identifying themselves as Americans, they see themselves as hungarians or Italians. Some of them identify with the working class against the owners, or even with radicals, people who want to overthrow our form of government. In order to insure that all children become loyal Americans I’m proposing the following: To encourage students to learn about democracy, all schools will have student councils, and every day all students will pledge allegiance to the flag. In all classes we will teach that our system of government is the best in the world. Through clubs, athletics, school assemblies, school newspapers, and the like, we will encourage students to identify not with their social class or radical group, but with their school. We will teach them to be patriotic to their country and patriotic to their school.

school Reform meeting Questions Be prepared to explain the following in your presentation at the school reform community meeting.

1. In one or two sentences, describe what you see as the purpose(s) of schooling.

2. Do you support the superintendent’s plan for “tracking?” Why or why not? If you don’t support the plan, how do you propose to deal with the variety of social backgrounds and skill levels in central city high schools?

3. Do you support the superintendent’s plan for increased testing and guidance counseling? Why or why not?

4. Do you support the superintendent’s curricular and extracurricular proposals? Why or why not? Do you have any other suggestions?

ACTIvITY TOOLS

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn138

ACTIvITY TOOLS

You are an executive with a large and prosperous corporation. There are a lot of problems in the country, problems that pose serious challenges to public education. In your eyes, the schools have not been meeting these challeng- es very successfully. For example, be- fore 1900, fewer than one out of every 10 kids between the ages of 14 and 17 was enrolled in high school. This is a real problem because people not in school become juvenile delinquents, turn to crime or worse, join radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). And besides, there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around for everyone who wants one. Also, lots of those entering schools are immigrants. They don’t speak much English and haven’t learned anything of what it means to be an American. Instead of identifying themselves as Americans, these immigrants see themselves as hungarians or Ital- ians. Some identify with the working

class against the owners, or even see themselves as radicals. In Lawrence, mass., in 1912, a massive strike involving 30,000 workers—teenagers, men, women, almost all immigrants— led by IWW radicals, defeated the mill owners. What is this country coming to? You need to make sure that the children of immigrants identify them- selves as loyal, responsible Ameri- cans—and that they don’t identify with one social class against another. Besides all the immigrants arriving in central city, there are lots of people leaving the farms to come to the city. These immigrants and farmers aren’t used to the factory ways of the city. They aren’t used to being prompt, working by the clock, doing repetitive work, obeying orders from a boss, etc.—all skills and attitudes needed to succeed as a factory worker. Their children are not ready to meet the challenges of modern life. You want the schools to turn out good factory

workers—but also serve the needs of your children, who are certainly not going to be factory workers. up until now, the high schools in central city have been “common schools” with one curriculum for all students. With few exceptions, ev- eryone took the same subjects in the same classes: boys with girls, bright kids with dull kids. The problem is that in earlier times, very few people went to school, so if you had a high school diploma, it meant something—you could get a good job in the business world. These students tended to be from upper-class or middle-class fami- lies. But now, with all these farm kids and immigrants entering the schools, there’s no way that all of them are go- ing to get these high-paying jobs. You need to figure out a way for the school system to train the future bankers and the future factory hands in the same classrooms—or at least in the same schools.

Corporate executive

Let’s get one thing straight: You didn’t move to the united States to take any- body’s job. At the turn of the century conditions were tremendously difficult in hungary. You owned a little plot of land, but when wealthy farmers began buying machinery to harvest their crops, you simply couldn’t compete. You could starve or move. When labor contractors began showing up, they promised good jobs and high wages if you would travel to the united States— a real land of milk and honey. The traveling conditions both in Europe, on the ship coming over, and within the united States were difficult beyond belief. But finally you arrived in central city, home of miller and Jones, a giant manufacturer of railroad cars. Instead of milk and honey you found grease and grime. Even though in hungary you were a skilled farmer, here you were called “unskilled labor.”

Your pay was low, but at least work was steady—for a while. But then you realized that you were guaranteed nothing. Often you’d work only six months out of the year and be laid off the rest of the time. needless to say, during these periods there were no un- employment benefits. As an unskilled worker you had no security. At times your friends would not be hired back by miller and Jones; younger, stronger workers would be hired to take their places. With no formal education, no access to additional training, and no big bank account, you have little hope of escaping this life of poverty. There may be little hope for you, but there is hope for your children. In America, education is free. You’ve been told that a high school diploma guarantees a young person a decent job. Just because you are an un- skilled laborer doesn’t mean that your

children will suffer the same fate. They might be teachers, clerks, shopkeep- ers or even doctors or lawyers. That’s why you will sacrifice anything to send your children to school. They will be in the same classes with the sons and daughters of bankers and business- men, architects and artists. They will read the same books, write the same essays and solve the same equations. In school, rich and poor will mean nothing. Your children are smart. There will be no limit to what they can ac- complish. You want them to learn to be Americans, but you are proud of your hungarian culture and also want them to value that heritage. Your children learn quickly and already speak two languages. You have absolute confi- dence they will be able to thrive in high school and go on to get good jobs.

hungarian immigrant

Teaching ideas 139

You are a black activist in central city. Over the years you’ve worked with a number of organizations to promote civil rights and independence for black people. Sometimes you’ve worked with groups that make alliances with whites, other times you’ve worked with black-only organizations. You join with whomever you see as capable of effectively fighting racism in central city and the country as a whole. For years there weren’t many black people in central city. most blacks came north during World War I. conditions were horrible in mississippi. Your family worked as sharecroppers there, growing cotton and a few vegetables. It seemed like you were always in debt to the white landlord. Everything you had to buy was expensive; but they paid you next to nothing for the crops you raised. Anyone who protested would be beaten or even killed. Blacks were denied the right to vote and the kids went to crummy schools. When people heard there were jobs up north, practically your whole county emptied out overnight. But conditions in central city have

become increasingly difficult since the war. Perhaps the biggest problem is job discrimination. Employers hire blacks in only the most dangerous, worst-paid and dead-end jobs. Even when you have the skills and education that qualify you for good jobs, the jobs still go to white people. The ku klux klan is a strong force in central city. They want to make sure that blacks stay poor and powerless and don’t get too “uppity” and start demanding good jobs, better housing, and decent schools. You are especially concerned about the education of black children. While schools are not formally segregated in central city, you know that black children are discriminated against. One recent study found that 50 percent of black girls in central city schools were classified as “retarded” and put in “special classes,” whereas only 4 percent of native-born whites were classified this way. For this you blame racist administrators and teachers. many school officials say that they want to teach children the skills they will need in “real life.” They assume

blacks will continue to be janitors and maids and so want to teach you to be good—and happy—janitors and maids. But you want your children to get a good academic education so they can become anything they set their minds to. however, some people complain that this kind of education will only make black children resentful. As one judge warned recently, education should not put “fool ideas of rising and equality into [black] folks’ heads, and [make] them discontent and unhappy.” In your view, in an unjust society, education should make young people discontented. It should fill their heads with dreams of equality and give them the tools—reading, writing, knowledge of their history—that will allow them to make their dreams real. You hope that the more education children have, the unhappier they will be with the racism in central city and the larger society. A good education should help give children the skills to organize for a better, more just, society. What you want from the superintendent of schools in central city, and the school system as a whole, is a commitment to fight racism.

black activist

During world war I, many southern blacks gave up sharecropping and moved north.

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ACTIvITY TOOLS

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn140

ACTIvITY TOOLS

You live in central city, uSA, and are a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor union. You’re concerned about school because you care about children, but also because you see schools as a place where people learn about what is expected of them by society. You see changing the schools as part of a larger movement for changing the whole society. much is now different in America. The society is more and more divided between rich factory owners and workers who own nothing but their own ability to labor. As far as you in the IWW are concerned, the problems of working people will only begin to be solved when workers take over all the workplaces and run them together for the benefit of the whole society—not just for the private profit of the owners.

As long as owners run industry for their own profit, there will be continual conflict between them and the workers they control. You believe that all wealth is produced by the workers, so all wealth should be controlled by the workers—what do owners produce? Thus, the goal of the IWW is not only for higher wages or shorter hours, but to change the whole society. Workplaces and all of society should be run by the people who produce, the people who do the work. And schools should help people learn the skills to run the whole society. In the IWW you don’t believe in the idea of “follow the leader.” Your goal is for every worker in the country to be a “leader.” Recently, you read a speech by Eugene Debs, an IWW founder. Debs summed up the IWW belief:

The average working [person] imagines that he must have a leader to look to; a guide to follow, right or wrong. … You have depended too much on that leader and not enough on yourself. I don’t want you to follow me. I want you to cultivate self-reliance. If I have the slightest capacity for leadership I can only give evidence of it by “leading” you to rely on yourselves.

That’s what democracy is all about as far as you’re concerned: everyone a leader, a thinker, a participant— regardless of race, sex or class background. And that’s what schools should promote for all the students, not just the ones from rich families. Schools should model a truly democratic, classless society.

iww member

You consider yourself “middle- class”—maybe upper-middle-class. You manage a small variety “five and dime” store; your father was a clerk for a large machine shop in town. The changes going on in central city make you nervous—not so much for yourself, but for your children. When you were young, the common wisdom was that if you went to high school and you graduated, you were guaranteed a good, solid middle-class or business job. You might become a clerk or a factory superintendent, or go on to college to become a lawyer or a doctor. The ticket was high school graduation, and for the most part only the upper and middle classes went to high school. But now everything is changing. In the last twenty years or so the population of central city has tripled. quite a number of people are coming into town off the farms, but most of the newcomers are immigrants

from overseas. These people, many of whom can’t even speak English, think that in America the streets are lined with gold. Problem is, the immigrants think that the way to get some of that good American gold is to send their kids to high school. Why is this a problem? Because there aren’t enough good jobs to go around. A university did a survey recently. They asked high school kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. Just over 90 percent wanted to be some kind of professional person, clerk or business person; only 4 percent wanted to work in a factory. But in the real world, only about 18 percent of the jobs are those kind of decent middle- class jobs. Over 60 percent are factory jobs or farmwork of some kind. You hate to think of yourself as selfish, but these statistics mean that there are going to be lots of people competing for the jobs that should belong to your

children. You know that in a fair competition your child would succeed. But what is happening now is that all these immigrant kids and farm kids who can barely read or write are crowding into the same classes. Soon, a high school diploma won’t be worth anything. You want your child to read classic literature, take mathematics, write essays and research papers, learn the history of this great country and master the workings of our form of government. But all these slow learners are going to hold everyone back. And they are also disruptive, many of them juvenile delinquents. The world is a different place. Today, good jobs require more education. You might even have to send your children to college. But what if they’ve had an inferior high school education because of all these rowdy newcomers?

middle-Class Person

Teaching ideas 141

‘salt of the earth’ grounds students in hope by s. J. Childs

How do I teach Global Studies without depressing students with all those stories about in- justice? How do I investigate the effects

of colonialism and globalization but

not perpetuate a view of victimization?

How do I help students think critically

about the suffering in the world with-

out making it one long sad story?

Over the years I included in my

curriculum examples of resistance, set

up simulations and activities where

students challenged the system or put

themselves in the role of change makers.

Still, I was sending too many students

into the world as cynical young adults

when what I wanted was to empower

students to become active citizens—

thinking critically about society, identi-

fying its problems and working toward

solutions. I wanted to start this school

year with one hopeful story we could

return to repeatedly. I found it in Salt

of the Earth, a compelling and dramatic

film that demonstrates alliances, soli-

darity, and resistance.

Salt of the Earth was made in 1953

about a coal mining strike in New Mex-

ico. It deals with the struggle for worker

equality as well as the fight for racial and

gender equity. Many of the actual mine

workers and families played parts in the

film. Because of its pro-labor sentiments,

the U.S. government saw the film as

Communist propaganda and blacklisted

it. The lead actress in the film, Rosaura

Revueltas, was even deported to Mexico

before the film was finished. This red-

baiting campaign is documented in the

Feminist Press book on the film.

Collective triumph The film shows the collective triumph

of a town over the mine owners. The

heroine is Esperanza, the wife of one of

the miners. She and the other women in

town not only give men their support,

they provide them with leadership and

sacrifice—inserting themselves into

a union discussion, taking over the

picket line when the men cannot, and

going to jail. This film celebrates alli-

ances—between the women and the

mineworkers, the Anglo and the Mexi-

can workers.

I first planned to show this video

within the opening week of the course

in 2001, but Sept. 11 and “Opera-

tion Enduring Freedom” took over the

country and my curriculum. Yet the

discussion of the blacklisting of Salt of

the Earth fit perfectly with a look at the

U.S.A. Patriot Act’s expansion of police

powers and Press Secretary Ari Fleish-

er’s warning to “watch what you say.” We

examined who might be swept up in the

government’s broad definition of “ter-

rorist” (see “Whose Terrorism?” in the

Rethinking Schools publication, Whose

Wars? Teaching About the Iraq War and

the War on Terrorism) and identified the

similarities between the broad use of

the term terrorist and the earlier use of

the word communist to mean someone

who is against U.S. policies.

Resistance—how people make

change and challenge injustice—became

the course’s central theme. Through

their analysis of Salt of the Earth, stu-

dents engaged in a close-up examina-

tion of how change happens and what

is needed to create social movements.

Although Salt of the Earth is a

black-and-white film, students quickly

became engaged with the story and

the characters. The students watched

as Esperanza (whose name means

Hope) overcame her role as frustrated

and isolated housewife to join other

women on the picket line when their

mining husbands could no longer do

so. They clapped when Esperanza gave

her husband a quick lesson in gender

politics when he moans about taking

care of the kids. He tells her, “If you

think I’m gonna play nursemaid from

now on, you’re crazy. I’ve had these

kids all day.” She shouts back, “I’ve

had them their whole lives!” Students

cheered as the jailed women refuse

to be cowed by the police, and when

the whole town comes to their aid as

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn142

everyone else and will go to any lengths

for their cause. I would do the same.”

Eric, a gay activist who started

our Gay-Straight Alliance at Frank-

lin, wrote, “As a homosexual, I feel as

though my rights aren’t acknowledged.

I feel a connection with Esperanza’s fuel

and fire and her desire to organize and

win. Her fight for equality is worthy. I

am working for the same thing.”

Catey, who identifies herself as a

conservative Christian, could see a

common bond between herself and

the miners’ wives. “I am like the group

of women that wanted to participate

in the strike. I have a hard time sitting

back and letting others control things. I

like to be involved in organizing, plan-

ning, and executing.”

Responding to Film I also asked students to respond to

dialogue from the film. Many students

reacted to a scene where Esperanza

they are evicted from their company-

owned housing.

acts of Resistance During the film, I asked kids to list the

acts of resistance they saw (see box). I

wanted them to be able to identify how

often the characters worked for change

and how even the littlest acts can add

up to great change. Their list included

Esperanza standing on the picket line

when her husband Ramón told her not

to, Ramón telling the company man he

wanted his workers to be safe, women

asking to vote at the union meeting,

Ramón refusing to strike a police offi-

cer after being hit, the townspeople

returning the furniture to a house after

an eviction, the women demanding

food in jail, the son skipping school to

stay with the picketers and forming a

kid brigade. Students noticed that what

most of the characters were doing was

standing up for what they thought was

right and speaking out. “They are fight-

ers and do what they believe is right,”

wrote Matt.

I wanted students to see them-

selves in these fighters, to recognize

the strength they have to “do what

they believe is right.” I wanted them

to recognize that change-makers aren’t

always impressive heroic figures, but

ordinary people like themselves, doing

small things for a bigger cause. I asked

them to explain what they had in com-

mon with any of the characters.

Some were unable to see any simi-

larities, even as they articulated them.

Rithy, a student leader, said, “I don’t

see that they have anything in common

with me, except some leadership skills

and a will to change things.” Others

found a lot to relate to in the film. “I am

half Mexican, and sadly some still look

down upon us, and believe we are all

‘dirty,’” wrote Nerissa, “Esperanza was

100 percent right and so was everyone

else. They fought for a better life and to

show that Mexicans are just as equal as

gives her defeated husband a talking to

after he puts her down. “Why must you

say to me, ‘Stay in your place’? Do you

feel better having someone lower than

you? . . . I don’t want anything lower

than I am. I am low enough already. I

want to rise. And push everything up

with me as I go.” Students appreciated

Esperanza’s hopefulness and her inclu-

sivity. “She doesn’t want others to suf-

fer as she has,” Eric wrote: “She cares

about other people in spite of the hard

times she has gone through.”

The history of the film is as com-

pelling as its story, because the making

of the film itself stands as an example

of resistance. Excerpts from the book

Salt of the Earth could be a valuable

supplement to showing the film. The

book includes interviews and stories

about the making of the film. That the

government viewed the making of the

movie as dangerous both amused and

alarmed my students, who saw possible

worksheet Questions on ‘salt of the earth’ Salt of the Earth was made in 1953 about a mining strike in new mexico. It deals with the struggle for worker equality and for racial and gender equity. The film was made during the mccarthy era, and it was blacklisted for containing “communist propa- ganda.” Please view the film carefully, taking notes, so that you can answer the following questions thoroughly. 1. List the various alliances you see throughout the film. When did people cross out of their comfort zones or groups to help others and when did they act in solidarity? 2. List the various instances of resis- tance during the film. When do you see people working for change, chal- lenging authority or the status quo? 3. What are the necessary elements for successful resistance?

4. What do you have in common with any of the characters or any of the groups in the film? 5. Discuss one quote from the film. 6. This film, according to the u.S. government, contained dangerous propaganda. What ideas in this film were considered dangerous and to whom? 7. Tell a story, in as much detail as you can, that shows what you mean when you say “we.” In other words, tell about a time when you acted as an ally for someone or in solidarity with someone, or when someone acted in solidarity with or as an ally for you. use the elements of narra- tive—dialogue, blocking, character development, setting description, etc. Show, don’t tell.

Teaching ideas 143

parallels in today’s political climate.

Anna noted the importance (and the

danger) of casting actual mine workers

and their families in key roles in the film.

“Using real people in the film showed

us who these ‘enemies of the state’ really

were and that they were willing to stand

up to anyone to get this film made.

These ordinary people, these struggling

people were making a difference.”

In our brainstorm after the film, stu-

dents identified several key elements of

resistance:

n Time and patience.

n Determination and a willingness

to struggle.

n Common beliefs and clear goals.

n Equity—a chance for all voices to

be heard.

n A plan—arrived at together

divided into baby steps with lots of

alternatives.

n Organization—divided responsi-

bility, small groups.

n Courage—taking risks in spite of

fear.

n Caution—using good judgment.

n Alliances—connection to larger

causes/connection to other groups.

I wrote this list on big poster paper

and taped it on the wall, where it stayed

the entire year. We often referred back

to it and added on. For example, after

we watched a documentary film on

the black union struggle in apartheid

South Africa, I asked students to dis-

cuss why union members were willing

to take serious risks for this cause and

what other elements of resistance they

would add to our list. They added:

n Leadership.

n Education about and for the

cause.

n Music and song.

n Faith/inspiration/religion.

n Use of the media—incidents that

catch media attention.

Just recently we discussed what the

Native population of the Northwest

Territories could do as their culture is

threatened by “Western media influ-

ence” and Canada’s desire for oil. Catey

gestured to the list and said, “What

about alliances? The Canadian govern-

ment isn’t going to back down easily.

These folks need help. Aren’t there other

groups who share the same goals?” We

then discussed what kinds of groups

might be interested in working with the

Inuit and Dene.

Being able to tie all our studies back

to the theme of resistance helps us shift

our focus from oppression and despair

to organizing, determination, planning,

solidarity, and hope. After viewing the

film Trinkets and Beads about the fight

of the Huaorani Indians in eastern

Ecuador against oil companies’ drilling

in the Amazon rainforest, I asked stu-

dents whether they saw any similarities

between this story and Salt of the Earth.

Elizabeth said the Huaorani marching

through the streets of Quito reminded

her of the women taking over the picket

line in Salt of the Earth. “You could tell

that the people watching them thought

they shouldn’t be there. But I was so

glad to see it. They were doing exactly

what needed to be done.” Jared said

that Moi, a Huaorani leader, reminded

him of Esperanza. “Moi is tough. He is

fighting back when it seems hopeless.

But he knows he has to win.”

what’s so Dangerous? Before Sept. 11, I had not thought to

emphasize the issue of what was so

dangerous about Salt of the Earth and

to whom. But I added this question in

order to help students connect the film

with current issues. They did much

more than that. Students recognized

that Esperanza and the women were

challenging a gender hierarchy, while

Mexicans and Anglos working together

confronted expectations of racial divi-

sion that benefited mine owners who

depended on a divide-and-conquer

strategy to maintain their power. And,

they knew that striking workers chal-

lenged corporate power.

But the students also surprised me

with their awareness of more subtle

issues. In class discussion, one student

said, “The film celebrates people work-

ing together and caring for one another

in a way that makes it safer to take risks.

Working miners from other communi-

ties supported the non-working strik-

ers. It showed to what lengths people go

to help one another and that they share

a common cause. Our society doesn’t

want to celebrate this kind of caring.

It likes to foster competition.” In class,

Catey put it bluntly, “The very idea of

resistance itself is what was so danger-

ous.” In writing she went further. “If a

group of people got together and orga-

nized themselves, then they can change

things. That concept was dangerous

to the United States.” Her sentiments

echo those of Juan Chacon, who played

Ramón in the film, one of the actual

mine workers and the union leader of

Local 890. He says, “This picture isn’t

against. It’s for! It shows what we can

do when we organize and we and Anglo

workers organize together. The com-

panies around here have always been

afraid of Anglo-Mexican unity. [They

try to] separate us from our brothers.”

More than I could have hoped, using

Salt of the Earth and coming back to it

all year has shifted the dialogue in our

class and the focus for my students.

This is not to say that sadness and frus-

tration doesn’t overtake us as we study

the events of the day and the patterns

of globalization, but now students have

ideas and a vision to fight back with. n

S. J. Childs teaches at Franklin High School

in Portland, Ore.

Salt of the Earth is available from

bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org. The book

Salt of the Earth is available from Feminist

Press, Old Westbury, NY: 1978. Rethinking

Globalization is available from Rethinking

Schools, www.rethinkingschools.org.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn144

the Funeral of martin luther king, Jr.

by nikki giovanni

Since the 1960s, nikki Giovanni, a poet, essayist, and children’s book author, has been active in expressing the need for black awareness and unity. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

his headstone said FRee at last, FRee at last but death is a slave’s freedom we seek the freedom of free men and the construction of a world where martin luther king could have lived and preached non-violence

atlanta 4-9-’68

S u

S a

n L

in a

R u

g g

Le S

Rethinking OuR assumPtiOns Schools are often exhorted to be neutral and objective in their inter- actions with children. Yet schools have never been value-free. Politics, culture, and ideology shape all aspects of school life—from teachers’ favoritism toward some students to unexamined premises guiding curriculum.

The writers in this chapter invite teachers to reflect on how they clas- sify children, understand the sources of student failure, view history, and think about race, gender, language, sexual orientation, and class.

PART FOUR

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn146

the memoir where Jiménez describes

going to graduation wearing a white t-

shirt because his family couldn’t afford

to buy him the required white shirt.

We also read Gary Soto’s story “The

Jacket,” as well as a number of stories

written by my former students.

We talked about buying clothes to

fit in, desiring clothes we can’t afford,

receiving clothes that we don’t want

from people we love. The topic fits

my criteria. It’s about big ideas: pov-

erty and acceptance. Students struggle

with finding a place to belong, but

they also want to avoid being a target

of other students’ ridicule for wearing

the “wrong” clothes or shoes. Many are

desperate to fit in—even when “fitting

in” means joining a group that rejects

the standard teen scene of tight low-

riding jeans and shrink-wrap tops.

I have a secret: I don’t grade student papers. Now, don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean that I toss them in the fire, “accidentally” lose them,

turn them over to student teachers,

stamp them with a six-trait writing

analysis and plug in numbers, or push

them through some kind of computer-

ized grade machine.

I discovered early on that if I wanted

to produce writers, I needed to let go

of grades.

Creating meaningful “work” Our grading should match our peda-

gogy. In my classroom I attempt to

prefigure aspects of the kind of society

I want my students to live in: a soci-

ety where the work is meaningful and

intrinsically rewarding, where people

grapple with big ideas that they care

about in an environment where they

can talk, read, write, and think without

worrying about failure or ridicule.

Students need to feel that their work

is important, relevant, and meaning-

ful. If not, why should they spend time

working on it? I was reminded of this

recently when I demonstrated a narra-

tive lesson in a classroom at Madison

High School in Portland, Ore. Madi-

son’s student body comes from diverse

cultural, racial, linguistic, and eco-

nomic backgrounds. Students had just

read Breaking Through, a short memoir

by Francisco Jiménez about growing up

in a migrant family and trying to fit in

as a teenager (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

The students and I examined a point in

my Dirty little secret why i don’t grade papers

by linda Christensen

As we started the writing, I told the

students, “Find your passion. Write

your way into a story that you want to

tell.” Damon didn’t write about clothes.

He wrote about getting a gift he didn’t

want from his foster parents. He wrote

about living in foster homes, about

learning how to lie about gifts he didn’t

want. He also wrote a list of questions

about his next home and his next

school—he was headed into his 12th

home the week after I gave the assign-

ment. He wondered if his new “fam-

ily” would like him. He wondered if he

would make friends at his new school.

Fitting in meant a lot more to Damon

than wearing the right clothes.

Because the assignment was open

enough for Damon to write about

what was important to him and what

was on his mind, he did. Because I want

m Ic

h A

E L D

u FFY

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 147

read-arounds in class. Not only does

the author get to hear comments

about his/her work, but the rest of

the class gets a chance to hear some

pretty amazing stuff. Like when we

heard Nicole’s home language paper,

I don’t think there was anyone who

wasn’t touched by it. Everyone had

felt, at some point, like that and

her paper was able to capture those

feelings and describe them perfectly.

At the same time, everyone thought,

“How can I write like that?” We all

learned from the paper. Now, this is

only one example, but almost every

day we share, something like this

happens.

Another response strategy I use is a

variation on the small response group.

Instead of reading papers out loud,

pairs of students exchange their pieces

and write letters to each other based on

the criteria of the paper. In the letters—

which typically run two pages—stu-

dents point out what’s working, where

they had questions, and which criteria

were present or missing. They also give

suggestions for revision. Students ben-

efit from reading each other’s papers by

noticing how someone else approached

a similar topic and by reading with an

editor’s eye: What’s working? What’s

missing? What would help this paper?

This is a skill they can transfer back to

their own work.

grades as wages In too many classrooms, grades are the

“wages” students earn for their labor.

Damon to keep writing, I didn’t put a

grade on it. Instead we had a conversa-

tion at the end of the period where I

talked to him about what I loved about

the piece, and I told him the truth:

Many adults and students need to read

his piece. I gave him a few suggestions

for revision.

He’s experimenting with making

his story into a narrative essay, tied

together with vignettes about the skills

he’s learned in foster homes. He sent

me the next draft via email from the

library near his new “home.” Damon’s

not writing for a grade. He doesn’t even

attend Madison anymore. He’s writing

because this is a topic he cares about.

He’s writing because someone is listen-

ing to him, and he hopes that through

his writing, more people will under-

stand what it’s like to live in a foster

home.

And before you say, “I can’t talk with

150 students after class,” I understand.

I can’t either. I talk with them when we

work on revisions in the computer lab,

during breaks, during lunch, and after

school. When Jefferson, where I spent

my teaching career, had tutor time

during the school day, I made appoint-

ments with students. I also structure

revision time during class, so that I

can work with students while they are

revising. Most often, I start conversa-

tions in the margins of their papers—

making comments, noting what I love,

asking questions when I’m confused,

and sometimes making suggestions or

reminding them of another student’s

piece or class talk.

I see responding to student papers

as part of the teaching process rather

than the evaluation process. Instead of

taking my time writing comments on

first drafts, for example, students read

their papers out loud, and their class-

mates give them feedback. (I call it a

read-around because my students sit in

a circle, and we read around the circle.

(See p. 213 for details.) At the begin-

ning of the year, the feedback is always

positive. Later in the year, we add sug-

gestions for strengthening pieces. We

start with what we love about the piece,

what’s working—a great opening, the

use of humor, the rhythm in a certain

line, a flashback that builds the reader’s

understanding of character. I point out

techniques the writers are using intui-

tively, so that fellow students can pick

up the strategies and use them in their

writing.

But the read-around is also a place

for me to informally assess common

problems in class papers—lack of evi-

dence, sloppy transitions, weak intro-

ductions—as well as individual prob-

lems. The read-around, which provides

a real audience for writing, allows me

to teach, assess, and move students to

the next draft.

Students in every class I’ve taught

have made it clear that the read-around

was the best part of my teaching. Adam

wrote:

There is so much to learn about

good writing. I know that a lot of

what shaped my writing was not the

diagramming sentences or finding

the subject and verb that we learned

in grade school, but the desire to

learn more about what I’m hearing

around me. Just hearing the work

of good writers makes an incredible

difference. When I find something I

really like, I ask myself, “What was it

about that piece that made me get all

goose-bumpy?” That’s why I think

it is really important to have those

Because the assignment was open enough for Damon to write about

what was important to him and what was on his mind, he did.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn148

Teachers assign work, students create

products, and grades exchange hands.

There are problems with this scenario.

Students who enter class with skills—

especially reading and writing skills—

are rewarded with higher grades. They

already know how to write the paper;

they just need to figure out what the

teacher wants in it. Essentially, they

take what the teacher talks about in

class and reproduce it in a paper. Stu-

dents who lack these basic skills are at

a disadvantage. Unless there has been

an explicit teaching of how to write the

papers, they may not know how to pro-

duce the products the teacher expects.

As a result, they receive lower grades.

Instead of rewarding or punishing

students with grades, I believe that we

need to “live out our ideals” as Myles

Horton exhorts us, by creating situ-

ations where students, like Damon,

learn to care about the work they pro-

duce. Of course, this means creating

meaningful and important work that

students want to do and creating com-

munities where good work can hap-

pen. It also means explicitly teaching

students how to write essays, articles,

stories, poems, and memoirs and find-

ing real audiences to read that work.

Revision: it’s never ‘Done’ Numbers on a six-trait analysis or

grades for content and mechanics on

the top of the papers don’t teach stu-

dents how to write, nor do they push

them to their next drafts. These meth-

ods either assume that students are

“done” or that they will care enough to

go back and attempt to fix their drafts

in order to raise their grades. Numbers

and grades “assess” or judge the paper,

rather than provide feedback about

how to improve it. Too many of my

students had learned to negotiate the

difficulties of writing by turning in

hurried drafts pulled together without

much thought. They received their C’s

or D’s, and they were “done” with their

writing. The grades let them escape

learning how to write.

When Keith Caldwell from the

National Writing Project visited the

Oregon Writing Project in 1980, he

used a great analogy. He said, “As soon

as you put a grade on a piece of writing

it’s done. Don’t grade it and you signal

that it can still be revised, still worked

on.” He compared writing to baking

pastries. Grades, according to Caldwell,

are the frosting. They signal that the

donut or the sugar cookie is heading

for the showcase. It’s done.

Because I want my students to view

their writing as a process, I refuse to

let them be “done.” If students turn in

drafts that represent their best work

at that point in time, they receive full

credit for the writing. Students who

don’t have a draft receive no credit.

When students turn in rushed drafts

that clearly aren’t their best efforts, I

return them and ask them to redo the

papers. Students regularly write and

rewrite papers they care about a num-

ber of times. I remember Anne Lennon,

a senior, lamenting in her end-of-the-

quarter portfolio: “Seven drafts on this

essay and I’m still not done!”

Too often, writing—and thinking—

in school becomes scripted (hence the

five-paragraph essay), because scripts

are easier to teach and easier to grade.

Unfortunately, they fail to engage stu-

dents in real writing. Real writing is

messy. And students often don’t “get”

how to write narratives or essays the

first time we teach them. They need

lots of practice without judgments;

they need to be told what they are

doing right, so they can repeat it; they

need to examine how to move to the

next draft.

but what about Report Cards? Because I work in public schools that

still churn out report cards, I must

give students grades at the end of each

quarter and semester. And I do—based

on the total points earned for each

grading period. The difference is that I

don’t put grades on individual papers.

They receive all of the credit possible

or they redo the papers. For example,

a first draft of an essay is typically 150

points; a revision is 300 points. But

they only receive the points—all of the

points—if they write a paper that meets

the criteria. (See box, next page.)

I’m sure there are folks who will

shake their heads at the lack of rigor or

standards in my system, but I believe

my system is rigorous and that I hold

students to meaningful standards. They

don’t pass my class if they can’t write an

essay or narrative—even if they com-

plete all of the class work. I will work

with them until they can write, but I

will not accept work that doesn’t meet

the exit criteria.

the ideal world Faces Reality Here’s the rub in this idyllic world:

I don’t always select topics that stu-

dents find meaningful, and there are

academic formats—literary essays, for

example—that students would rather

pull their teeth out than complete. But

I feel compelled to teach them to write

in these formats.

I see responding to student papers as part of the teaching process rather

than the evaluation process.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 149

Christensen’s grading Policy Grades: Your grades will be based a number of criteria:

Basic Concepts of Class: In order to pass this class, you must demonstrate that you have learned the major concepts of the course. These will change from quarter to quarter, but sample outcomes might include writing an essay that demonstrates your un- derstanding of historical or literary material or using historical facts to critique a document.

Completion of Daily Work: Daily work is the place we practice the skills needed for learning long-term skills. On a basketball court, team members might learn passing skills. In here, you will learn how to write at the college level by completing shorter writing assignments first or by completing a reading journal in preparation for writing an essay about a novel.

Class Participation: This class demands that you not only complete the work, but also contribute to class discussions. You contribute by listening while others speak, giving positive feedback, speaking on topic, learning how to take turns talking, taking notes during discussion that will help you write later, disagreeing with ideas rather than people. You also contribute by respecting other members of the class. no one should feel vulnerable in this room. We learn best in an atmosphere of

tolerance where people can take risks. So expect positive, rather than negative, critique from your classmates and me.

Homework: homework is an extension of the work in class. Of- ten, it will be relevant only in the context of our class work. For ex- ample, if we are studying welfare reform or the politics of language and you don’t do the reading, you will not be able to participate or understand the class discussion related to the reading. Similarly, we will write essays, narratives, or poetry that parallel our reading assignments. If you do not do your homework, you will miss the connection.

Difficulty: There will be times when emergencies come up or when you do not understand the homework. In the event this happens, call me at home and I will either grant you more time or explain the work more thoroughly. You may also set up appointments to work with me after school or during lunch.

Extensions: Because I expect quality work, from time to time I will return your essays, narratives, and poetry so you can take more time to polish or rework them. I don’t expect you all to be Alice Walkers, but I do expect that you will take time to learn how to write—which means learning how to rewrite. I will teach you, but in order to learn, you must practice.

I struggle to create assignments that

make academic formats compelling.

One year, my seniors at Jefferson read

Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael

Dorris. The novel is told in the voices of

three Native-American women. It starts

in the present day and moves back-

wards as the women unfold their per-

spectives on events that shaped them.

In my class, students wrote about key

moments from their lives. Then they

invited their parents or other impor-

tant people to write about the same

moments from their points of view. If

students couldn’t get a parent or friend

to write, they wrote about the events

themselves, but from another person’s

point of view. It was a powerful assign-

ment, and students shared incidents of

abuse, alcoholism, and drug addiction,

as well as other problems. It was hard

to turn from this emotionally charged

work to writing essays, but it was nec-

essary because I wanted my students to

also know how to navigate academic

writing.

Instead of asking them to write tra-

ditional literary essays, I invited stu-

dents to include their lives in the essays,

to bring in their stories in the same way

they had during class discussions. Dina

wrote:

I was raised in a home of five chil-

dren, six including myself. My father

was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

My mother was on her way to the

same behavior. She hid my father’s

problem for many years until our

home was falling apart. My father

was a ladies’ man, sharing himself

with others while my mother said

nothing, pretending everything

was all right. He would come home

drunk, and they would fight and he

would move out for periods of time,

and return after awhile. My mother

continued to take him back and try

to keep the marriage and family as

one. Regardless of the hurt she felt

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn150

inside, she wouldn’t let it slow her

down. At least, I never saw that it

did. Co-dependent is what I call her

behavior today.

Reading Yellow Raft on Blue Water by

Michael Dorris I found that he dealt

with the topics of dysfunctional

families and co-dependent issues.

The character Christine reminded

me of my mother.

Dina went on to include specifics

from the novel to develop her essay,

comparing her mother and Christine

from the novel. She learned to write a

literary essay, but one that had personal

meaning for her.

student Reaction Nicole’s reaction to my grading phi-

losophy cemented my belief that I was

doing the right thing. Nicole enrolled

in one of my classes every year begin-

ning with her sophomore year. The

first year, Nicole was frozen by her

fear of making a mistake. She attended

daily, she responded to other students’

papers, but she resisted writing—and

this was in Writing for Publication,

where writing was essential. In the

opening days of her junior year, when

a rather smug student made a negative

remark about a classmate’s paper dur-

ing a read-around, I didn’t have to say

a word. Nicole jumped in and talked

about the importance of finding what

works in a paper. She set the tone for

the year—and she finally wrote.

In a mid-year class evaluation of my

senior course, Contemporary Literature

and Society, Nicole raised her hand. “I

like that you don’t grade our papers. I

went through Sabin Elementary and

Beaumont Middle Schools with Mira.

Every time the teacher would hand

back our papers, Mira’s would have an

A and mine would have a C. It made

me feel like I wasn’t as smart as Mira.

Now when I look over at Mira’s paper,

I see that we both have comments from

you written all over them. It’s a conver-

sation, not a competition.”

Mira, the valedictorian, also liked

comments instead of grades. “What

tells me more about my writing? A

grade or the comments and questions

you write in the margins?” In fact, Mira

looked for colleges that wrote narra-

tive evaluations of their students rather

than grading them. (Now, she teaches

writing at the college level and writes

magnificent poetry.)

Peter, a skeptic in the no-grade

process, entered my junior class with

strong writing skills. By the end of his

second year with me, he wrote in his

class evaluation:

The way you have us make com-

ments (what did you like about the

piece of writing) has helped me deal

with people. My skin is thick enough

to take a lot of abuse just because

I’ve always had a fairly high opinion

of some of the things I can do. I

didn’t realize a lot of other people

don’t have that advantage. After a

while I found out positive criticism

helped me more than negative too.

I keep William Stafford’s poem “At

This Point on the Page” over my desk

because it reminds me of the fear I still

feel when I turn a piece of writing over

to someone to read: Will you like it?

Did I do a good job? And what I mean

is: Do you like me? Am I OK?

At This Point on the Page

Frightened at the slant of the writing,

I looked up

at the student who shared it with

me—

such pain was in the crossing of each t,

and a heart that skipped—lurched

—in the loop of the y.

Sorrowing for the huddled lines my

eyes had seen—

The terror of the o’s and a’s, and those

draggled g’s,

I looked up at her face,

not wanting to read farther, at least

by prose:

the hand shook that wrote that far on

the page,

and what weight formed each word,

God knows.

When I start a new class with stu-

dents, I need to remind myself to begin

with praise, to find what’s working, to

find the beauty before I find fault. To

remember that when I teach writing,

I’m teaching the writer, not the piece.

Will my words keep them writing or

send them scurrying for cover?n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

Dina learned to write a literary essay, but one that had

personal meaning for her.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 151

Though we do share a common phi-

losophy of education, our particular

methods of implementing our shared

beliefs are quite different. I am of the

opinion that his methodology, which

focuses on assisting children in build-

ing self-esteem exclusively through the

affective domain, manifests itself in

lower expectations of the children. These

lower expectations negatively influence

the children’s ability to grow intellec-

My principal and I have a fine working relationship. He has come to understand that I do not “do” Halloween (even as a child I

never liked the holiday), and I never

nag him about scheduling difficulties

before 8:30 a.m. We share a common

philosophy of education and know pre-

cisely why we come to work each morn-

ing—the kids! Generally, we are civil

and never have “words” in the presence

of others unless we are in the midst of a

staff meeting where all those assembled

have “lost it,” know they have “lost it,”

and have every intention of forgetting

what was said (or shouted) upon enter-

ing the local watering hole.

Yes, Mr. Smythe and I are doing quite

well except for one thing. In my opin-

ion, he does not hold the same expecta-

tions for my minority children, many

of whom come from lower socioeco-

nomic backgrounds than most of the

majority children. These children are

often referred to as children “at-risk.”

Before I continue, please understand

that I do not believe this man is bigoted

or lacking in respect for these children.

On the contrary, I feel that his expec-

tations come out of deep concern and

caring for them. It is just that I see him

as being so sensitive to the many diffi-

culties and disasters which often occur

in the children’s home environments

that he cannot accept the notion that

even in the midst of crisis they have a

responsibility to get an education, and

we have a responsibility to expect them

to go about acquiring one.

expectations and ‘at-Risk’ Children One teacher’s perspective

by l. C. Clark

tually and socially. In other words, he

focuses on the idea that by being toler-

ant and understanding of their difficul-

ties in the school setting, and not push-

ing too often or too hard, we can help

them to develop higher self-esteem. I,

on the other hand, assert that if children

are firmly and continually encouraged

to function in school by developing

appropriate school behaviors to facili-

tate their learning, their self-esteem will

k ATh

E R

In E

S LE

E TE

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn152

see me before reporting to his lunch

recess with the administrative assistant.

Then, I instructed him to go to one of

the math stations to get a class assign-

ment completed.

After school I related Jamie’s behav-

ior and performance to Mr. Smythe,

hoping to get some feedback on how

to get Jamie back on track in math. I

reminded him that while Jamie had

demonstrated good understanding of

some number concepts and had done

well with his basic facts (addition, sub-

traction, and multiplication through

the sixes table), his overall rating was

far below average and his progress was

erratic.

Mr. Smythe stood in silence for a

moment and then proceeded to tell

me that it was possible that Jamie had

rise because they will see themselves as

learners, capable of functioning fully in

an academic setting.

Jamie’s story I can illustrate our dilemma by describ-

ing an incident which transpired sev-

eral months into the last school year.

Jamie, one of my 17 low-achieving

math students, came running into class

shortly after the class began. Jamie told

me he had been in the administrative

assistant’s office trying to get out of los-

ing his lunch recess for “roofing” a ball.

I reminded him that math class began

at 9:10 sharp, and it was to his benefit

to be on time so as not to feel lost or

confused during the class discussion.

I continued the lesson and watched

as Jamie retrieved his book and a piece

of paper. As various children came up

to the chalkboard to solve problems, I

noticed that Jamie was not writing. I

walked over to him and asked if he had

a pencil or needed a new one. He did

not have a pencil, so I sent him over to

a cabinet to get one.

Twenty-five minutes into the

period, students were instructed to

have a partner look over their home-

work before handing it in and going on

to their next assignment. Jamie did not

move. I went over to him and asked if

there was a problem. He informed me

that he had not done his homework.

(Out of seven assignments due that

week Jamie handed in two. Those two

papers were completed because I sat

with him during his study break as he

worked independently.) I told Jamie to

I remain unconvinced that the explanation for the low performance of culturally dif ferent “minority” group students will be found by pursuing questions of cognitive or learning styles. I believe that the children, no matter what their style, are failing primarily because of systematic inequities in the delivery of whatever pedagogical approach the teachers claim to master—not be cause students cannot learn from teachers whose styles do not match their own. There is a protocol of interac tive behaviors of teachers who, for what- ever reasons, have low expectations for stu dents. Research in this area shows that teachers tend to: n Demand less from low-expectation stu dents (“lows”) than from high- expectation students (“highs”). n Wait less time for lows to answer ques tions. n give lows the answer or call on

some one else rather than try to improve the lows’ response through repeating the ques tion, providing clues, or asking a new question. n Provide lows with inappropriate rein forcement by rewarding inappropriate be haviors or incorrect answers. n criticize lows more often than highs for failure. n Fail to give feedback to lows’ public responses. n Pay less attention to lows and interact with them less frequently. n call on lows less often than highs to respond to questions. n Seat lows farther away from the teacher than highs. n use more rapid pacing and less ex tended explanations or repetition of defini tions and examples with highs than with lows. n Accept more low-quality or more in correct responses from low-

teachers and Cultural styles

by asa g. hilliard iii

expectation students. n Interact with lows more privately than publicly. n In administering or grading tests or as signments, give highs but not lows the benefit of the doubt in borderline cases. n give briefer and less informative feed back to the questions of lows than to those of highs. n use less intrusive instruction with highs than with lows, so that they have more opportunity to practice indepen dently. n When time is limited, use less effec tive and more time-consuming instruc tional methods with lows than with highs.n Asa G. Hilliard III was Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University. He passed away in 2007.

The above is an excerpt reprinted with permission of the Nat ional Education Association.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 153

and bring it back the next day.” I sug-

gested he apologize to the other boy.

Jamie knew what his responsibility was

and how to carry it out.

By adhering to a relativistic phi-

losophy, educators in effect lock those

considered to be “disadvantaged” or

“at-risk” into the very situations from

which education should free them.

Intended acts of compassion result in

outcomes which promote subtle rac-

ism. While I hold the position that

expectations must reflect a belief in a

child’s ability to meet the established

standards of an academic community,

I am not advocating such a rigid adher-

ence to any standard that the human-

ity of a child be sacrificed. Rather, I am

insisting that compassion be tempered

with reason, so that a child deemed “at-

risk” be allowed to fully develop and

experience his or her power—intellec-

tually, socially, and emotionally.

The issue of expectations which

arose in my relationship with my

principal has not been resolved. It is

extremely difficult to bring the word

“racism” into a discussion without cre-

ating either discomfort (which makes

the dialogue hesitant and shallow) or

dissension (which threatens to cut off

dialogue completely). But, realizing

that holding lower expectations for “at-

risk” youngsters (even out of compas-

sion) threatens their intellectual and

social/emotional growth commands

that the courage to acknowledge the

real problem be found.

A relationship, whether personal or

professional, reflects the degree of trust

and respect between the individuals

involved. I believe that between my

principal and myself there exists a level

of trust and respect that will advance

the dialogue which needs to begin and

hold the relationship intact even as we

may stand against one another.n

L. C. Clark is an elementary school teacher

in New York state.

had difficulty in class because of an

incident which had occurred in his

home last evening that required police

involvement. I acknowledged his com-

ment and waited for his input regard-

ing alternatives for assisting Jamie with

his learning. Neither of us spoke, and

it dawned on me that what he had said

about the previous evening was his

response to my (and Jamie’s) dilemma.

It was somewhat unnerving, but I

decided that the time had come for the

issue of expectations to be addressed.

My question was: “How many times

are we going to use the problems that

happen at home to excuse ourselves

from requiring Jamie to function as a

learner in an academic setting?”

‘at Risk’ of not being taught The “Jamie” story, one of many, has

serious implications for teachers,

administrators, and, most especially,

students who are considered to be “at-

risk.” I have observed that oversensitiv-

ity which manifests itself in repeated

acceptance of children’s problems

while not addressing solutions involv-

ing academic concerns is inappropriate

for several reasons.

First, it presumes that the problem

is temporary. This can lull teachers

and administrators into thinking that

everything will be all right tomorrow

(next week, next year). Some children

are in dysfunctional families and it

is highly unlikely that the conditions

precipitating their difficulties will be

relieved during their school years.

However, this does not mean that par-

ents are not to be notified or looked

to for assistance when children do not

behave appropriately.

For instance, in developing a plan to

get Jamie to be more responsible about

being prepared and on time for class, I

contacted his grandmother. I explained

Jamie’s problem and how it was hurt-

ing him academically, then solicited

her ideas for what I could do to change

his behavior. She told me that Jamie

liked to watch television after din-

ner, and she would not allow him to

watch TV if he did not “act right” in

school. After sharing other possibili-

ties, we agreed that whenever Jamie

acted irresponsibly he would: (1) call

home at the end of the school day to

tell his grandmother of the accumu-

lated time wasted due to being tardy

or unprepared and (2) lose 30 minutes

or more of viewing time depending on

the accumulated time and frequency of

offenses. By the end of the third mark-

ing period (early April), Jamie was

occasionally late and unprepared, but

he had come to understand that he had

to take responsibility for his behavior

and the consequences of his actions.

The second reason not addressing

solutions is inappropriate is that not

working on a solution with a child takes

away his or her opportunity to develop

positive ways to cope within the school,

as well as outside of its walls, when

problems arise. Case in point, Jamie

often missed out on participating in

extracurricular events, such as T-ball

and softball, because he would fail to

take the flier home or forget to return

the permission slip on time.

One day some other children were

getting ready to go to an after-school

practice when Jamie became angry and

started yelling. He confronted one of

the boys, called him “stupid” and the

softball team “dumb.” I moved Jamie

away from the boy, then asked him if

he had received the same T-ball form

at the same time as the other chil-

dren. When he said he had, I told him

to think about why he was not on the

team. Jamie left to go home.

The following morning I asked

Jamie if he now knew why he was not

on the team. He was silent for awhile

and then admitted that he had for-

gotten to return the slip. I asked if he

knew what he would do next time. He

replied, “Put it (the slip) in my pocket

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn154

w hen I was in 9th grade Mrs. Delaney, my English teacher, wanted to demonstrate the correct and incorrect ways to pro-

nounce the English language. She asked

Helen Draper, whose father owned sev-

eral clothing stores in town, to stand

and say “lawyer.” Then she asked me,

whose father owned a bar, to stand

and say “lawyer.” Everyone burst into

laughter at my pronunciation.

What did Mrs. Delaney accomplish?

Did she make me pronounce lawyer

correctly? No. I say attorney. I never

say lawyer. In fact, I’ve found substi-

tutes for every word my tongue can’t

get around and for all the rules I can’t

remember.

For years I’ve played word cop on

myself. I stop what I’m saying to think,

“Objective or subjective case? Do I

need I or me here? Hmmm. There’s a

lay coming up. What word can I substi-

tute for it? Recline?”

And I’ve studied this stuff. After all,

I’ve been an English teacher for over

30 years. I’ve gone through all of the

Warriner’s workbook exercises. I even

found a lie/lay computer program and

kept it in my head until I needed it in

speech and became confused again.

Thanks to Mrs. Delaney, I learned

early on that in our society language

classifies me. Generosity, warmth, kind-

ness, intelligence, good humor aren’t

enough—we need to speak correctly

to make it. Mrs. Delaney taught me

that the “melting pot” was an illusion.

The real version of the melting pot is

studied any of the grammar texts I keep

by my side, but she can spot all of my

errors because she grew up in a home

where Standard English was spoken.

And I didn’t, so I’ve trained myself to

play language cop. The problem is that

every time I pause, I stop the momen-

tum of my thinking. I’m no longer pur-

suing content, no longer engaged in try-

ing to persuade or entertain or clarify.

Instead I’m pulling Warriner’s or Mrs.

Delaney out of my head and trying to

figure out how to say something.

“Ah, but this is good,” you might say.

“You have the rules and Mrs. Delaney

to go back to. This is what our students

need.”

But it doesn’t happen that way. I

try to remember the rule or the catchy

phrase that is supposed to etch the rule

that people of diverse backgrounds are

mixed together and when they come

out they’re supposed to look like Vanna

White and sound like Dan Rather. The

only diversity we celebrate is tacos and

chop suey at the mall.

unlearning “inferiority” It wasn’t until a few years ago that I

realized grammar was an indication of

class and cultural background in the

United States and that there is a bias

against people who do not use lan-

guage “correctly.” Even the terminology

“standard” and “nonstandard” reflects

that one is less than the other. English

teachers are urged to “correct” students

who speak or write in their home lan-

guage. A friend of mine, whose ances-

tors came over on the Mayflower, never

teaching standard english: whose standard? by linda Christensen

S u

S a

n Lin

a R u

g g

Le S

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 155

in my mind forever, like, “people never

get laid,” but I’m still not sure if I use it

correctly. These side trips cost a lot of

velocity in my logic.

Over the years my English teach-

ers pointed out all of my errors—the

usage errors I inherited from my

mother’s Bandon, Oreg., dialect, the

spelling errors I overlooked, the fancy

words I used incorrectly. They did this

in good faith, in the same way, years

later, I “correct” my students’ “errors”

because I want them to know the rules.

They are keys to a secret and wealthier

society and I want them to be prepared

to enter, just as my teachers wanted to

help me.

And we should help kids. It would

be misleading to suggest that people

in our society will value my thoughts

or my students’ thoughts as readily in

our home languages as in the “cash lan-

guage,” as Jesse Jackson calls it. Students

need to know where to find help, and

they need to understand what changes

might be necessary, but they need to

learn in a context that doesn’t say, “The

way you said this is wrong.”

when Fear interferes English teachers must know when

to correct and how to correct—and I

use that word uneasily. Take Fred, for

example. Fred entered my freshman

class unwilling to write. Every day dur-

ing writing time I’d find Fred doodling

pictures of Playboy bunnies. When I

sat down and asked him why he didn’t

write, he said he couldn’t.

I explained to him that in this class

his writing couldn’t be wrong because

we were just practicing our writing

until we found a piece we wanted to

polish, in the same way that he prac-

ticed football every day after school,

but only played games on Fridays. His

resistance lasted for a couple of weeks.

Around him other students struggled

with their writing, shared it with the

class on occasion and heard positive

comments. Certainly the writing of his

fellow students was not intimidating.

On October 1, after reading the story

“Raymond’s Run” in Toni Cade Bam-

bara’s book Gorilla, My Love (Random

House, 1972), about trusting people in

our lives, Fred wrote for the first time:

“I remember my next door neighbor

trusted me with some money that she

owed my grandmother. She owed my

grandmother about 25 dollars.” Fred

didn’t make a lot of errors. In this first

piece of writing it looked like he had

basic punctuation figured out—except

for the odd capitals in the middle of the

sentence. He didn’t misspell any words.

And he didn’t make any usage errors.

Based on this sample, he appeared to

be a competent writer.

However, the biggest problem with

Fred’s writing was that he didn’t make

mistakes. This piece demonstrates his

discomfort with writing. He wasn’t tak-

ing any risks. Just as I avoid lawyer and

lay, he wrote to avoid errors instead of

writing to communicate or think on

paper.

When more attention is paid to the

way something is written or said than

to what is said, students’ words and

thoughts become devalued. Students

learn to be silent, to give as few words

as possible for teacher criticism.

Valuing what we know Students must be taught to hold their

own voices sacred, to ignore the teach-

ers who have made them feel that what

they’ve said is wrong or bad or stupid.

Students must be taught how to listen

to the knowledge they’ve stored up, but

which they are seldom asked to relate.

Too often students feel alienated

in schools. Knowledge is foreign. It’s

about other people in other times. At a

conference I attended, a young woman

whose mother was Puerto Rican and

whose father was Haitian said, “I went

through school wondering if anyone

like me had ever done anything worth-

language Prison by linda Christensen

All day words run past my tongue

words tumble and fall and you catch the wrong ones and count them back to me

All day I watch my tongue

for words that slip down the slope of my neighborhood

words that separate me from you

words that you catch and hold against me

All day I watch for words misshapen or bent around my too thick tongue

run-down at the heel words thin soled words

words that slip from my tongue

words that tell of mops and beer and bent backs

words that shape my world against a different map than yours

All day I watch my tongue for words

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn156

other’s stories in our read-around cir-

cle where everyone has the opportu-

nity to share, to be heard, to learn that

knowledge can be gained by examining

our lives. In the circle, we discover that

many young women encounter sexual

harassment, we learn that store clerks

follow black students, especially males,

more frequently than they follow white

students, we find that many of our par-

ents drink or use drugs, we learn that

many of us are kept awake by the crack

houses in our neighborhoods.

Before we share, students often

understand these incidents individu-

ally. They feel there’s something wrong

with them. If they were smarter, pret-

tier, stronger, these things wouldn’t

have happened to them. When they

hear other students’ stories, they begin

to realize that many of their problems

aren’t caused by a character defect. For

example, in Literature and U.S. His-

tory, a young man shared a passionate

story about life with his mother, who is

a lesbian. He loved her, but felt embar-

rassed to bring his friends home. He

was afraid his peers would think he was

gay or reject him if they knew about his

mother.

After he read, the class was silent.

Some students cried. One young

woman told him that her father was

gay and she’d experienced similar dif-

ficulties, but hadn’t had the courage to

tell people about it. She thanked him.

Another student confided that his uncle

had died from AIDS the year before.

What had been a secret shame became

an opportunity for students to discuss

sexual diversity more openly. Students

who were rigidly opposed to the idea

of homosexuality gained insights into

their own homophobia—especially

when presented with the personal rev-

elations from their classmates. Those

with homosexual relatives found new

allies with whom they could continue

their discussion and find support.

Sharing also provides a “collective

while or important. We kept reading

and hearing about all of these famous

people. I remember thinking, ‘Don’t

we have anyone?’ I walked out of the

school that day feeling tiny, invisible,

unimportant.”

As teachers, we have daily opportu-

nities to affirm that our students’ lives

and language are unique and impor-

tant. We do that in the selections of

literature we read, in the history we

choose to teach, and we do it by giv-

ing legitimacy to our students’ lives as a

content worthy of study.

One way to encourage the reluctant

writers who have been silenced—and

the not-so-reluctant writers who have

found a safe but sterile voice—is to ask

them to recount their experiences. I

sometimes recruit former students to

share their writing and their wisdom as

a way of underscoring the importance

of the voices and stories of teenagers.

Rochelle Easton, a student in my senior

writing class, brought in a few of her

stories and poems to read to my fresh-

men. Rochelle, like Zora Neale Hur-

ston, blends her home language with

Standard English in most pieces. She

read the following piece to open a dis-

cussion about how kids are sometimes

treated as servants in their homes, but

also to demonstrate the necessity of

using the language she hears in her

family to develop characters:

“I’m tired of washing dishes. Seems

like every time our family gets

together, they just got to eat and

bring their millions of kids over to

our house. And then we got to wash

the dishes.”

I listened sympathetically as my little

sister mumbled these words.

“And how come we can’t have ribs

like the grownups? After all, ain’t we

grown?”

“Lord,” I prayed, “seal her lips while

the blood is still running warm in

her veins.”

Her bottom lip protruded farther

and farther as she dipped each plate

in the soapy water, then rinsed each

side with cold water (about a two

second process) until she felt the

majority of suds were off.

“One minute we lazy women that

can’t keep the living room half clean.

The next minute we just kids and

gotta eat some funky chicken while

they eat ribs.”

… Suddenly it was quiet. All except

my little sister who was still talking. I

strained to hear a laugh or joke from

the adults in the living room, a hint

that all were well, full and ready to

go home. Everyone was still sitting

in their same spots, not making a

move to leave.

“You ought to be thankful you got a

choice.”

Uh-oh. Now she got Aunt Macy

started. ...

After reading her work, Rochelle

talked about listening to her family

and friends tell their stories. She urged

the freshmen to relate the tales of their

own lives—the times they were caught

doing something forbidden, the times

they got stuck with the dishes, the

funny/sad events that made their fresh-

man year memorable. When Rochelle

left, students wrote more easily. Some.

Some were afraid of the stories because

as Rance said, “It takes heart to tell the

truth about your life.”

But eventually they write. They

write stories. They write poems. They

write letters. They write essays. They

learn how to switch in and out of the

language of the powerful as Rochelle

does so effortlessly in her “tired of

chicken” piece.

sharing lessons And after we write, we listen to each

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 157

text” for us to examine the social roots

of problems more closely: Where do

men and women develop the ideas that

women are sexual objects? Where do

they learn that it’s OK for men to follow

women or make suggestive remarks?

Where is it written that it’s the wom-

an’s fault if a man leers at her? How did

these roles develop? Who gains from

them? Who loses? How could we make

it different? Our lives become a win-

dow to examine society.

learning the ‘standard’ without humiliation But the lessons can’t stop there. Fred

can write better now. He and his class-

mates can feel comfortable and safe

sharing their lives or discussing lit-

erature and the world. They can even

understand that they need to ask “Who

benefits?” to get a better perspective on

a problem. But still when they leave my

class or this school, some people will

judge them by how their subjects and

verbs line up.

So I teach Fred the rules. It’s the lan-

guage of power in this country, and I

would be cheating him if I pretended

otherwise. I teach him this more effec-

tively than Mrs. Delaney taught me

because I don’t humiliate him or put

down his language. I’m also more effec-

tive because I don’t rely on textbook

drills; I use the text of Fred’s writing.

But I also teach Fred what Mrs. Del-

aney left out.

I teach Fred that language, like

tracking, functions as part of a gate-

keeping system in our country. Who

gets managerial jobs, who works at

banks and who works at fast food res-

taurants, who gets into what college

and who gets into college at all, are

decisions linked to the ability to use

Standard English. So how do we teach

kids to write with honesty and passion

about their world and get them to study

the rules of the cash language? We go

back to our study of society. We ask:

Who made the rules that govern how

we speak and write? Did Ninh’s family

and Fred’s family and LaShonda’s fam-

ily all sit down together and decide on

these rules? Who already talks like this

and writes like this? Who has to learn

how to change the way they talk and

write? Why?

We make up our own tests that

speakers of Standard English would

find difficult. We read articles, stories,

poems written in Standard English and

those written in home language. We

listen to videotapes of people speak-

ing. Most kids like the sound of their

home language better. They like the

energy, the poetry, and the rhythm of

the language. We determine when and

why people shift. We talk about why it

might be necessary to learn Standard

English.

Asking my students to memorize

the rules without asking who makes

the rules, who enforces the rules, who

benefits from the rules, who loses from

the rules, who uses the rules to keep

some in and keep others out, legiti-

mates a social system that devalues

my students’ knowledge and language.

Teaching the rules without reflection

also underscores that it’s OK for oth-

ers—“authorities”—to dictate some-

thing as fundamental and as personal

as the way they speak. Further, the

study of Standard English without cri-

tique encourages students to believe

that if they fail, it is because they are

not smart enough or didn’t work hard

enough. They learn to blame them-

selves. If they get poor SAT scores, low

grades on term papers or essays because

of language errors, fail teacher entrance

exams, they will internalize the blame;

they will believe they did not succeed

because they are inferior instead of

questioning the standard of measure-

ment and those making the standards.

We must teach students how to

match subjects and verbs, how to

pronounce lawyer, because they are

the ones without power and, for the

moment, have to use the language of the

powerful to be heard. But, in addition,

we need to equip them to question an

educational system that devalues their

life and their knowledge. If we don’t,

we condition them to a pedagogy of

consumption where they will consume

the knowledge, priorities, and products

that have been decided and manufac-

tured without them in mind.

It took me years to undo what Mrs.

Delaney did to me. Years to discover

that what I said was more important

than how I said it. Years to understand

that my words, my family’s words,

weren’t wrong, weren’t bad—they were

just the words of the working class. For

too long, I felt inferior when I spoke. I

knew the voice of my childhood crept

out, and I confused that with igno-

rance. It wasn’t. I just didn’t belong to

the group who made the rules. I was an

outsider, a foreigner in their world. My

students won’t be. n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

Students must be taught to hold their own voices sacred, to ignore the teachers who have made them

feel wrong or bad or stupid.

mailto:nfo%40amazeworks.org?subject=

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn158

seeing Color by lisa Delpit

diverse—particularly African-Amer-

ican—children in her kindergarten

classrooms. Her first teaching jobs were

in the segregated schools of the South,

where she became the school radical

by telling everyone that she wanted

an integrated class, that society forced

her to teach only white children. When

she moved back North, she found her-

self teaching white children in a white

suburb. She had an occasional black

student—one the child of the live-in

maid of a prominent family, two others

when the school board attempted some

minor integration. And her encoun-

ters with these children caused Paley

concern. One avoided looking at her

and only responded to her questions

with “Yes’m.” Another, Fred, joined

As a new teacher, I was deliver-ing my first reading lesson to 1st-grade students in inner- city Philadelphia. I had practically

memorized the publisher-provided les-

son dialogue while practicing in front

of a mirror the night before.

“Good morning, boys and girls.

Today we’re going to read a story about

where we live, in the city.” A small

brown hand was raised. “Yes, Marti.”

Marti had been a kindergartner in the

informal classroom where I completed

student teaching.

“Teacher, how come you talkin’ like

a white person? You talkin’ just like

my momma talk when she get on the

phone!”

Needless to say, the practiced les-

son was put aside as we relaxed into

my more typical informal and cultur-

ally familiar interaction patterns. And

I was once again struck by the brilliant

perception of 6-year-olds.

This and other vignettes of my

teaching career surfaced as I reread

Vivian Gussin Paley’s fascinating White

Teacher. There was no stopping the

flood of scenes of children, parents, and

teachers, for Paley’s writing is so vivid,

so classroom-centered, so immediate

that anyone who has ever taught—or

ever thought about teaching—cannot

help being drawn into the daily dramas

she describes perfectly. White Teacher,

originally published in 1979, was reis-

sued in 1990, probably because Paley

was awarded a prestigious MacArthur

Foundation fellowship in 1989. She was

the first classroom teacher so honored.

The book details Paley’s develop-

ment as she struggled to learn to teach

an aggressive group of six white kids.

When the teachers came into Paley’s

room under various pretenses to, as

Paley says, “check out the two black

children,” they all singled out Fred.

“You’ve got your hands full with him.”

“Shouldn’t he be in a special class?”

Color blindness At the first faculty meeting Paley raised

the issue that even though all the chil-

dren in Fred’s small group behaved

as he did, teachers singled out Fred

because of his color. After vigorous dis-

cussion, the faculty reached a consen-

sus: “More than ever we must take care

to ignore color. We must only look at

behavior, and since a black child will be

more prominent in a white classroom,

R o

D R

ig u

e z

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 159

we must bend over backward to see no

color, hear no color, speak no color.”

Paley found herself confused by such

directives when children themselves

raised issues of color. In one instance

a little white child told a little black

girl that she looked like chocolate

pudding. Was that an insult? Should

Paley reprimand the white child? She

found herself trapped not only by the

school’s position but by her own lib-

eral upbringing: “We showed respect

by completely ignoring black people as

black people. Color blindness was the

essence of the creed.”

Insight came when Paley moved to

a Midwestern city and took a job at an

integrated private school. Although

most of the faculty and professional

staff were white, about a third of the

students were children of color. Early

on she had a meeting with a black par-

ent. “Mrs. Hawkins told me that in her

children’s previous school the teacher

had said, ‘There is no color differ-

ence in my classroom. All my children

look alike to me.’ ‘What rot,’ said Mrs.

Hawkins. ‘My children are black. They

know they’re black, and we want it rec-

ognized. It’s a comfortable natural dif-

ference. At least it could be so, if you

teachers learned to value differences

more. What you value, you talk about.’”

Thus began the journey toward

acknowledging and valuing differ-

ences. When Michelle, black and viva-

cious, pointed to a picture in a book

and said she wished she looked like

the pink-cheeked blond girl on the

page, Paley recalls, “I could have eas-

ily ignored this. Maybe Juli Ann, white

and plain, wished she looked like the

girl in the book too ... But Michelle had

a special, obvious reason. I knew I must

say something. ‘Michelle, I know how

you feel. When I was little I also would

have liked to look like this little girl. She

doesn’t look like anyone in my fam-

ily, so I couldn’t have looked like her.

Sometimes, I wish I had smooth brown

interpersonal relationships. While the

number of children of color in our pub-

lic schools is rapidly rising, the number

of teachers of color continues to decline.

More than ever, white teachers will be

teaching African-American children.

As a teacher-educator, I have

worked with white students who will

be tomorrow’s teachers, and I have

many African-American friends who

have done the same. The attitude that

Paley brought to her first black stu-

dents—that to acknowledge their color

would be to insult them—is prevalent

among our young white people about

to join the teaching profession. One

of my teacher-education colleagues

told me that Paley’s book was the only

book she had found that helped her

students understand that to say you

don’t see color is to say you don’t see

children. Her students were then able

to understand that people could be

proud of their color and their differ-

ences and that the teacher could help

this process.

Qualities of a good teacher Paley exhibits other behavior and

attitudes that I try to instill in future

teachers. First and foremost, she is

an observer of children. When some-

thing goes wrong with a child, she does

not assume that the cause necessarily

lies within the child. She looks to her

own teaching and to her own lack of

knowledge. She realizes that she prob-

ably misses much of the intelligence

of the children who are from another

culture. She points out that when a

child who shares her own Jewish back-

ground makes comments about meat

and dairy dishes, she receives instant

messages about his or her intelligence.

But when several black children tell her

that “black people don’t eat pig. Only

white people eat pig,” she is honest

enough to say, “I think I am missing

part of the picture presented by many

black children by not being familiar

skin like yours. Then I could always be

dark and pretty.’ Michelle looked down

at her skin. So did everyone else. I don’t

know what she was thinking. But I

knew the feelings I had expressed were

true, though I did not know it until I

spoke.”

In Paley’s chronicle of her develop-

ment of learning from and with her

students over five years, she encoun-

ters Steven’s angry, “DON’T TALK TO

ME. I don’t have to listen to no white

lady. … Don’t nobody white look at

me. Don’t talk to me. You stink. Fuck-

ers!” Kenny didn’t want to take off his

jacket because the teacher might not

like what his T-shirt said: “SUPER-

NIGGER, guardian of the oppressed.”

Clare, from a West Indian family, was in

such unfamiliar cultural territory that

she was almost diagnosed as retarded.

Another Kenny, whose physical prow-

ess and bravado were amazing as long

as he was outside tumbling with his

brothers, was so timid during school

activities that he became speechless if

required to perform some small task in

front of the whole class.

It is important that this book has

been reissued. Never has there been

so much talk about “restructuring”

schools. While legislators, governors,

and various “experts” debate the vir-

tues of “site-based management,”

“merit pay,” “choice,” or “accountability

schemes,” there is little talk about the

kind of “restructuring” that must hap-

pen before we can make any headway

with education: the restructuring of

To say you don’t see

color is to say you don’t see

children.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn160

with the context within which certain

simple statements are made.”

She also seeks to learn from adults

who look like the children she teaches.

Many white teachers, with the best of

intentions, believe that they know what

is best for all children. And because

they view themselves as liberals, they

believe that their behavior is above

reproach. In Paley’s words, “My luggage

had ‘liberal’ ostentatiously plastered all

over it, and I thought it unnecessary to

see what was locked inside.” Believing

in their “rightness,” some liberal white

teachers do not seek the opinions of

parents or teachers of color, and they

even subtly discredit those opinions if

offered. Paley, on the other hand, often

sought the insights of the parents of her

black students, and she worked with

them to find solutions to problems.

When teachers are teaching children

who are different from themselves,

they must call upon parents in a collab-

orative fashion if they are to learn who

their students really are.

Paley also learned from an African-

American woman who worked with

her as a student teacher one year. Janet

was an older woman and an excep-

tional teacher with lots of experience

teaching in preschool. Paley watched

how she handled situations and asked

questions about her own performance.

That Paley was different from most

teachers can be verified by Janet’s reac-

tion to the rest of the staff, with whom

she was withdrawn and silent. When

Paley asked her about it, Janet said

she didn’t feel comfortable with most

white teachers because “they either

avoid talking about race like it was a

plague, or else they look at me only

when black kids are discussed as if the

ghetto is the only thing I know any-

thing about.” White teachers can utilize

culturally diverse colleagues as learning

resources only if they respect them and

their opinions—not a typical scenario

in today’s schools.

Doris, in perfect imitation of older

black women, put her hands on her hips

as my co-teacher was leading her to the

“time-out” chair: Doris said, “You better

take your hands off my clothes. People’s

mamas have to pay for their clothes!”

My own daughter is not yet 2 years

old, but of course I have begun to think

about what kind of school environ-

ment I want for her. After spending

hours searching for black-oriented

books and taking a brown felt-tip pen

to white toy figures, I do not want

her to come home, like many of my

friends’ children who have attended

predominantly white preschools and

kindergartens, and say that she’s ugly

because she’s brown or that she wants

long blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t

want her to spend much of her think-

ing power trying to figure out what

she should or shouldn’t say to a white

teacher. In other words, when she is 5

years old, I want her to be nourished

and nurtured as she would be at home.

I don’t want her to feel alien or dif-

ferent. I want her to believe that she

and people who look like her are gor-

geous, smart, and in charge of things. I

strongly want her to be in an African-

American environment. There will be

time later to learn about differences, to

learn to struggle in a sometimes hostile

environment. But when she’s 5, I don’t

want her too far from home.

Paley praises the integrated kinder-

garten environment. But she does not

have to worry about being a minority

of color. In fact, she declined an offer

to teach in an inner-city school because

she didn’t think she could handle being

in the minority again, as she felt she had

been in the South. Should we inflict such

difficult status on our 5-year-olds? n

Lisa D. Delpit is an Eminent Scholar and

Executive Director of the Center for Urban

Education and Innovation at Florida

International University in Miami.

“Seeing Color” originally appeared in the

Hungry Mind Review.

Paley’s book and her approach to

children have many strengths, and I

could not hope for a more sensitive

white teacher of African-American

children. Yet I worry. Paley asks, “How

much does it matter if a child can-

not identify ethnically or racially with

a teacher? Does it matter at all? If the

teacher accepts him and likes him as he

really is, isn’t that enough?” I suspect

she and I might differ.

Remaining Questions I wonder whether so many of the Afri-

can-American children in her classes

would have expressed a desire to be

white if their teacher had been black. I

feel for Ayana when she and Rena were

helping Paley put away blocks and Rena

said, “White people tell lies.” I surmise

from other conversations in the book

that several of Paley’s black students

have been exposed to the philosophies

of the Nation of Islam and carried

some of those discussions from home

into the classroom. “That’s right, they

do tell lies,” Ayana agreed. Paley asked,

“Do all white people tell lies?” Paley

continues: “Ayana read my face. ‘Uh …

no. Not all white people.’ She looked

guiltily at Rena.” Clearly Ayana must

have been expending energy in this

classroom determining what she could

and could not say to this white teacher

whom she loved and trusted. And this is

an instance that Paley was aware of. In

how may other situations in this class

did Ayana and other black children

have to spend time and energy work-

ing out the complexities of what was

appropriate for a non-black audience?

By contrast, I recall the easiness with

which Marti, in my opening vignette,

could bring up race with me and the

ease with which I could slip into our

comfortable way of interacting. I also

recall my understanding, apprecia-

tion, and suppressed laughter—and

my white co-teacher’s shock and hurt

until we discussed the incident—when

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 161

or pregnant teens, or they have to

identify themselves as something of

a problem to get help. We wanted to

shift that perspective and wanted to

say, “OK, let’s talk about your issues

from the perspective of where you

want to go, from the perspective of

your potential.”

There’s an old saying that goes, “It

takes a village to raise a child.” We said,

if it takes a village to raise a child, why

not help raise the village? That was the

mission that Luis Garden Acosta along

with Frances Lucerna, two of the co-

founders of El Puente, the organiza-

tion, decided to embark upon. We took

a lot of the ideas we had developed in

the leadership center (the after-school

program) to the academy. We tried to

create a seamless program that would

start at 8:00 in the morning and end at

8:00 at night.

How does the school develop leaders

for peace and justice?

There’s a four-year vision. When

Héctor Calderón is principal at El

Puente Academy for Peace and Justice

in Brooklyn, N.Y. El Puente, which

means “the bridge” in Spanish, bridges

the arts, health, environment, and edu-

cation. The school shares a mission with

the community organization that cre-

ated it: to nurture leadership for peace

and justice. It was one of 40 schools

founded in a five-year period by grants

from the New Visions Foundation.

Located in the Williamsburg neighbor-

hood, the academy serves 160 students,

80 percent of whom are Latino. Fifty-

nine percent live below the poverty

line, and 90 percent are eligible for free

and reduced-price school lunches. As of

2001, 80 percent of students graduated

in four years.

Calderón spoke with Catherine

Capellaro, former managing editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine, in 2005.

How did El Puente Academy for Peace

and Justice come to be?

El Puente as a leadership center

has been around since 1982. But in

1993 we had the unique opportunity

to envision what a school could look

like. We had been successful in devel-

oping training for young people to

become leaders in peace and justice.

The heart of our mission is to inspire

and nurture leadership. Kids did

activities here: dancing, mural paint-

ing, or doing community health and

environment internships. We engaged

young people in a dialogue about this

kind of life, this way of being. We

were coming from the perspective of

potential, rather than deficit. In most

organizations, young people have to

have a problem: They’re drug addicts,

when small is beautiful an interview with héctor Calderón

we create our curriculum, the funda-

mental question that we try to answer

is “Who am I?” So all curricula in the

9th grade has that as a central theme.

In global studies, in English, in math,

in science, they all are trying to figure

out who they are. For example, if I’m

a history teacher, then you understand

yourself historically, culturally. In

English, we look at literature that deals

with questions of identity. We read a

lot of books, from Down These Mean

Streets by Piri Thomas, to Bodega

Dreams, to Drown by Juno Diaz, com-

ing-of-age stories that young people

can identify with because the experi-

ences resemble their own. There is

study in science of self, which is biol-

ogy, where they discover themselves

as biological beings. They study life

from conception to development and

life around them. In math, you’re also

writing your personal narratives and

experiences with mathematics.

This must take an enormous amount

of coordination among teachers.

How do you pull it all together?

There were three things that we

realized early on, three conceptual

frameworks or tenets that we abide by.

One was that disciplines came out of

the needs and experiences of people.

Whether you’re teaching math, sci-

ence, history, language—all of them

were created because there were real

community needs. We say that if dis-

ciplines came out of the needs and

experiences of people, why are we

separating community or community

organizing from school?

The second tenet is that knowledge

in its natural state is holistic. In most

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn162

in a way that allows us to become fully

human. That struggle is a struggle for

liberation. And I think schools have a

profound obligation and duty to really

allow young people to become fully

developed and nurtured, to become

the best they can be.

What does that look like in practice?

One example is the sugar project,

which began in 1996 and 1997. We

were looking at trying to create an

integrated arts project. It’s a way of

really infusing the arts throughout

the curriculum and at the same time

letting the disciplines speak to com-

munity issues, particularly because

of the history of Williamsburg, where

Domino Sugar is four or five blocks

away from the school. At one point

Domino Sugar distributed 50 per-

cent of the United States’ sugar. It was

refined right at this plant. Many of the

parents of the young people who came

here worked at some point or another

at Domino Sugar. We wanted to take

the issue of sugar and look at it as a

collaboration between community

artists, organizers, academy facilita-

schools, you learn math here, you

learn English here, you learn history

here. It loses the synergy between the

disciplines. How do they speak to each

other? That translates into questions

from young people, like, “Why are we

doing this?” “How is this connected to

what I’m learning in history?” So kids

might be doing essays in English, for

example, and we give them an essay in

history and they’re like, “Whoa, why

are we doing this here?” That’s because

there’s a loss of those connections.

There are larger connections at the

conceptual level, like how the theme

of identity goes through all the subject

areas. Young people begin to see how

each of the disciplines speak to it.

The last tenet is [Paulo Freire’s] idea

of education for liberation. By libera-

tion we mean the struggle to become

fully human. We say that because at

some level we are born fully human,

but because of dehumanizing condi-

tions—particularly for young people

of color—they experience a lack of

affordable housing, lack of health

care, lack of access to good education,

to things we need to help us develop

tors, as a way of integrating language

arts, history, government, visual arts,

dance, and music. We looked at the

history of sugar and how it came from

Europe and the history of slavery—to

really create something rich and pro-

found as a subject of study.

We looked at the implications of

sugar. If I was a chemistry teacher, I

was looking at the composition of

sugar and the chemical structures

that make up sugar. History teachers

looked at the history of slavery in the

sugar plantations in the Caribbean

and throughout the South. The health

class looked at the effects of sugar,

particularly in the crisis of obesity.

The economics teacher was looking at

the labor of sugar: the Domino sugar

factory and their use of labor in this

country, the wages that people get

paid, and who got to work there. Stu-

dents did a lot of oral history projects

with former Domino workers.

All these ideas and projects culmi-

nated in an outdoor performance at

our community garden where we rec-

reated a lot of these things, the history

of sugar, the effects of sugar. It became

a carnival-like procession complete

with stilt-walkers, performed through

the streets of the community. The

whole community came out and really

just embraced the project. It was a

great way of bridging the community

and the work that we were doing. All

the integrated arts projects have that

as a final component.

What is the current theme at El

Puente Academy?

This year the project is health. As

part of that we’re looking at Radiac

Research Corporation. Radiac is a

low-level nuclear waste disposal plant,

the only one in New York State—a

block away from the school. If any-

thing were ever to happen in that

place, it would release a toxic cloud

that would engulf all of Williamsburg

Student mural painters from el Puente.

JO E

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Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 163

fascinating. That report was pub-

lished in a health journal. It was really

the first time that a community-based

organization’s work was actually pub-

lished in a medical journal. This is

what we mean by community knowl-

edge, really engaging in this kind of

work that we feel is important.

How are themes developed, pro-

posed, or selected?

Usually we bring together a lot of

people, a team of stakeholders who

are thinking about different things.

… And then we pick a theme based

on our conversation. This year [we

discussed] three questions: What do

you think is the greatest issue affect-

ing our communities? Which issue are

you personally invested in? What is

the issue you feel you have the greatest

capacity to influence?

For example, the issue I felt was fac-

ing our community is gentrification.

Personally, I was invested in the issue

of police brutality. And, lastly, I think

the greatest place where the public can

influence and really change things is

the environment. I think there were

and parts of lower Manhattan. We

want to stop the permit this year for

Radiac operating the plant on the

waterfront.

Williamsburg reads like a “Who’s

Who of Environmental Hazards.” We

have the Williamsburg Bridge, we

have the Brooklyn-Queens Express-

way, where cars are constantly emit-

ting carbon monoxide into the air.

We also have a nuclear plant right

here. Every year, one project we do

is to measure the level of particu-

lates, and students look at the health

effects of these particulates.

We also have one of the biggest

underground oil spills, bigger than

the Exxon Valdez. It’s still spilling;

they can’t stop it; it’s underground

and it’s been ongoing. We are part of

what they call “the lead belt” and the

“the asthma belt.”

Asthma is a huge issue in this

community. Through the Commu-

nity Health and Environment Group,

which is an organizing arm of El

Puente, our students are doing surveys

of the level of asthma in this com-

munity. We count within a 10-block

radius and identify many families as

having asthma. As part of the work,

we try to provide extra services to

those families. Biology takes on

another dimension for our students

when they’re studying the respiratory

system and they are looking at asthma

and how it affects that population.

One of the things that the health

coordinator at El Puente did was help

students look at the Dominican and

Puerto Rican populations that live

primarily in the south side of Wil-

liamsburg. We found out that there

is a higher incidence of asthma in

Puerto Ricans. Then we tried to find

out why that was. We looked at natu-

ral remedies that Dominicans use that

may not be as prevalent in the Puerto

Rican population. We had a whole

presentation of this and it was really

enough of those common answers

around, and that’s how we chose the

idea of the health/environment theme.

Once the theme is chosen, a group

of facilitators/artists begins to brain-

storm different angles and takes on

the issue. Classes are developed. We

have what we call educational options.

A lot of those classes directly speak to

the integrated arts project. The design

team really is the glue that keeps all the

different things together. They decide

what the culminating piece will look

like and, ultimately, they will keep the

curriculum tight and together so that

everybody is on board with the work

that we’re trying to do.

How does the size of El Puente con-

tribute to being able to implement

curriculum like you’re describing?

Size is definitely a key. On one level,

it’s great that I can go to any of my stu-

dents. I know their names, who they

are, where they live, the families they

come from. I know something about

what they’re personally invested in. If

you’re putting a curriculum forward

that deals with community, one of

Student mural painters from el Puente.

JO E

m ATu

n IS

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn164

the key factors for any organizer is to

know your community. What are they

invested in? What are their self-inter-

ests? Being small allows us to really

create the kind of close-knit com-

munities that we have. It allows us to

really serve the interests of our young

people.

If we were larger, we could do this

kind of work, but it would clearly be

more difficult to be as attuned as we

are to our young people. Size really

matters—and it matters because I can

go to staff and coordinate in ways that

if I had a larger staff would be much

harder. We also have a whole comple-

mentary group of people that are hon-

orary staff people who are part of the

community-based organization. They

also integrate with us in the work that

we do.

How tied to the standards and

Regents exams does El Puente have

to be?

The work that we do is very rigor-

ous and it hits a lot of the standards

that are put out there for subject

areas. For example, in an economics

class, students are looking at lending

practices of banks in our neighbor-

hood. They talk about redlining. That

project became a part of creating a

report in which we disaggregated data

by race, class, gender, and geography

and looked at the disparity in lend-

ing practices. They took that to the

city council. I think all of that requires

rigorous learning. We give Regents,

but for me, it’s not the only gauge. We

also do portfolio assessments in which

we tie those assessments closer to the

curriculum that we’re teaching. So

students have to take all the Regents

that they would have to take at any

other school. They also have to pass

at a level of competence in each of six

portfolios.

How do you define “rigor”?

If you can really find answers to

fundamental problems that are plagu-

ing the community, that is rigorous.

It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort.

People understand that the work we

are doing is explicitly tied to bettering

the community.

What does a school for social justice

mean to you? Why do you think this

orientation is important?

Schools were meant to address a

need within the community, a need to

educate people. Why would we want

to educate our young people? Clearly,

every generation must build on the

next generation. With us it’s about

educating young people who don’t

understand the fundamental respon-

sibility to the world and the environ-

ment in which they live.

Whether we’re using the arts to

get there or you’re using the sciences

to get there, we all as citizens of the

world have a responsibility to make

the world we live in much better. The

Native Americans talk about building

for seven generations. I think, in many

ways, schools have really become

about educating the self, devoid of

community.

A lot of schools think they’ve done

their mission if they educate kids who

go to Harvard and become great at

whatever they do. We want our kids

to go to the best schools. We want

them to have access to a great educa-

tion. But we also ask the fundamental

question: For the sake of what? For

the sake of what are we educating our

young people? It has to do with this

sacred covenant that we have with the

world around us. We have a moral

and civil obligation to really make the

world a better place. To me, the idea of

social justice is not some pie-in-the-

sky thing: It begins with our students.

It begins in daily acts, in understand-

ing the connection between what

they learn in school and the commu-

nity they live in. It begins in practical

applications of their knowledge to

better the world they live in. n

The sugar project is a way of really infusing the arts throughout

the curriculum and at the same time letting the disciplines speak to

community issues.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 165

i won’t learn from you! Confronting student resistance

by herbert kohl

Y ears ago, one of my 5th-grade students told me that his grandfather Wilfredo wouldn’t learn to speak English. He said that no

matter how hard you tried to teach

him, he ignored whatever words you

tried to teach and forced you to speak

to him in Spanish. When I got to know

his grandfather I asked, in Spanish,

whether I could teach him English and

he told me unambiguously that he did

not want to learn. He was frightened,

he said, that his grandchildren would

never learn Spanish if he gave in like

the rest of the adults and spoke Eng-

lish with the children. Then, he said,

they would not know who they were.

At the end of our conversation he

repeated adamantly that nothing could

make him learn to speak English, that

families and cultures could not survive

if the children lost their parents’ lan-

guage, and, finally, that learning what

others wanted you to learn can some-

times destroy you.

I discussed Wilfredo’s reflections

with several friends, and they inter-

preted his remarks as a cover-up of

either his own fear of trying to learn

English or his failure to do so. These

explanations, however, show a lack of

respect for Wilfredo’s ability to judge

what is appropriate learning for him-

self and his grandchildren. By attribut-

ing failure to Wilfredo and refusing to

acknowledge the loss his family would

experience through not knowing Span-

ish, they turned a cultural problem

into a personal psychological problem:

They turned willed refusal to learn into

failure to learn.

I have encountered willed not-learn-

ing throughout my 40 years of teach-

ing, and believe that such not-learning

is often and disastrously mistaken for

failure to learn or the inability to learn.

Learning how to not-learn is an

intellectual and social challenge; some-

times you have to work very hard at

it. It consists of an active, often inge-

nious, willful rejection of even the

most compassionate and well-designed

teaching. Not-learning tends to take

place when someone has to deal with

unavoidable challenges to her or his

personal and family loyalties, integrity,

and identity. In such situations, there

are forced choices and no apparent

middle ground. To agree to learn from

a stranger who does not respect your

integrity causes a major loss of self.

c LE

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn166

The only alternative is to not-learn and

reject their world.

the lessons of san antonio I remember visiting some teacher

friends in San Antonio many years

ago. I was there trying to help in their

struggles to eliminate anti-Latino rac-

ism in the public schools in the barrios.

There were very few Latino teachers

and no Latino administrators in bar-

rio schools in the parts of San Antonio

where my friends worked. Many of the

administrators were Anglo, retired mil-

itary personnel from the San Antonio

air force base who had hostile, impe-

rialist attitudes towards the children

they taught and the communities they

served.

In one junior high I was invited

to observe a history class by a teacher

who admitted that he needed help with

this particular group of students, all of

whom were Latino. The teacher gave

me a copy of his textbook, and I sat in

the back of the room and followed the

lesson for the day, which was entitled,

“The first people to settle Texas.” The

teacher asked for someone to volunteer

to read and no one responded. Most

of the students were slumped down in

their desks and none of them looked

directly at the teacher. Some gazed off

into space, others exchanged glimpses

and grimaces. The teacher didn’t ask

for attention and started to read the

text himself. It went something like,

“The first people to settle Texas arrived

from New England and the South in ...”

Two boys in the back put their hands in

their eyes; there were a few giggles and

some murmuring. One hand shot up

and that student blurted out, “What are

we, animals or something?” The teach-

er’s response was, “What does that have

to do with the text?” Then he decided

to abandon the lesson, introduced me

as a visiting teacher who would substi-

tute for the rest of the period and left

the room.

I don’t know if he planned to do that

all along and set me up to fail with the

students just as he did, or if his anger

at being observed overcame him and

he decided to dump the whole thing

on me. Whatever the motivation, he

left the room, and I was there with the

students. I went up front and reread

the sentence from the book and asked

the class to raise their hands if they

believed what I had just read. A few of

them became alert, though they looked

at me suspiciously as I continued,

“This is lies, nonsense. In fact, I think

the textbook is racist and an insult to

everyone in this room.” Everyone woke

up and the same student who had asked

the teacher about animal life turned to

me and asked, “You mean that?” I said

I did, and then he interrupted and said,

“Well, there’s more than that book

that’s racist around here.”

I said that it was obvious that the

textbook was racist, it was there for

everyone to read, but wondered how

they detected racism in their teachers.

The class launched into a serious and

sophisticated discussion of the way in

which racism manifests itself in their

everyday lives at school. And they

described the stance they took in order

to resist that racism and yet not be

thrown out of school. It amounted to

nothing less than full-blown and coop-

erative not-learning. They accepted the

failing grades it produced in exchange

for the passive defense of their per-

sonal and cultural integrity. This was

a class of school failures, and perhaps,

I believed then and still believe, the

repository for the positive leadership

and intelligence of their generation.

not-learning is not Failure Until we learn to distinguish not-

learning from failure and respect the

truth behind this massive rejection of

schooling by students from poor and

oppressed communities, it will not be

possible to solve the major problems of

education in the United States today.

Risk-taking is at the heart of teaching

well. That means that teachers will have

to not-learn the ways of loyalty to the

system and to speak out for, as the tra-

ditional African-American song goes,

the concept that everyone has a right to

the tree of life. We must give up look-

ing at resistant students as failures and

turn a critical eye towards this wealthy

society and the schools that it supports.

No amount of educational research,

no development of techniques or

materials, no special programs or com-

pensatory services, no restructuring or

retraining of teachers will make any

fundamental difference until we con-

cede that for many students, the only

sane alternative to not-learning is the

acknowledgment and direct confron-

tation of oppression—social, sexual,

and economic—both in school and in

society. Education built on accepting

that hard truth about our society can

break through not-learning and lead

students and teachers together, not to

the solution of problems but to direct

intelligent engagement in the struggles

that might lead to solutions. n

Herbert Kohl is author of 36 Children.

This essay is dedicated to the memory of

Betty Rawls and the struggle for justice.

Excerpted from the book I Won’t Learn

from You and Other Thoughts on

Creative Maladjustment (The New Press,

1994.)

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 167

Food is not for Play by Jean hannon

Not everyone’s mealtimes look like

mine.

There will not necessarily be enough

food tomorrow.

Food is not for play.

T hese are the lessons I learned from Ana, and this is how she taught me: Five-year-old Ana entered our class-

room and went immediately to the large

container of plastic snow play toys. She

retrieved the dish-like items (recycled

yogurt and applesauce containers) and

meticulously placed them all in a neat

row. Then Ana moved down the line

of dishes carrying a much larger con-

tainer and a makeshift ladle. She pains-

takingly scooped something invisible

(to me) into each smaller container.

I understood that Ana was playing her

version of “house”; she was dramatizing

mealtime at the orphanage in northern

China where she had spent most of her

young life. Ana had moved to her new

home and new family only three weeks

before joining our classroom.

Harrison, a classmate, quickly

learned that the simplest and most

effective way to terrorize Ana was to

make lunging gestures toward her open

lunch box. Harrison never actually

took any of Ana’s carefully packaged

and abundant lunchbox contents. But

he intimidated Ana with the idea that

he could take her food. Ana would cry,

Ana’s new friends would scold Harrison,

and he would smirk. As I soothed Ana,

I would talk to Harrison and encourage

him to consider Ana’s perspective.

Not all of the learning centers in our

kindergarten classroom were available

to the children every day. Some I kept

for “special.” It was a Friday in Febru-

ary and the children stood around one

particular center in acute anticipation.

As I removed the cover from the sen-

sory table, Ana shrank back in horror.

I had presented the class with a play

area filled with rice. In it was enough

to feed how many for how long? And

I was encouraging the students to stick

their hands into that food, to measure,

to manipulate, to play! The look on

Ana’s face at the moment I lifted that

cover and she first understood what I

was suggesting has not left me in the

intervening 10 years.

That experience helped me to con-

clude that using food for art or play is

misguided.

Young children mostly believe their

teachers. They believe that their teach-

ers know a great deal and are generally

truthful. Young children repeat their

teachers’ platitudes and embrace their

classroom gestures. When young chil-

dren play school they model their dra-

matic behavior after that of their teach-

ers, and their imitative play is often

embarrassingly accurate.

I have come to realize just how con-

fusing my use of food for play and art

was, not only for Ana, but for all my

young students. While we collected cans

of food “for the hungry,” I also facilitated

a lesson where students glued beans to

cardboard to outline the letters of their

names. I nagged the children to eat their

lunches and not throw away food, but

followed it by encouraging them in tac-

tile exploration at the rice table. Perhaps

because they wanted to continue feeling

safe and cared for by a competent and

thoughtful adult, the children did not

question my particular brand of hypoc-

risy. Still, how could they not have been

confused by the discrepancy between

what I said about the value of food and

the other lessons I provided?

Several things were inherent in my

lessons: a disconnect between consum-

ers, food, food workers, and ultimately

the earth itself, a finite resource. Inher-

ent also was the message of “them” and

“us.” “We” have enough and we can

therefore waste. “They” do not have

enough and must rely on the more for-

tunate and/or capable “us.”

I believe guilt is a useless emotion

unless it leads to change. Ana’s lessons

forced me to reevaluate and change my

teaching practice: In our classroom food

is no longer part of our art or play. n

Jean Hannon currently teaches 2nd grade

at Badger Road Elementary School near

Fairbanks, Alaska. Ana was in Hannon’s

kindergarten class at Badger Elementary.

k ATh

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In E

S TR

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn168

Issues of racism and direct confronta-tion between African-American and European-American people in the United States are usually considered

too sensitive to be dealt with directly

in the elementary school classroom.

When African Americans and European

Americans are involved in confrontation

in children’s texts, the situation is rou-

tinely described as a problem between

individuals that can be worked out on

a personal basis. In the few cases where

racism is addressed as a social problem,

there has to be a happy ending.

This is most readily apparent in the

biographical treatment of Rosa Parks,

one of the two names that most chil-

dren associate with the Civil Rights

Movement, the other being Martin

Luther King, Jr.

The image of “Rosa Parks the Tired”

exists on the level of a national cultural

icon. Dozens of children’s books and

textbooks present the same version of

what might be called “Rosa Parks and

the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” This

version can be synthesized as follows:

Rosa Parks was a poor seamstress.

She lived in Montgomery, Ala., dur-

ing the 1950s. In those days there

was still segregation in parts of

the United States. That meant that

African Americans and European

Americans were not allowed to use

the same public facilities such as

restaurants or swimming pools. It

also meant that whenever the city

buses were crowded, African Ameri-

cans had to give up seats in front to

European Americans and move to

The driver called a policeman, who

arrested Rosa.

When other African Americans

in Montgomery heard this, they

became angry too, so they decided to

refuse to ride the buses until every-

one was allowed to ride together.

They boycotted the buses.

The boycott, which was led by

Martin Luther King, Jr., succeeded.

Now African Americans and Euro-

the back of the bus.

One day on her way home from

work Rosa was tired and sat down

in the front of the bus. As the bus

got crowded she was asked to give

up her seat to a European-American

man, and she refused. The bus driver

told her she had to go to the back

of the bus, and she still refused to

move. It was a hot day, she was tired

and angry, and she became very

stubborn.

the Politics of Children’s literature what’s wrong with the Rosa Parks myth

by herbert kohl

In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.

A P

/W ID

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O R

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 169

pean Americans can ride the buses

together in Montgomery.

Rosa Parks was a very brave person.

This story seems innocent enough.

Rosa Parks is treated with respect, and

the African-American community is

given credit for running the boycott

and winning the struggle. On closer

examination, however, this version

reveals some distressing characteristics

that serve to turn a carefully planned

movement for social change into a

spontaneous outburst based upon

frustration and anger.

The following annotations on the

previous summary suggest that we need

a new story, one not only more in line

with the truth but one that shows the

organizational skills and determination

of the African-American community

in Montgomery and the role of the bus

boycott in the larger struggle to deseg-

regate Montgomery and the South.

Correcting the myth

1. Rosa Parks was a poor, tired seam-

stress. She lived in Montgomery, Ala.,

during the 1950s.

Rosa Parks was one of the first

women in Montgomery to join the

National Association for the Advance-

ment of Colored People and was its

secretary for years. At the NAACP she

worked with chapter president E.D.

Nixon, who was also vice president of

the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Por-

ters. Parks learned about union strug-

gles from him. She also worked with

the youth division of the NAACP, and

she took a youth NAACP group to visit

the Freedom Train when it came to

Montgomery in 1954. The train, which

carried the originals of the U.S. Consti-

tution and the Declaration of Indepen-

dence, was traveling around the United

States promoting the virtues of democ-

racy. Since its visit was a federal project,

access to the exhibits could not be seg-

regated. Parks took advantage of that

2. In those days there was still segre-

gation in parts of the United States.

That meant that African Ameri-

cans and European Americans were

not allowed to use the same public

facilities.

The existence of legalized segrega-

tion in the South during the 1950s is

integral to the story of the Montgom-

ery bus boycott, yet it is an embarrass-

ment to many school people and dif-

ficult to explain to children without

accounting for the moral corruption of

the majority of the European-Ameri-

can community in the South.

Locating segregation in the past is

a way of avoiding dealing with its cur-

rent manifestations and implying that

racism is no longer a major problem.

Describing segregation passively

(“There was still segregation” instead

of “European Americans segregated

facilities so that African Americans

couldn’t use them”) also ignores the

issue of legalized segregation, even

though Parks was arrested for a viola-

tion of the Alabama law that required

segregation in public facilities. It

doesn’t talk overtly about racism. And

it refers to “parts” of the United States,

softening the tone and muddying the

reference to the South.

I’ve raised the question of how to

expose children to the reality of seg-

regation and racism to a number of

educators, both African-American

and European-American. Most of

the European-American and a few of

the African-American educators felt

that young children do not need to

be exposed to the violent history of

segregation. They worried about the

effects such exposure would have on

race relations in their classrooms and

especially about provoking rage on the

part of African-American students.

The other educators felt that, given

the resurgence of overt racism in the

United States, allowing rage and anger

to come out was the only way African-

fact to visit the train. There, she and the

members of the youth group mingled

freely with European Americans who

were also looking at the documents.

This overt act of crossing the boundar-

ies of segregation did not endear Parks

to the Montgomery political and social

establishment.

Parks’ work as a seamstress in a

large department store was secondary

to her community work. In addition,

as she says in an interview in My Soul

Is Rested, she had almost a life history

of “being rebellious against being mis-

treated because of my color.” She was

well known to African-American lead-

ers in Montgomery for her opposition

to segregation, her leadership abilities,

and her moral strength. Since the 1954

Brown v. Board of Education decision,

she had been working to desegregate

the Montgomery schools. She had also

attended an interracial meeting at the

Highlander Folk School in Tennes-

see a few months before the boycott.

Highlander was known throughout

the South as a radical education center

that was overtly planning for the total

desegregation of the South. At that

meeting, which dealt with plans for

school desegregation, Parks indicated

that she intended to participate in

other attempts to break down the bar-

riers of segregation. To call Rosa Parks

a poor tired seamstress and not talk

about her role as a community leader is

to turn an organized struggle for free-

dom into a personal act of frustration.

It is a thorough misrepresentation of

the Civil Rights Movement in Mont-

gomery and an insult to Parks as well.

The image of ‘Rosa Parks the

Tired’ exists on the level

of a national cultural icon.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn170

American and European-American

children could work toward a common

life. They felt that conflict was a posi-

tive thing that could be healing when

confronted directly and that avoiding

the horrors of racism was just another

way of perpetuating them. I agree with

this second group.

3. Whenever the city buses were

crowded, African Americans had to

give up seats in front to European

Americans and move to the back of

the bus.

Actually, African Americans were

never allowed to sit in the front of the

bus in the South in those days. The

front seats were reserved for Euro-

pean Americans. Between five and

ten rows back, the “colored” section

began. When the front filled up, Afri-

can Americans seated in the “colored”

section had to give up their seats and

move toward the back of the bus. Thus,

for example, an elderly African Ameri-

can would have to give up his or her

seat to a European-American teenager

at the peril of being arrested.

4. One day on her way home from

work Rosa was tired and sat down in

the front of the bus.

Parks did not sit in the front of the

bus. She sat in the front row of the

“colored” section. When the bus got

crowded she refused to give up her seat

in the “colored” section to a European

American. It is important to point this

out as it indicates quite clearly that it

was not her intent, initially, to break

the segregation laws.

At this point the story lapses into

the familiar and refers to Rosa Parks as

“Rosa.” The question of whether to use

the first name for historical characters

in a factual story is complicated. One

argument is that young children will

more readily identify with characters

presented in a personalized and famil-

iar way. However, given that it was a

sanctioned social practice in the South

during the time of the story for Euro-

In the book Voices of Freedom by

Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, Parks

describes that day in the following

way:

On Dec. 1, 1955, I had finished my

day’s work as a tailor’s assistant in

the Montgomery Fair Department

Store and I was on my way home.

There was one vacant seat on the

Cleveland Avenue bus, which I took,

alongside a man and two women

across the aisle. There were still a few

vacant seats in the white section in

the front, of course. We went to the

next stop without being disturbed.

On the third, the front seats were

occupied and this one man, a white

man, was standing. The driver asked

us to stand up and let him have

those seats, and when none of us

moved at his first words, he said,

“You all make it light on yourselves

and let me have those seats.” And

the man who was sitting next to the

window stood up, and I made room

for him to pass by me. The two

women across the aisle stood up and

moved out.

When the driver saw me still sitting,

he asked if I was going to stand up

and I said, “No, I’m not.”

And he said, “Well, if you don’t stand

up, I’m going to call the police and

have you arrested.”

I said, “You may do that.”

He did get off the bus, and I still

stayed where I was. Two policemen

came on the bus. One of the police-

men asked me if the bus driver had

asked me to stand and I said yes.

He said, “Why don’t you stand up?”

And I asked him, “Why do you push

us around?”

He said, “I do not know, but the law

is the law and you’re under arrest.”

Mere anger and stubbornness could

not account for the clear resolve with

which Parks acted. She knew what

pean Americans to call African-Ameri-

can adults by their first names as a way

of reinforcing the African Americans’

inferior status (African Americans

could never call European Americans

by their first names without breaking

the social code of segregation), it seems

unwise to use that practice in the story.

In addition, it’s reasonable to assume

that Parks was not any more tired on

that one day than on other days. She

worked at an exhausting full-time job

and was also active full time in the

community. To emphasize her being

tired is another way of saying that her

defiance was an accidental result of her

fatigue and consequent short temper.

Rage, however, is not a one-day thing,

and Parks acted with full knowledge of

what she was doing.

5. As the bus got crowded she was

asked to give up her seat to a Euro-

pean-American man, and she refused.

The bus driver told her she had to go

to the back of the bus, and she still

refused to move. It was a hot day, she

was tired and angry, and she became

very stubborn. The driver called a

policeman who arrested Rosa.

This is the way that Parks, in her

book My Soul Is Rested, described her

experiences with buses:

I had problems with bus drivers over

the years because I didn’t see fit to

pay my money into the front and

then go to the back. Sometimes bus

drivers wouldn’t permit me to get on

the bus, and I had been evicted from

the bus. But, as I say, there had been

incidents over the years. One of the

things that made this [incident] ...

get so much publicity was the fact

that the police were called in and I

was placed under arrest. See, if I had

just been evicted from the bus and

he hadn’t placed me under arrest

or had any charges brought against

me, it probably could have been just

another incident.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 171

she was doing, understood the conse-

quences, and was prepared to confront

segregation head-on at whatever sacri-

fice she had to make.

6. When other African Americans in

Montgomery heard this, they became

angry too, so they decided to refuse

to ride the buses until everyone was

allowed to ride together. They boycot-

ted the buses.

The connection between Parks’

arrest and the boycott is a mystery

in most accounts of what happened

in Montgomery. Community sup-

port for the boycott is portrayed as

being instantaneous and miraculously

effective the very day after Parks was

arrested. Things don’t happen that way,

and it is an insult to the intelligence and

courage of the African-American com-

munity in Montgomery to turn their

planned resistance to segregation into

a spontaneous emotional response.

The actual situation was more interest-

ing and complex. Not only had Parks

defied the bus segregation laws in the

past, according to E.D. Nixon, in the

three months preceding her arrest at

least three other African-American

people had been arrested in Montgom-

ery for refusing to give up their bus

seats to European-American people.

In each case, Nixon and other people

in leadership positions in the African-

American community in Montgom-

ery investigated the background of the

person arrested. They were looking for

someone who had the respect of the

community and the strength to deal

with the racist police force as well as all

of the publicity that would result from

being at the center of a court challenge.

This leads to the most important

point left out in popularized accounts

of the Montgomery bus boycott. Com-

munity leaders had long considered a

boycott as a tactic to achieve racial jus-

tice. Of particular importance in this

discussion was an African-American

mentioned in children’s books. It did

succeed and was one of the events that

sparked the entire Civil Rights Move-

ment. People who had been planning

an overt attack on segregation for years

took that victory as a sign that the

time was ripe even though the people

involved in the Montgomery boycott

did not themselves anticipate such a

result.

Concluding thoughts What remains then, is to retitle the

story. The revised version is still about

Rosa Parks, but it is also about the

African-American people of Mont-

gomery, Ala. It takes the usual, individ-

ualized version of the Rosa Parks tale

and puts it in the context of a coher-

ent, community-based social struggle.

This does not diminish Parks in any

way. It places her, however, in the midst

of a consciously planned movement

for social change, and reminds me of

the freedom song “We Shall Not Be

Moved,” for it was precisely Parks’ and

the community’s refusal to be moved

that made the boycott possible.

When the story of the Montgomery

bus boycott is told merely as a tale of a

single heroic person, it leaves children

hanging. Not everyone is a hero or her-

oine. Of course, the idea that only spe-

cial people can create change is useful if

you want to prevent mass movements

and keep change from happening. Not

every child can be a Rosa Parks, but

everyone can imagine herself or him-

self as a participant in the boycott. As

a tale of a social movement and a com-

munity effort to overthrow injustice,

the Rosa Parks story opens the possi-

bility of every child identifying herself

or himself as an activist, as someone

who can help make justice happen. n

Herbert Kohl is an educator and author

of numerous books. He writes the “Good

Stuff ” column for Rethinking Schools

magazine.

women’s organization in Montgomery

called the Women’s Political Council

(WPC). It was headed by Jo Ann Gib-

son Robinson, a professor of English

at Alabama State University in Mont-

gomery, an African-American univer-

sity. In 1949, Gibson was put off a bus

in Montgomery for refusing to move

to the back of an almost empty bus.

She and other women resolved to do

something about bus segregation.

The boycott was an event waiting to

take place, and that is why it could be

mobilized over a single weekend. Parks’

arrest brought it about because she was

part of the African-American leader-

ship in Montgomery and was trusted

not to cave in under the pressure every-

one knew she would be exposed to, not

the least of which would be threats to

her life.

This story of collective decision-

making, willed risk, and coordinated

action is more dramatic than the story

of an angry individual who sparked a

demonstration; it is one that has more

to teach children who themselves may

one day have to organize and act col-

lectively against oppressive forces.

7. The boycott, which was led by

Martin Luther King, Jr., succeeded.

Now African Americans and Euro-

pean Americans can ride the buses

together in Montgomery. Rosa Parks

was a very brave person.

The boycott was planned by the

WPC, E. D. Nixon and others in Mont-

gomery. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a

new member of the community. He

had just taken over the Dexter Avenue

Baptist Church, and when Nixon told

him that Parks’ arrest was just what

everybody was waiting for to kick off a

bus boycott and assault the institution

of segregation, King was at first reluc-

tant. However, the community people

chose him to lead, and he accepted

their call. The boycott lasted 381 incon-

venient days, something not usually

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn172

my board and my blanket were navajo, but my bed is inside the River. in the beads of remembrance, i am her body in my father’s hands. she gave me her eyes and the warmth of basalt. the vertebrae of her back, my breastplate, the sturdy belly of mountainside. “Pahtu,” he whispered in her language. she is the mountain of change. she is the mountain of women who have lain as volcanoes before men. Red, as the women much loved, she twisted like silvery chinook beyond his reach. Dancing the woman-salmon dance, there is not much time to waste.

elizabeth woody (warm Springs wasco/navajo) is author of Seven Hands, Seven Hearts: Prose and Poetry and Luminaries of the Humble. (For lesson ideas, see p. 212.)

in memory of Crossing the Columbia

by elizabeth woody for Charlotte edwards Pitt and Charlotte Agnes Pitt

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 173

heather’s moms got married Creating a gay- and lesbian-friendly classroom

by mary Cowhey

when it comes to issues of family diversity, teacher self-censorship remains the sta- tus quo in many schools. Often this is

based on the fear of raising potentially

controversial topics. When schools do

get involved in promoting gay-straight

alliances and so forth, it is usually at the

secondary level. Most people still get

queasy talking about gay and lesbian

issues at middle or—heaven forbid—

elementary levels.

I teach at an elementary school in

Northampton, Mass., where many of

my students are raised by lesbian par-

ents. My education in teaching family

diversity and learning from my fami-

lies began on the first day of my career,

before I even set foot in my classroom.

Visiting the home of one student, I was

greeted by a parent wearing a button

that read, “We’re here. We’re gay. And

we’re on the PTA.” She and her partner

began talking about being foster par-

ents for the state Department of Social

Services and being adoptive parents. I

asked if they would be willing to advise

me on good books and teaching ideas.

Based on my experiences over the

course of eight years of teaching, here

are some of my recommendations for

teachers in elementary schools:

Do not presume that students live

in traditional families with both mar-

ried heterosexual birth parents. Name

a wide variety of configurations pos-

sible in the diversity of human families.

Part of that naming process includes

using books and resources that portray

family diversity, including the video,

That’s a Family. [See p. 174 for more

resources.] Invite students to respond

to the question, “Who is in your fam-

ily?” Allow students to share and dis-

play their family stories and pictures.

Explore and challenge gender ste-

reotypes with your students. Use chil-

dren’s books such as Amazing Grace,

William’s Doll, Oliver Button Is a Sissy,

China’s Bravest Girl: the Legend of Hua

Mu Lan, Riding Freedom, and Beauti-

ful Warrior as springboards for discus-

sions. Activities can include students

brainstorming lists of stereotypi-

cal behavior for boys and girls, then

making captioned drawings of boys

and girls engaging in nonstereotypi-

cal behaviors. These can be made into

a class book or hallway display, “Boys

Can/Girls Can.” Once students learn to

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn174

question gender stereotypes, they can

recognize and reflect on stereotypi-

cal characters and behaviors in other

books and media. They can extend

their understandings of stereotypes to

recognize and challenge other forms of

bias.

Teach a lesson on teasing and

name-calling. Children’s literature,

such as Oliver Button Is a Sissy or The

Hundred Dresses can be an excellent

point of departure for discussion and

activities. These can help establish a

baseline of classroom expectations

that we are all respected members of

this classroom community and that no

put-downs will be tolerated.

Answer students’ questions about

gay and lesbian issues in a straight-

forward, educational manner. Do

not ignore or quash their curiosity.

Remember that the two main points

of reference are respecting differences

and equality for all people. Elementary

children are not asking about sexuality.

When they ask what “gay” means, it’s

sufficient to say, “Gay is when a woman

loves a woman or a man loves a man in

a romantic way.”

Replace the phrase “moms and

dads” with “parents and guardians”

in your classroom and in your school.

Do this in informal conversation, class-

room teaching, and official school

documents such as registration forms

and emergency cards. Not only is this

phrase more inclusive for students

with gay or lesbian parents, but also

for those being raised by foster par-

ents, grandparents, aunts, and others.

It accepts and affirms all of the families

in your school.

Consider showing a video like Oli-

ver Button Is a Star as part of a profes-

sional development workshop for fac-

ulty and staff. Oliver Button Is a Star is a

documentary that weaves a reading and

musical production of Oliver Button Is

a Sissy with interviews with adults like

arctic explorer Ann Bancroft, author/

illustrator Tomie dePaola, and dancer

Bill T. Jones, who recall their childhood

experiences. It includes scenes (some

from my classroom) where 1st and 2nd

graders do activities about name-call-

ing and challenging gender stereotypes.

That’s a Family and It’s Elementary are

good choices too.

In the event that you encounter an

intolerant colleague, administrator,

or parent, keep the following points

in mind:

n The diversity of families in our

school is more beautiful and complex

than any one of us could presume to

know. Whether we have any self-iden-

tified (“out”) gay- or lesbian-parented

families in our school community or

not, it is safer to assume that they are

here than not.

n An estimated one in 10 students

may grow up to be gay or lesbian

adults.

n All of our students deserve a safe

and supportive school experience.

n Gays and lesbians are entitled to

the same rights as others. We are talking

about equal rights, not special rights.

n We are not talking about “sexual-

ity” when we discuss gay and lesbian

issues any more than we are discuss-

ing sexuality when we read Cinderella

or any other story with all heterosexual

characters. n

Mary Cowhey teaches 2nd grade at Jackson

Street School in Northampton, Mass. She is

author of Black Ants and Buddhists.

Resources on Family Diversity All Families Are Different nonfiction By Sol gordon Prometheus Books, 2000, 50 pp. Written by a clinical psychologist, this illustrated book for readers 7 and older defines families in multiple ways, considering economic and racial factors as well as including same-sex, divorced, and foster parents. All Families Are Special Fiction By norma Simon Albert Whitman and company, 2003, 32 pp. A teacher tells her students she is going to be a grandmother, initiating a conversation about family diversity in which students share how their home lives are similar or different. colorful illustrations complement an appropriately sensitive book for young readers.

Families All Matter Book Project curriculum amaze, P.O. Box 17417, minneapolis, mn 55417 612-824-8090 [email protected] This literature-based elementary school curriculum includes annotated lists of children’s books, creative activities, and a teachers’ guide. many aspects of family diversity are covered. That’s a Family: A Film for Kids About Family Diversity nonfiction, vhS Women’s Education media, 2180 Bryant St., Ste. 203, San Francisco, cA 94110 415-641-4616 http://groundspark.org/ children’s voices are central to this gentle approach to talking about and developing respect for family diversity.

http://groundspark.org/

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 175

thoughts on teaching native american literature by Joseph bruchac

My own first experiences in teaching American Indian literature came after three years in West Africa. I returned to the

United States in 1969 and found myself

at Skidmore College near my home

town of Greenfield Center, N.Y., an

instructor with little chance of ten-

ure who had been given a job because

there was a last-minute opening at the

school.

That was OK with me. My main

objective had been to come home to my

Abenaki grandfather in whose house I’d

been raised. He lived only three miles

east from the college, an easy ride on a

bicycle through the hills and backroads

at the edge of the Kaydeross Range. As I

rode from the dawn towards the west, I

passed fields which had been filled with

Mohawk corn, and within my line of

sight to the north were the mountains

and the old, still hidden burial places

of some of my own ancestors. The

road passed a stone’s throw from samp

mortars worn deep into bedrock where

corn and acorns had been ground into

flour for thousands of years. Just south

of that road were streams where my

grandfather and I caught trout and said

words of thanks to the fish spirits.

Somehow, being home made it eas-

ier to be a “low man on the academic

totem pole”—one of their favorite

images, no irony intended—teach-

ing freshman composition and little

else. It was in 1970 that the first Native

American literature course was taught

at Skidmore, during their one-month

winter term. I wasn’t allowed to teach

it, though by then I was being allowed

to teach a single course in black litera-

ture. “Topics in American Indian Lit-

erature” was taught by a senior faculty

member who used a lot of work from

anthropologists and a little contem-

porary Indian writing. He used Kroe-

ber’s The Inland Whale, some creation

stories, threw in a few poems by poets

who were Indian. He tried his best and

he consulted with me—with apologies.

“You ought to be teaching this,

Joseph, but you know how it is.”

“Totem pole?” I said.

He nodded, without irony. “You

understand.”

Along the way he set up a reading.

One of those who spoke was Harry W.

Paige, whose book, Songs of the Teton

Sioux, had been his Ph.D. thesis at the

State University of New York at Albany

for his doctorate in English—the first

doctorate in English from SUNY/

Albany. Harry’s book wasn’t bad, and

it was a result of a lot of time spent

among the Teton Sioux. He gave his

talk, followed by Duane McGinnis (not

yet Niatum) and myself. Duane, a Klal-

lam poet and editor, had been invited

to campus to talk to that special one-

time-only Native American literature

course and I was, after all, of Indian

descent and had published a few things

here and there. In the audience that

night was William Fenton, whose life-

time of study of the Iroquois was evi-

denced by many books and articles and

the emeritus chair of anthropology at

the same SUNY/Albany that gave Paige

his degree.

In fact, I’m pretty sure Bill Fenton

was there for Paige—not for Duane

and myself. After the readings and talk,

the question and answer session got

around to such things as vocables in

traditional songs—“nonsense words,”

as Fenton put it—and storytelling tra-

ditions. “There are,” Fenton said, “no

more traditional Iroquois storytell-

ers. I knew the last one and he died

some years ago.” There was some dis-

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn176

agreement that night, and I leave it

to your imagination as to which two

people were the most vocal in their

disagreeing.

my Own Directions I begin at Skidmore and with those

details because I feel it sets the scene for

my own directions as a writer of Native

American literature and a teacher of

the literature of Native Americans.

Those details also lend themselves well

to some points I’d like to make about

teaching Native American literature.

First, however, another story.

Not long ago, I was invited to do a

storytelling program at a college in Ver-

mont. While there, I had dinner with

several people who have been teaching

Native American literature in college.

Our conversation was an illuminat-

ing one for me, because it pointed out

how widespread the teaching of Native

American literature is becoming and

just how needed are some directions

in HOW and WHAT to teach in such

courses. One of the people said that he

was having a hard time finding texts.

Another said that he was using Freder-

ick Turner’s 1973 volume The Portable

Native American Reader and beginning

with Creation myths, but that he had

some misgivings about the accuracy of

the translations, though he didn’t know

enough to know for sure how good

they were. The third teacher of Native

American literature mentioned taking

a course in how to teach Native Ameri-

can literature from a certain professor.

Someone else at the table knew that

when we speak of “Native American

literature,” of “American Indian litera-

ture” or (as they say in Canada) “Native

literature,” we are speaking of many

literatures, especially when we refer

to that work which comes from what

might loosely be called (though there

were, in fact, a number of writing and

mnemonic recording systems in North

America) “Oral Tradition.” Just as Zulu

oral poetry from southern Africa is very

different from the traditions of the gri-

ots of Mali in the northwest of Africa,

the Haudenosaunee (as the “Iroquois”

call themselves) epic of the founding of

their Great League of Peace is not at all

like the deer songs of the Yaqui.

When you approach the totality of

“Native American literature,” you are

confronted by an incredibly vast body

of work. It comes out of, in just the

area now called the continental United

States, more than 400 different lan-

guages and distinct cultures. It is thou-

sands of years old. Yet, without any

special preparation, without any real

grounding in the cultures which pro-

duced those many literatures, without

any familiarity with the languages from

which they were translated (seldom by

native speakers and all too often trans-

lated in very slipshod and inappropri-

ate ways), teachers on the university

and even high school level are expected

to teach this “Native American lit-

erature.” Not only that, most of those

teachers have never visited a Native

American community or spoken with

a single Native American. It is, to say

the least, daunting. To put it another

way, as one of my friends and teachers,

a Pueblo elder known to the world as

“Swift Eagle,” said, “It’s dumb!”

The first full-fledged Native Ameri-

can literature course I taught was in a

maximum security prison. I was, by

then, no longer in Skidmore’s English

Department. My terminal contract had

been terminated. Other job opportuni-

ties in other parts of America had been

professor and mentioned that when

she taught Native American literature

as a visiting professor at their school,

the few Native American students on

campus had signed up for the course

but all dropped it because they found

something objectionable about it. No

one knew what.

a lot of listening I do a lot of listening in such conversa-

tions. Partly because I was raised to lis-

ten and partly because when academic

conversations start, it isn’t that easy to

break into them. Even when people ask

you a direct question, they often try to

answer it themselves before you can

open your mouth. So I waited. These

people I was having dinner with were

good folks and their interest and their

concerns were very real. When you’re

ready to listen, I thought. When it is

quiet enough. And when it was quiet

enough, I began to say a few words

about how I have approached the

teaching of Native American literature.

And unless you’ve lost patience by now

with my slow developing style, you’re

about to read some of those words.

When we speak about Native Ameri-

can literature today, it is, in many ways,

like speaking of African literature.

More accurately, it is how speaking

about African literature would be if

we were living in an Africa which had

lost 90 percent of its population in the

last 500 years and was being run as a

single united continent by European

colonials. As is the case with Africa,

Imagine we only knew Shakespeare’s work through a racist missionary with a tin ear who transcribed one play from a verbal recounting by an octogenarian

who never liked the theater much.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 177

‘native American literature,’ is a vast body of work coming out of

hundreds of languages and cultures.

possible, but I wasn’t about to leave my

native soil again. Eventually, I’d been

rehired by Skidmore’s external degree

program to develop and direct a col-

lege program at Great Meadow Cor-

rectional Facility. I stayed with that job

for eight years. In addition to being an

administrator, I taught a course now

and then. African Literature, Black Lit-

erature, and finally, in 1975, Introduc-

tion to Native American Literature.

If I’d had my druthers, I would have

begun any Native American literature

course not in the classroom, but in

the woods. (That would have been just

fine insofar as the men in my class at

Great Meadow went. They understood

what I meant, but that got almost as

big a laugh from them as the proposed

course in Astronomy at the prison that

was nixed by the Deputy Superinten-

dent in charge of security when the

professor said that field trips outside

at night would be necessary). It was

important, I told that class, to have a

sense of the American earth, of the

land and the people as one.

I divided the syllabus into four

directions and focused on the liter-

ary traditions of one particular Native

nation from each corner of the con-

tinent. To the east, we looked at the

People of the Long House, the Haude-

nosaunee. We began with poems writ-

ten in English by Maurice Kenny and

Peter Blue Cloud before turning to

the epic story of the Founding of the

Great League, listening to recordings of

Mohawk social dance songs as we did

so. To the south, we began with poems

of Leslie Silko and Simon Ortiz and

we read Silko’s Ceremony and Moma-

day’s House Made of Dawn in the con-

text of the healing traditions of Navajo

and Pueblo cultures. To the north, we

looked at James Welch’s novel Winter in

the Blood. To the west, we focussed on

translations of Lakota and Cheyenne

traditional songs while we read Lance

Henson’s poetry. Again, as with the Iro-

then look at those traditions them-

selves, you recognize that you’re seeing

just the tip of the iceberg.

To my mind, it is best to teach intro-

ductory courses focusing on the work

written in English, to think of these

courses as only the beginning and

to hope for both the knowledgeable

instructors and the opportunity for

schools to offer more advanced stud-

ies—a course in Haudenosaunee Lit-

erature 301 or Momaday 405—just as

we offer introductory courses in British

literature and then give our advanced

students a chance to study the Victori-

ans or Shakespeare.

2. Teach the work in context. The

Native American view of life as

reflected in literature (whether in Eng-

lish or originally in an earlier native

language) is holistic. Remember that if

you are teaching Native American lit-

erature well, you are not just teaching

literature, you are also teaching culture.

To understand the work—or to begin

to understand it—it must be seen as

it was used. The word is regarded as

alive, not just syllables and symbols. An

understanding, for example, of the tra-

ditional Navajo Night Chant is impos-

sible without knowing the place of the

Night Chant in the practices of heal-

ing, without recognizing that it is only

one part of an event which involves the

participation of dozens or even hun-

dreds of individuals, that it is meant to

be sung in a certain place at a certain

time, and that the making of a sand

painting depicting a particular event

in Navajo mythology is intimately con-

nected to it. Similarly, it is difficult to

teach a modern work such as Silko’s

quois material, we listened to the music

of the people, including not just grass

dance songs, but also Floyd Westerman

singing “Custer Died for Your Sins.”

We looked at maps of America (and

allowing any maps into the prison was

a major struggle), and we talked about

history, from east to west, from north

to south. It was one of the best classes

I’d ever taught, and I still have some of

the papers written by those men.

Four simple Directions Although there have been other courses

in Native American literature that I have

taught since then—in seminar courses

for senior citizens, at Hamilton College

and at the State University of New York

at Albany—and a great deal of new

Native American work and work about

Native American literature has come

into print, I have not really changed my

approach to teaching Native American

literature. There are four simple direc-

tions that I follow (in addition to those

cardinal ones) and I would suggest

them as applicable for others who wish

to teach Native American literature.

1. Clearly define what you mean by

“Native American literature.” Remem-

ber the breadth and diversity of what

we call “American Indian.” Remember

that we are referring, in fact, to many

nations within this nation; to many lit-

eratures, literatures which each come

from a national identity and a strong

sense of place. You might make a good

case that contemporary Native Ameri-

can writing in English is one continu-

ous literary body, but when you look at

the influence of the old traditions and

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn178

Ceremony without some awareness of

the place and purpose of similar heal-

ing and storytelling traditions among

the Pueblo people.

3. Pay attention to continuance. Be

aware of the strong connections in

all Native American writing between

what the western world calls “past” and

“present.” I am not just talking about

the awareness of literary tradition—

though that works at least in part as

an analogy—but of something more

than that. Many of the native languages

deal with “time” in a very different way

than does English. Similarly, the time

sense of many contemporary Native

American novels can seem strange, cir-

cuitous, even circular. Continuance is

an important word for me in dealing

with Native American writing. I stress

this continuance by constantly linking

contemporary Native writers to their

roots, to their people and their places,

their traditions.

4. Be wary of work in translation.

My own approach is, for introductory

courses at least, to place the strongest

emphasis on contemporary work writ-

ten in English and to use a few carefully

selected translations from the old tra-

ditions in direct relation to those newer

writings. A great many stories, songs,

ceremonies, and the like which can

be found in books are flawed in many

ways. In some cases, the translations

are bowdlerized or inaccurate. Imagine

what it would be like if Shakespeare’s

plays had been written in Lakota and

we only knew his work in English

through a single translation of Othello

done by an 18th-century puritanical

and racist Baptist missionary with a

tin ear who transcribed the play from

a verbal recounting of it by a slightly

senile octogenarian who never liked

the theater that much. From my own

knowledge of certain Native American

languages and some of the translations

that have been foisted off as legitimate,

and the original language. Then, even a

nonnative speaker can have some sense

of the sound and rhythms as they were

meant to be. But, again, show respect.

Walk slowly. Listen to Native people.

Native American literature, as we

now have the chance to offer it, is more

than just an extra area, more than just

a little diversity for the curriculum.

It is the literature of a continent (of

two continents, in fact, but I’ll confine

myself to the area north of Mexico for

now), and it is a literature continually

growing, being created and rediscov-

ered. It is said that when Columbus

touched onto the island of Hispaniola

he didn’t know where he really was.

He didn’t have, you might say, a good

sense of direction. I certainly hope that

future teachers of Native American lit-

erature will at least avoid that mistake

of a European coming into contact

with something new. I hope they will

see where they are, see which way is

south, which way is west, which way

is north, and which way to look if they

want to see the light of dawn. n

Joseph Bruchac is a poet, storyteller,

teacher, author, and co-editor of Keepers

of the Earth: Native American Stories and

Environmental Activities for Children.

The above article originally appeared

in SAIL, Studies in American Indian

Literature. Reprinted with permission of

the author.

I can assure you that I am not exag-

gerating the injustices that have been

done. In some cases, in fact, rather

than translations, the so-called myths

and legends that we find in any number

of places are sometimes made up from

the whole cloth—oft involving a tragic

love between a boy from one tribe and

a girl from another and either a lover’s

leap or a canoe going over whatever

high waterfall is handy to the transla-

tor’s fevered imagination.

Another point about work in trans-

lation to keep in mind is that some

things which have been recorded

or translated have been recorded or

translated without the permission of

the native people who own that work.

Much of Native America’s traditional

culture is living in the strongest sense

of that word. Revealing that culture to

the uninitiated is sacrilegious. A good

teacher of Native American literature

needs to know enough to be able to

know which works need to be shown

special respect. I cannot emphasize that

word respect strongly enough. In some

cases it may even mean NOT discuss-

ing something. That is a hard direction

for people with the western mindset

to follow, that western mindset which

says “Tell it all, show it all, explain it

all.” I feel that those with that mindset

would be better off avoiding the teach-

ing of Native American literature.

sense of sound When using Native American literature

in translation, it is safest to use work

which has been translated by Native

scholars themselves. Alfonso Ortiz and

J. N. B. Hewitt are two examples. There

are also a number of ethnologists whose

reputations and whose relations with

the people whose work they translated

are quite reputable. Dennis Tedlock

and Frances Densmore represent some

of the best in contemporary and early

20th-century work. I also like to have

access to both the English translation

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 179

why students should study history an interview with howard Zinn

The following is condensed from an

interview with Howard Zinn, author of

A People’s History of the United States,

The Politics of History, Declarations of

Independence and other works. Zinn has

taught history and political science at Spel-

man College in Atlanta and at Boston Uni-

versity. He was interviewed by Barbara

Miner of Rethinking Schools.

Why should students study history?

I started studying history with one

view in mind: to look for answers to

the issues and problems I saw in the

world about me. By the time I went to

college I had worked in a shipyard, had

been in the Air Force, had been in a

war. I came to history asking questions

about war and peace, about wealth and

poverty, about racial division.

Sure, there’s a certain interest in

inspecting the past and it can be fun,

sort of like a detective story. I can make

an argument for knowledge for its own

sake as something that can add to your

life. But while that’s good, it is small

in relation to the very large objective

of trying to understand and do some-

thing about the issues that face us in

the world today.

Students should be encouraged to

go into history in order to come out

of it, and should be discouraged from

going into history and getting lost in it,

as some historians do.

What do you see as some of the major

problems in how U.S. history has been

taught in this country?

One major problem has been the

intense focus on U.S. history in isola-

tion from the world. This is a problem

that all nations have, their nationalistic

focus on their own history, and it goes

to absurd lengths. Some states in this

country even require a yearlong course

in the history of that state.

But even if you are willing to see the

United States in relation to world his-

tory, you face the problem that we have

not looked at the world in an equi-

table way. We have concentrated on

the Western world, in fact on Western

Europe. I remember coming into my

first class in Spelman College in Atlanta

in 1956 and finding that there was no

required course in black history, or

Asian or African history, but there was

a required course in the history of Eng-

land. And there on the board was this

chart of the Tudors and the Stuarts, the

dynasties of England.

For the United States, emphasis has

been particularly glaring in terms of

Latin America, which is that part of

the world closest to us and with which

we’ve had the most to do economically

and politically.

Another glaring problem has been

the emphasis in teaching American

history through the eyes of the impor-

tant and powerful people, through the

presidents, the Congress, the Supreme

Court, the generals, the industrialists.

History textbooks don’t say, “We are

going to tell the story of the Mexican

War from the standpoint of the gener-

als,” but when they tell us it was a great

military victory, that’s exactly what

they are doing.

Taking that as an example, if one were

to have a more inclusive view of the

war with Mexico, what would be some

of the themes and perspectives one

would include?

The Mexican War is an example of

how one event raises so many issues.

You’d have to see the war first of all as

more than a military action. So often

the history of war is dominated by

the story of battles, and this is a way

of diverting attention from the politi-

cal factors behind a war. It’s possible

to concentrate upon the battles of the

Mexican War and just to talk about the

triumphant march into Mexico City,

and not talk about the relationship of

the Mexican War to slavery and to the

acquisition of territories which might

possibly be slave territories.

Another thing that is neglected in

the Mexican War is the viewpoint of

the ordinary soldiers. The soldiers

who had volunteered for the Mexican

War—you didn’t need a draft because

so many people in the working classes

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were so destitute that they would join

the military on the promise of a little

bit of pay and mustering out money

and a little bit of prestige—the volun-

teers went into it not really knowing

the bloodshed it would involve. And

then so many of them deserted. For

example, seven regiments of General

Winfield Scott deserted on the road to

Mexico City.

You should tell the story of the Mas-

sachusetts volunteers who went into

the Mexican War. Half of them died,

and the half who returned were invited

to a homecoming party and when a

commanding officer got up to address

the gathering, they booed him off the

platform.

I think it’s a good idea also to do

something which isn’t done anywhere

so far as I know in histories in any

country, and that is: tell the story of the

war from the standpoint of the other

side, of “the enemy.” To tell the story of

the Mexican War from the standpoint

of the Mexicans means to ask: How did

they feel about having 40 percent of

their territory taken away from them as

a result of the war? How did they view

the incident that President Polk used as

a reason for the beginning of the war?

Did it look real or manufactured to

them?

You’d also have to talk about the

people in the United States who pro-

tested against the war. That would be

the time to bring up Henry Thoreau

and his essay, “Civil Disobedience.”

You’d have to look at Congress and

how it behaved. You’d have to look

at Abraham Lincoln, who was in the

House of Representatives during the

judgments of right and wrong because,

after all, those are matters of subjec-

tive opinions, those are issues on which

students will disagree and teachers will

disagree.

But it’s the areas of disagreement

that are the most important. Ques-

tions of right and wrong and justice

are exactly the questions that should

be raised all the time. When students

are asked, “Is this right, is this wrong?”

then it becomes interesting, then they

can have a debate—especially if they

learn that there’s no simple, absolute,

agreed-upon, universal answer. It’s

not like giving them multiple choice

questions where they are right or

wrong. I think that’s a tremendous

advance in their understanding of

what education is.

Teachers must also address the

problem that people have been mis-

educated to become dependent

on government, to think that their

supreme act as citizens is to go to the

polls and vote every two years or four

years. That’s where the history of

social movements comes in. Teachers

should dwell on Shay’s Rebellion, on

colonial rebellions, on the abolition-

ist movement, on the populist move-

ment, on the labor movement, and so

on, and make sure these social move-

ments don’t get lost in the overall story

of presidents and Congresses and

Supreme Courts. Emphasizing social

and protest movements in the making

of history gives students a feeling that

they as citizens are the most important

actors in history.

Students, for example, should learn

that during the Depression there were

strikes and demonstrations all over the

country. And it was that turmoil and

protest that created the atmosphere in

which Roosevelt and Congress passed

Social Security and unemployment

insurance and housing subsidies and

so on.

Mexican War. You’d learn a lot about

politicians and politics because you’d

see that Abraham Lincoln on the one

hand spoke up against the war, but on

the other hand voted to give money

to finance the war. This is so impor-

tant because this is something that is

repeated again and again in American

history: the feeble opposition in Con-

gress to presidential wars, and then the

voting of funds for whatever war the

President has initiated.

[For a student activity on the Mexi-

can War, see p. 116.]

How do you prevent history lessons

from becoming a recitation of dates

and battles and congresspersons and

presidents?

You can take any incident in Ameri-

can history and enrich it and find par-

allels with today. One important thing

is not to concentrate on chronological

order, but to go back and forth and find

similarities and analogies.

You should ask students if anything

in a particular historical event reminds

them of something they read in the

newspapers or see on television about

the world today. When you press stu-

dents to make connections, to abstract

from the uniqueness of a particular

historical event and find something it

has in common with another event—

then history becomes alive, not just

past but present.

And, of course, you must raise the

controversial questions and ask stu-

dents, “Was it right for us to take Mexi-

can territory? Should we be proud of

that, should we celebrate that?” History

teachers often think they must avoid

Questions of right and wrong and justice are exactly the questions that should be

raised all the time.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 181

How can teachers foster critical think-

ing so that students don’t merely mem-

orize a new, albeit more progressive,

set of facts?

Substituting one indoctrination for

another is a danger and it’s very hard to

deal with. After all, the teacher, no mat-

ter how hard she or he tries, is the domi-

nant figure in the classroom and has the

power of authority and of grades. It’s

easy for the teacher to fall into the trap

of bullying students into accepting one

set of facts or ideas. It takes hard work

and delicate dealings with students to

overcome that.

The way I’ve tried to deal with that

problem is to make it clear to the stu-

dents that when we study history we are

dealing with controversial issues with

no one, absolute, god-like answer. And

that I, as a teacher, have my opinion

and they can have their opinions, and

that I, as a teacher, will try to present

as much information as I can but that I

may leave out information. I try to make

them understand that while there are

experts on facts, on little things, on the

big issues, on the controversies and the

issues of right and wrong and justice,

there are no experts, and their opinion

is as good as mine.

But how do you then foster a sense of

justice and avoid the trap of relativity

that, “Well, some people say this and

some people say that”?

I find such relativity especially true

on the college level, where there’s a great

tendency to indecisiveness. People are

unwilling to take a stand on a moral

issue because, well, there’s this side and

there’s that side.

I deal with this by example. I never

simply present both sides and leave it at

that. I take a stand. If I’m dealing with

Columbus, I say, look, there are these

people who say that we shouldn’t judge

Columbus by the standards of the 20th

century. But my view is that basic moral

standards are not different for the 20th

letters that slaves wrote, the writings of

Frederick Douglass—I think they have

to be introduced as much as possible.

Students should learn the words of

people themselves, to feel their anger,

their indignation.

In general, I don’t think there has

been enough use of literature in history.

People should read Richard Wright’s

Black Boy; they should read the poems

of Countee Cullen; they should read

the novels of Alice Walker, the poems of

Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansbury’s

A Raisin in the Sun. These writings have

an emotional impact that can’t be found

in an ordinary recitation of history.

It is especially important that stu-

dents learn about the relationship of

the United States government to slav-

ery and race.

It’s very easy to fall into the view

that slavery and racial segregation were

a Southern problem. The federal gov-

ernment is very often exempted from

responsibility for the problem, and is

presented as a benign force helping

black people on the road to equality.

In our time, students are taught how

century or the 15th century.

I don’t simply lay history out on a

platter and say, “I don’t care what you

choose, they’re both valid.” I let them

know, “No, I care what you choose; I

don’t think they’re both valid. But you

don’t have to agree with me.” I want

them to know that if people don’t

take a stand the world will remain

unchanged, and who wants that?

Are there specific ways that teachers

can foster an anti-racist perspective?

To a great extent, this moral objec-

tive is not considered in teaching his-

tory. I think people have to be given

the facts of slavery, the facts of racial

segregation, the facts of government

complicity in racial segregation, the

facts of the fight for equality. But that

is not enough.

I think students need to be aroused

emotionally on the issue of equality.

They have to try to feel what it was like,

to be a slave, to be jammed into slave

ships, to be separated from your family.

Novels, poems, autobiographies, mem-

oirs, the reminiscences of ex-slaves, the

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Eisenhower sent his troops to Little

Rock, Ark., and Kennedy sent troops

to Oxford, Miss., and Congress passed

civil rights laws.

Yet the federal government is very

a follower of a movement that had

developed for 30 years by the time he

became president in 1861; it was the

antislavery movement that was the

major force creating the atmosphere in

often an obstacle to resolving those

problems of race, and when it enters

it comes in late in the picture. Abra-

ham Lincoln was not the initiator

of the movement against slavery but

Aptheker, herbert (editor) (1990). A Documentary History of the Negro People of the United States, Vols. 1–4. citadel Press. An extremely valuable, I am tempted to say indis- pensable, collection, not at all dry, as are some documentaries. Brown, Dee (editor) (1971). Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. holt, Rinehart & Winston. A moving collec- tion of statements and recollections by American Indians which gives you their point of view in a vivid, passion- ate way. carroll, James (2006). House of War. houghton mifflin. gives us not just a history of the Pentagon, but a sweep- ing and critical history of u.S. foreign policy throughout the cold War. car- roll, once a priest, now a novelist and columnist for the Boston Globe, has done prodigious research and writes brilliantly about the militarization of the nation after World War II. chomsky, noam (1992). Year 501. South End Press. here, the nation’s most distinguished intellectual rebel gives us huge amounts of information about American foreign policy, and puts it into historical perspective, go- ing back to the columbus era. Drinnon, Richard (1990). Facing West. Schocken. A brilliantly written account of imperial expansion by the united States, not just on the Ameri- can continent against the Indians, but overseas in the Philippines and in vietnam. Foner, Eric (1988). Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. harper & Row. A rich, vivid, epic-like narrative of those extraordinary years 1863 to 1877, by one of the leading “new historians.”

hampton, henry, and Steve Fayer, with Sarah Flynn (editor) (1990). Voices of Freedom. Bantam. An oral history of the black movement for civil rights, from the 1950s to the 1980s, much of its material coming out of the research done for the Tv documen- tary Eyes on the Prize. hofstadter, Richard (1974). The Amer- ican Political Tradition. vintage. A classic of American history, beauti- fully written, an iconoclastic view of American political leaders, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, and the two Roosevelts, suggesting more consensus than difference at the top of the political hierarchy. hope Franklin, John (1974). From Slavery to Freedom. knopf. The classic overview of Afro-American history by the nation’s leading black historian. Lerner, gerda (editor) (1977). Black Women in White America: A Docu- mentary History. Random house. A rare glimpse into the lives, the minds, the spirits of that doubly oppressed group, ranging from slavery to our time. A wonderful sourcebook. Lynd, Staughton (editor) (1966). Non- violence in America. Bobbs-merrill. A valuable examination of the ideas, in their own words, of early quaker dissidents, abolitionists, anarchists, progressives, conscientious objectors, trade unionists, civil rights workers, and pacifists, from the colonial period to the 1960s. martínez, Elizabeth (editor) (1991). 500 años del pueblo chicano: 500 Years of Chicano History. Southwest Organizing Project. marvelous photos but also an exciting bilingual text loaded with valuable history.

history book Resources Takaki, Ronald (1993). A Different Mirror. Little, Brown & company. A splendid, comprehensive look at the role ethnic minorities have played in American history. Eloquent, powerful, meticulously researched. Takaki, Ronald (1989). Strangers from a Distant Shore. Penguin. gives us what has been glaringly missing from our traditional histories, the story of Asian Americans, from the early years of the republic through the dramatic, tragic experiences of chinese and Japanese immigrants to the arrival of refugees from Southeast Asia. Williams, David (2005). A People’s History of the Civil War. new Press. Departs radically from the traditional histories of the civil War, which center on great battles or on Lincoln and the generals. Williams, a scholar from the deep South, tells us the untold stories of the class conflict inside both South and north during the war. It is a refreshing and provocative approach. Yellen, Samuel (1974). American Labor Struggles. Pathfinder. This brings to life the great labor conflicts of American history, from the railroad strikes of 1877 to the San Francisco general strike of 1934. Young, marilyn (1991). The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. harper collins. A superb history of u.S. involvement in vietnam. —Howard Zinn Editors’ note: Don’t forget Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1981, Harper and Row) and Voices of a People’s History of the United States (with Anthony Arnove, 2004, Seven Stories), which uses speeches, letters, poems, and more to bring “people’s history” to life.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 183

which emancipation took place follow-

ing the Civil War. And it was the presi-

dent and Congress and the Supreme

Court that ignored the 13th, 14th,

and 15th Amendments after they were

passed. In the 1960s it wasn’t Johnson

and Kennedy who were the leaders and

initiators of the movement for race

equality, but it was black people.

In addition to focusing on social

movements and having a more con-

sciously anti-racist perspective, what

are some other thematic ways in

which the teaching of history must

change?

I think the issue of class and class

conflict needs to be addressed more

honestly because it is ignored in tradi-

tional nationalist history. This is true

not just of the United States but of

intense hardships that poor white peo-

ple faced in this country, making it eas-

ier for them to look for scapegoats for

their condition. You have to recognize

the problems of white working people

in order to understand why they turn

racist, because they aren’t born racist.

When discussing the Civil War,

teachers should point out that only a

small percentage of the white popula-

tion of the South owned slaves. The

rest of the white population was poor

and they were driven to support slav-

ery and to be racist by the messages

of those who controlled society—that

they would be better off if the Negroes

were put in a lower position, and that

those calling for black equality were

threatening the lives of these ordinary

white people.

other countries. Nationhood is a cover

for extreme conflicts among classes in

society, in our country, from its found-

ing, from the making of the Consti-

tution. Too often, there’s a tendency

to overlook these conflicts, and con-

centrate on the creation of a national

identity.

How does a teacher deal with the

intersection of race, class, and gender

in terms of U.S. history, in particular

that the white working class has often

been complicit, consciously or uncon-

sciously, in some very unforgivable

actions?

The complicity of poor white peo-

ple in racism, the complicity of males

in sexism, is a very important issue.

It seems to me that complicity can’t

be understood without showing the

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In the history of labor struggles,

you should show how blacks and

whites were used against one another,

how white workers would go out on

strike and then black people, desperate

themselves for jobs, would be brought

in to replace the white workers, how

all-white craft unions excluded black

workers, and how all this creates mur-

derously intense racial antagonisms. So

the class and race issues are very much

intertwined, as is the gender issue.

One of the ways of giving some sat-

isfaction to men who are themselves

exploited is to make them masters in

their own household. So they may be

humiliated on the job, but they come

back home and humiliate their wives

and their children. There’s a wonderful

short story by a black woman writer,

Ann Petry, “Like a Winding Sheet” that

should be required reading in school.

It’s about a black man who is humili-

ated on the job and comes home and,

on the flimsiest of reasons, beats his

wife. The story is told in such a way

as to make you really understand the

pent- up anger that explodes inside

a family as a result of what happens

out in the world. In all these instances

of racial and sexual mistreatment, it

is important for students to under-

stand that the roots of such hostility

are social, environmental, situational,

and are not an inevitability of human

nature. It is also important to show

how these antagonisms so divide peo-

ple from one another as to make it dif-

ficult for them to solve their common

problems in united action.

How can you teach white students to

take an anti-racist perspective that

isn’t based merely on guilt over the

things that white people have done to

people of color?

If such a perspective is based only

on guilt, it doesn’t have a secure foun-

dation. It has to be based on empathy

and on self-interest, on an understand-

ing that the divisions between black

and white have not just resulted in

the exploitation of black people, even

though they’ve been the greatest vic-

tims, but have prevented whites and

blacks from getting together to bring

about the social change that would

benefit them all. Showing the self-

interest is also important in order to

avoid the patronizing view of feeling

sorry for someone, of giving somebody

equality because you feel guilty about

what has been done to them.

At the same time, to approach the

issue merely on the basis of self-inter-

est would be wrong, because people

should learn to empathize with other

people even where there is no visible,

immediate self-interest.

In response to concerns about multi-

culturalism, there’s more lip service

to include events and perspectives

affecting women and people of color.

But often it’s presented as more facts

and people to learn, without any fun-

damental change in perspective. What

would be the approach of a truly anti-

racist, multicultural perspective in

U.S. history?

I’ve noticed this problem in some

of the new textbooks, which obviously

are trying to respond to the need for a

multicultural approach. What I find is a

bland eclecticism where everything has

equal weight. You add more facts, you

add more continents, you add more

cultures, you add more people. But

then it becomes a confusing melange

in which you’ve added a lot of different

elements but without any real emphasis

Picket sign from a protest in 1941 during a time of heightened labor unrest, when walt Disney fired union organizers on his art staff.

Rethinking OuR AssumptiOns 185

on what had previously been omitted.

You’re left with a kind of unemotional,

cold combination salad.

You need the equivalent of affirma-

tive action in education. What affirma-

tive action does is to say, look, things

have been slanted one way for a long

time. We’re going to pay special atten-

tion to this person or to this group of

people because they have been left out

for so long.

People ask me why in my book, A

People’s History of the United States, I

did not simply take the things that I

put in and add them to the orthodox

approaches so, as they put it, the book

would be better balanced. But there’s

a way in which this so-called balance

leaves people nowhere, with no moral

sensibility, no firm convictions, no out-

rage, no indignation, no energy to go

anywhere.

I think it is important to pay spe-

cial attention to the history of black

people, of Indians, of women, in a way

that highlights not only the facts but

the emotional intensity of such issues.

Is it possible for history to be objec-

tive?

Objectivity is neither possible nor

desirable.

It’s not possible because all history

is subjective, all history represents a

point of view. History is always a selec-

tion from an infinite number of facts

and everybody makes the selection dif-

ferently, based on their values and what

they think is important. Since it’s not

possible to be objective, you should be

honest about that.

Objectivity is not desirable because

if we want to have an effect on the

world, we need to emphasize those

things which will make students more

active citizens and more moral people.

How can a progressive teacher pro-

mote a radical perspective within a

bureaucratic, conservative institu-

tion? Teachers sometimes either push

the limits so far that they alienate

their colleagues or get fired, or they’re

so afraid that they tone down what

they really think. How can a teacher

resolve this dilemma?

The problem certainly exists on the

college and university level—people

want to get tenure, they want to keep

teaching, they want to get promoted,

they want to get salary raises, and so

there are all these economic punish-

ments if they do something that looks

outlandish and radical and different.

But I’ve always believed that the main

problem with college and university

teachers has been self-censorship. I

suspect that the same thing is true in

the high schools, although you have

to be more sympathetic with high

school teachers because they operate

in a much more repressive atmosphere.

I’ve seen again and again where col-

lege and university teachers don’t really

have a problem in, for instance, using

my People’s History in their classrooms,

but high school teachers always have

a problem. They can’t get it officially

adopted, they have to get permission,

they have to photocopy parts of it

themselves in order to pass it out to the

students, they have to worry about par-

ents complaining, about what the head

of the department or the principal or

the school superintendent will say.

But I still believe, based on a lot of

contact with high school teachers over

the past few years, that while there’s a

danger of becoming overly assertive

and insensitive to how others might

view you, the most common behav-

ior is timidity. Teachers withdraw and

use the real fact of outside control as

an excuse for teaching in the orthodox

way.

Teachers need to take risks. The

problem is how to minimize those

risks. One important way is to make

sure that you present material in class

making it clear that it is subjective, that

it is controversial, that you are not lay-

ing down the law for students. Another

important thing is to be extremely tol-

erant of students who disagree with

your views, or students who express

racist or sexist ideas. I don’t mean tol-

erant in the sense of not challenging

such ideas, but tolerant in the sense

of treating them as human beings. It’s

important to develop a reputation that

you don’t give kids poor grades on the

basis of their disagreements with you.

You need to create an atmosphere of

freedom in the classroom.

It’s also important to talk with other

teachers to gain support and encour-

agement, to organize. Where there are

teachers unions, those are logical places

for teachers to support and defend one

another. Where there are not teacher

unions, teachers should always think

how they can organize and create a col-

lective strength.

Teachers don’t always know where to

get those other perspectives. Do you

have any tips?

The orthodox perspective is easy to

get. But once teachers begin to look for

other perspectives, once they start out

on that road, they will quickly be led

from one thing to another to another.

So it’s not as daunting as people might

think?

No. It’s all there. It’s in the library. n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn186

sit down. inhale. exhale. the gun will wait. the lake will wait. the tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through april. you do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. i assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment.

you need not die today. stay here—through pout or pain or peskiness. stay here. see what the news is going to be tomorrow.

graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. you are spring.

Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, in 1950. One of the foremost African-American poets in the nation’s history, she died in 2000. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

to the young who want to Die

by gwendolyn brooks

h E

AT h

E R

h A

D D

E n

Students from the organization Sistas and Brothas in the Bronx speak to the media about overcrowding at their high school.

beyOnD the ClassROOm no classroom is an island. Teachers soon become painfully aware of how factors beyond the classroom limit what they can accomplish with their students.

Overcrowded classes, tracking, crumbling social services, social inequality, and the isolation of teachers themselves all undermine effective education.

As the writers in this chapter argue, reform-minded teachers must complement their efforts inside their classrooms with alliances to transform the schools, districts, and communities they work in.

PART FIve

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn188

why we need to go beyond the Classroom by stan karp

School power comes in many pieces. Most teachers committed to social justice understandably focus on

their own classrooms where they have

daily opportunities to project a vision

of democracy and equality. Whether

it’s developing curriculum that includes

the real lives of our students, encourag-

ing young people to examine issues of

race, class, and gender as they build aca-

demic competence, or organizing activ-

ities that promote cooperative skills and

spirit, classroom teachers can often find

ways to promote social justice despite

the institutional agendas and bureau-

cratic practices imposed upon us.

But what if we stop at the classroom

door? What if critical teachers see their

role only in terms of classroom prac-

tice? Is our job solely to create “safe

spaces” inside an often ineffective and

oppressive educational system? Can we

sustain ourselves for years as commit-

ted professionals by focusing solely on

the 30, 60, or 150 students for whom

we assume direct responsibility each

September? What about the other are-

nas of educational activity beyond our

classrooms: schoolwide change, com-

munity and district education politics,

teacher unionism, and national educa-

tion reform? What do these have to do

with next week’s lesson plans?

One unavoidable answer is that

teachers will never really succeed at

their jobs until conditions of teaching

and learning improve dramatically. We

need more resources, better prepara-

tion and support, smaller classes, more

effective partnerships with the com-

munities we serve, and, especially in

poorer areas, a vision of social change

that can replace poverty and despair

with progress and hope. We need effec-

tive responses to violence, racism, drug

abuse, family crisis and the many other

problems that surface daily in our class-

rooms. Teachers have to address these

problems in the course of their profes-

sional lives as surely as our students

have to study and do their homework

to achieve individual academic goals.

schools are social battlegrounds Adding “extracurricular” activism

to a classroom teacher’s workload

may seem overwhelming. But it is a

necessity that’s been forced upon us.

Whether the issue is vouchers, funding,

multiculturalism, testing, or tracking,

schools have become public battle-

grounds for competing social and

political agendas. Yet many “reform”

proposals would only make matters

worse. If education reform is going

to make schools more effective, more

equitable and more democratic insti-

tutions, the voices of grassroots teach-

ers, parents, and students are essential.

If we don’t help to change our schools

from the bottom up, we will have them

changed for us from the top down.

Education activism is also crucial

to finding the allies we need. It is naive

S u

S a

n Lin

a R u

g g

Le S

Milwaukee teachers and community members demonstrate for public school support.

Beyond the Classroom 189

to believe that we can transform our

schools and our students’ lives by our-

selves. While we can admire and strive

to emulate teachers who through hard

work and commitment manage to per-

form classroom “magic,” the real hope

for educational transformation does

not lie in the development of isolated

“superteachers,” but in the reconstruc-

tion of school life. We need better, more

collaborative relations with our col-

leagues and the space to nurture those

possibilities. We need better, more

cooperative relations with parents and

communities, particularly where cul-

tural and racial differences exist. And we

need more democratic practices in our

schools, our unions, and our districts,

which can only come with contacts and

activism beyond classroom boundaries.

Finally, critical teachers need to

move beyond the classroom because to

do otherwise would undercut the very

efforts we make each day. If we recog-

nize that effective education requires

students to bring their real lives into

their classrooms and to take what they

learn back to their homes and neigh-

borhoods in the form of new under-

standing and new behavior, how can

we not do the same? Critical teaching

should not be merely an abstraction

or academic formula for classroom

“experimentation.” It should be a strat-

egy for educational organizing that

changes lives, including our own.

Teachers who find these arguments

compelling will face tough challenges.

As activist educators struggle to figure

out “where to put the lever,” it is use-

ful to keep in mind the contradictory

character of the institutions we seek to

change and understand just why suc-

cessful school reform is so hard.

Consider for example the cur-

rent wave of reform framed by the No

Child Left Behind Act. (See p. 200.)

Under NCLB, the federal government

is using test scores to identify which

schools will face an escalating series

ceeds. While there are many model

schools, model classrooms, and model

educators from which we can learn a

great deal, there are no model districts,

no model states, and no model systems

that have put in place and sustained the

policies and programs needed to deliver

quality education and outcomes to all

children. Why should this be so?

Ultimately, the reasons have less to

do with the flaws of any specific reform

strategy or intervention than with the

historic reality that schools have always

had a dual character.

On the one hand, public schools

remain perhaps our most important

democratic institution. They are the

product of decades of effort to give

substance to the nation’s promises of

equal opportunity, self-improvement

and success through hard work and

achievement. Schools play a key role in

American dreams of class mobility and

generational progress, and their suc-

cess or failure has a daily impact on the

lives and prospects of millions of chil-

dren and families.

At the same time, schools histori-

cally have been instruments for repro-

ducing class and race privilege as it

exists in the larger society. The low

academic performance of schools in

poor areas, the inadequate facilities, the

endemic underfunding, the persistence

of tracking and resegregation, the noto-

rious administrative instability and

shallow trendiness of reform efforts,

the toleration of failure and disrespect

for communities of color, all reflect real

relations of inequality and injustice

of mandatory “reforms” ranging from

intervention by outside consultants to

wholesale dismissal of school staff to

the imposition of private management

on public schools.

Yet even according to a study by

the conservative Thomas B. Fordham

Foundation (an enthusiastic supporter

of NCLB) the “reform interventions”

mandated by the new law have a “suc-

cess rate” of well below 50 percent,

(even when that success is measured

in narrow test score terms.). Accord-

ing to the study, “Several lessons can be

drawn from America’s previous experi-

ence with state and district-level inter-

ventions into failing schools:

n Some turnaround efforts have

improved some schools, but success is

not the norm.

n No particular intervention ap-

pears more successful than any other.

n Interventions are uneven in their

implementation and always hard to

sustain.

n It is nearly impossible to deter-

mine which interventions offer the

most bang for the buck because they are

attempted in very different situations.”

These findings resonate with my

own experience as a classroom teacher

and school reformer for over 30 years

in Paterson, N.J. Having lived through

state takeovers, school reconstitutions,

site-based management, small school

restructuring, state standards and test-

ing (and more testing), and “whole

school reform” initiatives of all kinds,

it’s hard not to conclude that school

reform fails more often than it suc-

Schools have never been just about educating children. They are also about constructing social and political power.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn190

that permeate our society. Through

ideology, gatekeeping, various forms of

stratification, and bureaucratic, often

authoritarian, administration, schools

function as a large sifting and labeling

operation that recreates and justifies

existing distributions of wealth and

power. In many ways, schools repro-

duce the very inequality that American

mythology professes they are designed

to overcome.

This dual character of schooling—

its democratic promise and its institu-

tional service to a society based on class,

race, and gender privilege—invariably

generates contradictory impulses when

it comes to reform. At every turn, the

gap between the promise and practice

of schooling creates a tension: Should

curriculum reflect a mainstream hege-

mony or a multicultural pluralism?

Should schools endorse traditional val-

ues or promote independent, critical

thought? Are standards being raised to

bar the door to some or assure better

outcomes for all? Should parents and

classroom teachers have as much to say

about reform agendas as governors and

corporate executives? Should schools

be as concerned with promoting anti-

racist attitudes as marketable skills?

Will new forms of assessment provide

better ways to report and improve stu-

dent performance or more effective

ways to sort and label kids for prede-

termined slots in society?

To be sure, answers to complicated

questions of educational policy cannot

be reduced to either/or propositions.

But the debate over policy options

resources for a relatively small slice of

the student population. Instead of pro-

viding models of systemwide reform,

they can be insulated pockets of privi-

lege, resegregation, and tracking. It all

depends on which of the system’s dual

tendencies prevails. This is one reason

for keeping a sharp eye on the big pic-

ture and asking “who benefits and who

does not” whenever a reform proposal

is put on the table.

Of course, there are many educators,

parents, and advocates at all levels push-

ing the system to realize its most ambi-

tious and democratic possibilities. These

heroic efforts need encouragement in

the face of hard choices and daunting

problems. But they also need a healthy

dose of realism about the nature of the

system we’re trying to move.

Unfortunate as it may be, schools

have never been just about educating

children. They are also about con-

structing social and political power.

Real school reform must be about chal-

lenging it.

None of this is reason for despair or

inaction. But it is cause for some hard

thinking when it comes to deciding

where to invest one’s time and energies.

In rethinking education activism along

with our teaching, we need to measure

our choices against the possibilities each

issue offers to move our classrooms and

communities closer to more just and

more democratic arrangements.

School site councils. Site-based

management reforms have faded in

recent years as the standards and testing

crusade has moved school power away

from schools, classrooms, and teach-

ers to state and national bureaucracies.

Experience has also yielded some cau-

tionary lessons about whether changes

in “governance” necessarily translate

into better classrooms and about how

much responsibility teachers should

assume for managing a system where

power remains firmly in the hands of

hierarchical bureaucracy.

inevitably takes place within the con-

text of this dual character of schooling.

The choices made push schools in one

direction or the other along a contin-

uum from promoting social justice to

reinforcing the status quo. Whether any

particular reform initiative improves

or impoverishes life in the classroom

often depends on how it fits into this

larger context.

This is one reason that reforms can-

not be judged by their rhetorical prom-

ises or short-term effect on test scores.

Instead they must be measured by their

real impact on classrooms and their

ability to deliver more democratic class-

room experiences and more equitable

results and outcomes across the system.

Take for example, the current enthu-

siasm in reform circles for small school

experiments. Small schools show prom-

ise in large part because they attempt to

change the social relations of school-

ing; done well, they can create a more

human scale and more supportive envi-

ronment for collaborative, personalized

interaction among students, teachers,

and communities. They can nourish

creativity and mutual accountability

in powerful ways that large, traditional

schools cannot. Small schools can also

introduce elements of choice, plural-

ism, and innovation into historically

bureaucratized and stagnant systems.

But like most reforms, small schools

can also be developed in problematic

ways. They can become specialized

magnets that select only the “best” stu-

dents and most involved parents. They

can claim a disproportionate share of

There are many educators, parents, and advocates at all levels pushing the

system to realize its most ambitious and democratic possibilities.

Beyond the Classroom 191

Still, at its best, site-based reform

can open a credible process for replac-

ing hierarchical and bureaucratic

forms of school governance with more

representative and democratic struc-

tures. As educator Deborah Meier

has written, “a democratic school cul-

ture is the best professional develop-

ment.” Where site councils have real

power, parents, teachers, and oth-

ers in a school community can make

significant decisions about resources,

curricula, and school policies in ways

that can nourish community/school/

teacher collaboration. Site councils

can become places where members of

a school community work to reconcile

different perspectives and priorities,

and learn to build trust and respect

over the long term.

At its worst, however, (and here

comes that dual character again) site-

based reform can become simply

another bureaucratic layer in a system

that doesn’t work. It can consume valu-

able time and energy in a seemingly

endless cycle of unproductive meetings

designed to give a veneer of legitimacy

to bureaucratic agendas. Instead of rep-

resentative bodies, site councils can be

empty shells dominated by administra-

tive appointees, or bodies that margin-

alize parents (or classroom teachers)

in ways that promote old antagonisms

rather than new alliances. They can

also become pawns in a cynical process

of imposing austerity, breaking union

power, or otherwise administering

policies of educational retrenchment

rather than reform.

Questions to Consider Whether or not a particular site-based

project is worth a teacher’s investment

of time and energy probably depends

on the answers to a variety of ques-

tions: Has the council been created in

response to a top-down directive or is

it the product of grassroots, union, or

community action? Does the site coun-

Labor unions in general, and teacher

unions in particular, have won historic

rights and better conditions for those

they represent. In most school systems,

unions serve as some check on the arbi-

trary power of the politicized bureau-

cracies that manage school districts.

More significantly, they are an impor-

tant reservoir of collective strength and

resources for reform that need to be

protected from a variety of anti-labor

crusades in education today, including

privatization, voucher schemes, and

legal restrictions on organizing and the

right to strike.

Unfortunately in too many cases,

teacher unions have become bureau-

cratic partners in the management of

failing school systems. Like other labor

organizations, they often suffer from

undemocratic and uninspiring inter-

nal practices which demobilize and

fragment their memberships instead

of enlisting them in creative campaigns

for better schools. And like most other

social institutions, they have been

deformed by the persistence of racism

and sexism which has at times crippled

their ability to respond effectively to

complex issues like affirmative action

cil have direct control over resources

or policies that can have substantial

impact on the school? Is the site coun-

cil a place where teachers and parents

really have a chance to engage in dia-

log and form alliances? Is the process

characterized by an increase in com-

munication, access to information, and

debate by key constituencies? Is site-

based reform accompanied by a tangi-

ble investment in the time and training

needed to make it work? Is there build-

ingwide or districtwide discussion of

how such reform will change the roles

of all concerned, or is it being grafted

onto existing structures?

Even where the answers to such

questions are mixed, asking them will

help measure the potential of a given

site-based project and prepare teachers

for critical participation in the process.

teacher unions Teacher unions offer another mix of

opportunities and obstacles for teach-

ers looking to effect change. Like public

schools themselves, teacher unions are

both deeply flawed institutions, and, at

the same time, indispensable to hopes

for educational democracy and justice.

10 things you Can Do beyond your Classroom 1. Serve on a local school council. 2. Become active in your union. 3. Breathe new life into a standing union/school committee (e.g., instruction, community outreach, curriculum). 4. Organize a teachers’ study or discussion group. 5. Write an op-ed for the local newspaper about how ncLB is affecting your school and classroom. 6. help distribute Rethinking Schools.

7. Join a local community organization with an interest in schools (e.g., the nAAcP or a local neighborhood coalition). 8. Investigate and publicize tracking policies in your school. 9. Flood your faculty room with provocative materials about critical teaching. 10. Investigate and publicize education funding policies in your state.

For related resources, organizations, and periodicals, see pp. 215-232.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn192

versus seniority rights, the need to

close the gap between communities of

color and predominantly white profes-

sional staffs, and the building of par-

ent-teacher partnerships.

Teacher unions have too often

adopted short-sighted, defensive per-

spectives on key reform issues, some-

times focusing too narrowly on salary

and contract concerns at the expense

of a broader vision of educational jus-

tice and change. As a result they can pit

the short-term interests of their mem-

bers against the long-term interests

of schools and the communities they

serve. Ultimately this weakens public

support for both unions and schools.

Whether the issue is identifying and

helping ineffective teachers, prioritiz-

ing scarce resources, acknowledging

community and parent concerns in

contract talks, or otherwise facilitating

the reform of existing school systems,

teacher unions have too often been

committed to a narrow defense of exist-

ing arrangements. The consequences

can be devastating for both school sys-

tems and teachers. In Chicago and New

York, reforms to increase community

and parent power were instituted, to a

large extent, against union opposition,

weakening the reforms in both cases.

Elsewhere unions have stubbornly

refused to address the issue of “bad

teachers,” thereby helping to magnify

and sensationalize what in actuality

is a marginal issue, while at the same

time failing to address the dismal state

of teacher preparation and in-school

support.

union work leads you to conclude that

the space for change in your local is

limited, you’re likely to have made valu-

able contacts, and positioned yourself

and others for a broader challenge to

the union status quo as the education

crisis deepens and more unions find

business-as-usual strategies unequal to

the tasks before them.

teacher study and support groups Another major reason for critical teach-

ers to look beyond the classroom is to

break out of the confining isolation

they often face. Most school cultures are

not very supportive of critical thought,

change, or even collaboration among

staff. Starting a teachers’ study group

can be a way of finding allies to sus-

tain committed teaching over the long

haul. A teacher group might begin as an

informal after-school social hour where

teachers trade stories, resources, and

ideas. To encourage discussion beyond

the “gripe session stage” (a chronic ten-

dency that infects many faculty rooms)

it’s often helpful to pick a specific topic

like tracking, assessment, or discipline,

read a background article, and then talk

about the issue’s impact on your own

school and classrooms. Once a group

establishes some cohesion and continu-

ity, it can address more difficult issues

such as multicultural relations among

teachers and students, or differing

parent-teacher perspectives. It’s often

useful to invite outside participants

for frank conversations about sensitive

issues often avoided in typical “inser-

vice” programs.

Discussion or study groups have a

variety of attractions for teachers look-

ing to move beyond the classroom.

They’re flexible, and can set their own

agendas and pace without interference.

If the interest in one school is insuffi-

cient to sustain a group, teachers from

several schools can begin coalescing a

local network of progressive educators.

But some of the responsibility for

the failures of teacher unions is our

own. Too often progressive-minded

teachers abstain from union activity,

lumping the union with the adminis-

tration as “them.” I know I felt that way

myself when I first entered the teach-

ing profession. It was only after hav-

ing these attitudes challenged by com-

mitted teachers working for reform

in both the NEA and the AFT that I

reconsidered my assumptions and saw

possibilities I had overlooked.

Teacher unions are our organizations

or, at any rate, they should be, and while

it would be naive to ignore the obstacles

that bureaucratized unions can place in

the path of rank-and-file activism, it is

self-defeating to surrender in advance.

Many locals are starved for the partici-

pation of committed members. Others

may be genuinely committed to the

interests of teachers and kids but have

no awareness of critical perspectives or

alternative teaching strategies. More-

over, it’s not necessary to pursue the

possibilities of union activism by start-

ing with a frontal attack on the existing

leadership. Most teacher unions have

a variety of committees and forums

that offer possibilities for initiative and

debate. A teacher looking for connec-

tions with other colleagues and poten-

tial allies should definitely consider

becoming a building delegate, reviving

a dormant instructional committee,

organizing a classroom discussion cau-

cus, or proposing a union-sponsored

community forum on some hot edu-

cational issue. Even if a year or two of

A teacher group might begin as an informal after-school social hour where

teachers trade stories, resources, and ideas.

Beyond the Classroom 193

They can draw on a variety of national

resources and networks for ideas and

support (see Resources, p. 215–231),

and can develop into a safe space for

critical reflection and mutual support

not readily available elsewhere. Even-

tually, discussion and study can lead

to action, public discussion, and local

campaigns to improve schools. With

public attention increasingly focused

on education, a local teacher group has

the potential to evolve into an impor-

tant local, grassroots institution. One

person posting a sign on the faculty

bulletin board or approaching a few

colleagues can initiate a low-risk strat-

egy that can pay big dividends.

local, state, and national education activism The opportunities discussed above

can each provide ways to promote

social justice in education, and at the

same time sustain individual teach-

ers in their daily efforts in the class-

room. But there are many key educa-

tional issues that will be determined,

not primarily inside local schools and

classrooms, but in the larger context

of community, state, and national

politics. These include voucher plans,

which threaten to divert public funds

to private schools, and privatization

schemes, which propose divesting in

the very concept of public education

and turning over schools to private

managers. It also includes legal battles

now underway in dozens of states over

school funding inequities which repro-

duce society’s racial and class divisions,

create a patchwork of rich schools

and poor schools, and breed crippling

inequality. It also increasingly includes

the imposition of state and national

testing standards which bureaucrati-

cally drive school curricula and limit

teacher autonomy in the classroom,

often in ways that hinder effective

instructional practices. Teachers need

to be informed about these issues and,

where possible, help to resolve them in

positive ways.

In the final analysis, however, what’s

important is not that classroom teach-

ers assume an impossible burden of

individual responsibility for solving

all the social and educational prob-

lems that affect their classrooms. What

teacher activist groups The number of social justice teacher support and activist groups is growing all the time. check out teacheractivistgroups.org for an up-to-date list. Below are some local groups that have their own websites; some also maintain listservs.

Education For Liberation national www.edliberation.org

Educators Network for Social Justice milwaukee www.ensj.org/

Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Research Group (LSJTRG) St. Louis, mo. http://literacyforsocialjustice.com/

New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) new York www.nycore.org

Portland Area Rethinking Schools (PARS) Portland, Ore. www.portlandrethinkingschools.org

Teachers for Social Justice (T4SJ) San Fransisco area www.t4sj.org

Teachers for Social Justice (TSJ) chicago www.teachersforjustice.org

Teachers Unite new York city www.teachersunite.net

matters is that they see and, as much

as possible, understand the connec-

tions between those classrooms and

the society around them, and realize

that efforts to apply critical teaching

are tied to broader efforts to promote

democracy and equality in society. If

teachers can find ways to link the two,

they will strengthen both. n

Stan Karp ([email protected]) taught

English and journalism for 30 years in

Paterson, N.J. He is currently director of the

Secondary Reform Project at the Education

Law Center in Newark, N.J., and an editor

of Rethinking Schools magazine.

http://www.edliberation.org

http://www.ensj.org/

http://literacyforsocialjustice.com/

http://www.nycore.org

http://www.portlandrethinkingschools.org

http://www.t4sj.org

http://www.teachersforjustice.org

http://www.teachersunite.net

mailto:stan.karp%40gmail.com?subject=

kate

Typewritten Text

kate

Typewritten Text

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn194

there will be no monograms on our skulls. you who are training your daughters to check for the words “Calvin klein” before they look to see if there are pockets are giving them no hands to put in those pockets.

you are giving them eyes that will find nothing solid in stones. no comfort in rough land, nameless sheep trails. no answers from things which do not speak.

since when do children sketch dreams with price tags attached? Don’t tell me they were born this way. we were all born like empty fields. what we are now shows what has been planted.

will you remind them there were people who hemmed their days with thick-spun wool and wore them till they fell apart?

think of darkness hugging the houses, caring nothing for the material of our pajamas. think of the delicate mesh of neckbones when you clasp the golden chains. these words the world rains back and forth are temporary as clouds. Clouds? tell your children to look up. the sky is the only store worth shopping in for anything as long as a life.

naomi Shihab nye is an acclaimed poet, essayist, and teacher. She is author and/or editor of more than 20 books. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

Rebellion against the north side

by naomi shihab nye

Beyond the Classroom 195

ing instruction or creating schools as

learning communities where teach-

ers have opportunities to have honest

discussions about classroom practice,

share successful lessons and strategies,

or examine student work together,

more and more administrators opt

for what I call “boxed” professional

development—from fill-in-the-blank

writing curricula to “stick-the-kid-

on-the-computer” reading and math

programs.

When high school language arts

teachers in Portland were asked by the

Professional Development Committee

Teachers teaching teachers is like the blind leading the blind,” a lit-eracy “expert” told Portland Pub- lic Schools (PPS) administrators in the

fall of 2005, while discussing my three-

year writing proposal for elementary

schools. My plan included classroom

teachers sharing strategies and lessons

to improve writing in grades 3 through

5. Instead, elementary teachers got yet

another outside expert with a program

and a large price tag.

During my seven years as a cur-

riculum specialist designing profes-

sional development in Portland Pub-

lic Schools, I wanted teachers to see

themselves as curriculum producers,

as creative intellectuals rather than

technicians serving out daily portions

of someone else’s packaged or down-

loaded materials. I attempted to cre-

ate spaces where teachers could work

together to develop their own curricu-

lum and discuss education issues.

School districts write mission state-

ments about creating citizens of the

world, but more and more, they want

teachers to become robotic hands who

deliver education programs designed

and shipped from sites outside of our

classrooms.

If we want an educated citizenry, we

need teachers who know how to think

about their students’ needs and write

their own curriculum in collaboration

with others.

In recent years, the No Child Left

Behind (NCLB) legislation has pushed

administrators to grab quick solu-

tions to get a fast “bump” in their test

scores. Instead of taking the time to

build teacher capacity by improv-

teachers teaching teachers by linda Christensen

—a group founded by the school dis-

trict and the Portland Association of

Teachers—which professional devel-

opment programs had the greatest

impact on their students’ learning, they

overwhelmingly named the Portland

Writing Project, the Summer Literacy

Curriculum Camp, and the Profes-

sional Development Days—which

were all led by classroom teachers.

Teachers stated that these three pro-

grams were practical and related spe-

cifically to their content. The programs

gave them models of new strategies and

curricula, hands-on practice, and time

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn196

for collaboration and implementation.

Teachers also said they appreciated

the support of ongoing professional

development, instead of the one-shot

variety. What struck me in reading the

surveys and talking with teachers was

that the top-down approach of telling

teachers what to do without engaging

them in active learning is as ineffective

in professional development as it is in

the classroom.

In the same way that some teachers

insult students by assuming that they

have no knowledge, history, culture,

or language, some schools and school

districts insult teachers by assuming

that they come to professional devel-

opment without any prior knowledge

or expertise. For example, last year a

literacy “expert” came to town with her

bag of tricks. She landed at a school

that had a literacy team representing

teachers across the disciplines. Instead

of finding out what they knew, she

proceeded to teach them about “think

alouds,” graphic organizers, textbook

previewing, and reading strategies

they’d already been implementing in

their classrooms.

Another common professional

development pitfall is the series of

overheads, which is currently being

replaced by the dancing PowerPoint

presentation, with too-simple bulleted

points about complex issues like inclu-

sion of special education students or

English Language Learners in main-

stream classrooms, as if naming a prob-

lem constituted addressing it. Without

any modeling, discussion, or time to

Daughter, Monica Sone’s autobiogra-

phy, which takes place during the Jap-

anese-American internment. The par-

ticipants, co-directors, and I developed

role plays and writing assignments

using the book, primary source docu-

ments, children’s books, or other par-

allel texts on the topic. While the co-

directors and I provide the framework

for the summer institute, each teacher

develops and teaches a writing lesson

that contributes to the unit. For exam-

ple, Alexis Aquino-Mackles, a 1st-grade

teacher, read a section of Nisei Daugh-

ter that described how Sone’s family

burned “everything Japanese: Japanese

dolls, music, swords, Japanese poetry.”

Then she read a section from Farewell

to Manzanar where a Japanese-Amer-

ican mother breaks her family’s heir-

loom dishes one at a time rather than

sell them to the vultures who lurked

in Japanese-American neighborhoods

during the evictions and bought fami-

lies’ valuables at ridiculously low prices

prior to the internment. She gave each

member of our class a broken piece of

pottery and had us write an interior

monologue from the character’s point

of view about that moment.

Tanya McCoy, a high school sci-

ence teacher, asked each of us to bring

a baggie full of soil from our garden.

After conducting experiments on the

soil and discussing how different the

soil would be in the mostly desert-like

settings of the internment camps, we

wrote about our experiments.

Our intention is not for teachers to

grab this particular unit and obedi-

ently follow the lessons; instead we aim

to equip teachers to think in interdis-

ciplinary terms and see themselves as

curriculum developers, not consumers

of other people’s curriculum. The work

around Nisei Daughter is an important

example, but only because it provides

a model for how teachers of any grade

level or content area might approach

developing units of study. I intention-

plan for implementation, the leaders

of these inoculation sessions expect

teachers to take the theory back and

apply it in their classrooms. This is like

taking students to the Louvre, showing

them great art, and expecting them to

reproduce it without giving them any

lessons on drawing and painting.

Portland writing Project The Portland Writing Project (PWP), a

collaboration between Portland Public

Schools and the Oregon Writing Proj-

ect at Lewis & Clark College, is one of

the almost-200 sites of the National

Writing Project (NWP). The Portland

Writing Project models the pedagogy

it hopes teachers will take back to their

classrooms, but it also encourages

teachers to constantly reflect on their

classroom practice and revise their

teaching based on their observations.

Like the NWP, the PWP doesn’t preach

one way to teach writing; it teaches the

writing process. But in Portland, we

also help teachers learn to develop their

own curriculum.

Every summer for most of the past

20 years, 25 K–12 Portland Public

Schools teachers have gathered to share

writing strategies and lessons with each

other during an intensive (9 a.m. to 4

p.m.) four-week class; they receive 10.5

university credits for participating. At

our site, my co-director and I choose

a multicultural novel that situates our

teaching in a period of U.S. history, so

that teachers can learn to integrate his-

tory, reading, novel study, writing, and

students’ lives into their lessons.

For a number of years we read Nisei

Teachers learn the strategies by doing the strategies, not by having someone

talk about ‘participatory, engaging, hands-on curriculum.’

Beyond the Classroom 197

the four weeks, the co-directors and

I work with participants to tease out

what they do know and what they can

share. We try to validate and expand

their knowledge—in the same way we

respond to students in our classrooms.

PWP teachers continue to meet

monthly during the year following the

summer institute. (Some teachers have

continued to come to these meetings

for a number of years, and almost 100

teachers gather for our yearly writing

retreat in February.) They discuss the

implementation of strategies in their

classroom. They bring in student work

to examine, successful lessons to share,

and problems to ponder and solve.

Because many teachers have not

experienced a classroom that engages

their hearts and minds while also

teaching them to read and write criti-

cally, it is essential that professional

development do more than describe

good classroom practice. We can’t just

hand teachers a program to imple-

ment. Teachers need to participate

in this kind of pedagogy as a student

experiences it in order to understand

why this kind of instruction is neces-

sary. For example, Ellie Hakala, lan-

guage arts teacher, said at one PWP

meeting, “I never realized how impor-

tant students’ sharing their work was

until I went through the Writing

Project. When I wrote a great piece,

we aim to equip teachers

to think in interdisciplinary terms and see

themselves as curriculum

developers.

ally model curriculum that struggles

with racism and inequality of all kinds,

that encourages teachers to think

about engaging students in why there

is inequality and oppression, and that

looks for places of solidarity, hope, and

alternatives.

All the teachers in the PWP also

participate in reading groups, writing

response groups, role plays, and simu-

lations. They write every assignment.

They learn the strategies by doing the

strategies, not by having someone talk

about “participatory, engaging, hands-

on curriculum.” They know revision

strategies because they use them as

they write and revise their own nar-

ratives, essays, and poetry. They can

teach students methods for opening

narratives or strategies for knocking

their classmates’ socks off with their

dialogue because they learn how to

write like writers during the institute.

Teachers also reflect after each activity

on how they will use or adapt the strat-

egies in their classrooms. They meet in

grade-level groups throughout the four

weeks to plan for the following year. It

is their activity, their plans, and their

growth that provides the content and

the goal of this kind of professional

development.

The intent of the PWP is not to “fix”

broken teachers; it provides a rich envi-

ronment for teachers to practice liter-

acy, to have hard conversations about

thorny issues that surface in their class-

room practice. This is the kind of dia-

logue that simply can’t happen in top-

down trainings or when teachers are

handed a packaged curriculum created

at Princeton.

Of course, not all teachers who

attend the summer institute bring stel-

lar practice. Some are victims of bad

writing instruction themselves; others

have internalized the need to look out-

side of their classroom for answers, to

find an expert or guru to follow instead

of becoming their own experts. During

I wanted everyone to hear it, not just

my small group. I wanted to hear what

others had written. Now my students

want to share all the time as well.”

summer Curriculum Camps In collaboration with a group of lan-

guage arts teachers representing each

of our high schools, I designed the

Curriculum Camp specifically to give

teachers time to create curriculum and

to bring a more diverse, multicultural,

contemporary reading list into our

high school language arts classrooms.

Instead of just buying the books and

putting them in bookrooms across

the city, I wrote a grant to pay teach-

ers to come together and write curric-

ulum guides to help teach the novels.

Of course, it would have been cheaper

and faster to buy prepackaged curricu-

lum for teachers to open each fall and

follow the directions. But our group

wanted to hone teachers’ capacities to

create curriculum from the ground up,

so we chose to take the time and spend

the money to share and build teacher

knowledge. Because the novels, like the

ones we chose for the Portland Writ-

ing Project, included sensitive cultural,

racial, and gender issues as well as his-

toric events that not all teachers were

familiar with, we knew it was impor-

tant to spend time researching back-

ground knowledge and talking about

how to teach the novels. We wanted to

expand the repertoire of instructional

strategies that teachers use, but we

also wanted to link those strategies to

deeper, more challenging content.

Our intent was to integrate the

canon, but also to share the expertise

of our skilled teachers as we wove read-

ing and writing strategies into these

study guides. (Many of these teach-

ers participated in the Portland Writ-

ing Project sometime during the past

20 years.) Many of us needed to learn

how to teach reading and writing skills

more effectively. Using the PWP model

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn198

of teachers teaching teachers, we took

turns teaching workshops that shared

effective strategies while we built our

units.

We received a grant from the pri-

vately funded Portland Public School

Foundation for $40,000—enough to

purchase sets of books for every high

school and to pay two teachers from

each school their hourly wage for 30

hours of work. Other teachers volun-

teered to come for credit. They were

hungry for a community where they

could learn and share with each other.

At the end of the first summer one

teacher wrote, “I have learned that we

are our best resources.”

Six years later, we continue to meet

for a week each summer, scrounging

money from various grants or the dis-

trict’s coffers. In fact, more than 90 per-

cent of PPS high school language arts

teachers, as well as a number of ESL,

special education, and social studies

teachers, attended at least one summer

camp by the time I retired from PPS in

2006.

We spend part of each morning dis-

cussing provocative readings and topics

or attending reading or writing work-

shops that participants asked us to pro-

vide. We talk about the tough issues:

How to differentiate our curriculum

with an increasingly diverse student

body, how to work with students who

don’t speak or write Standard English,

how to teach students to design their

own essay topics. Then teachers move

into work groups to develop curricu-

lum on new novels, nonfiction texts,

or hot topics. For example, teachers

have created curriculum on Persepolis,

Kite Runner, Fences, Thousand Pieces of

Gold, as well as Fast Food Nation, Nickel

and Dimed, and Smoke Signals.

The curriculum camp provides

another lesson for professional devel-

opment: New teachers need time to

grow their practice with skilled pro-

fessionals. During the Summer Cur-

riculum for the students who populate

our schools. While published guides

may be slicker in presentation than

ours, they lack the creative struggle of

teachers making decisions about the

best way to introduce the book, the

best way to teach how to read this par-

ticular text.

Professional Development Days How do teachers get better at their craft?

How do we create “lifelong learners” in

the teaching profession? If we don’t

reach beyond our classrooms to learn

new strategies or engage in debates

with our colleagues, we can grow rigid

and narrow. No matter how long we’ve

been teaching or how good we are, we

can always benefit from gathering with

colleagues and sharing new curriculum

ideas and strategies, talking about new

issues that have surfaced, or discussing

old issues that we still need to tackle.

As teachers, professional develop-

ment needs to provide us with time-

outs from our work, so we can step

back and ask the questions about our

daily practice that needle us. We need

time to think, discuss, debate, find new

strategies and resources for our class-

rooms and ourselves. Too often pro-

fessional development is provided in

tiny morsels from 3:30 to 5:30 after we

have taught all day—or squeezed into

an hour one morning a month. For-

tunately, the Portland Association of

Teachers and Portland Public Schools

hammered out an agreement to pro-

vide five paid professional development

days for teachers each year. Originally,

the days were set aside to give teachers

time to become familiar with the state

standards, work samples, and scoring

rubrics. For a number of years these

days were divided between school-

based professional development and

district professional development.

During the seven years I worked as

the high school language arts curricu-

riculum Camp first-year teachers and

veteran teachers a year or two from

retirement work side-by-side develop-

ing curriculum and learning new skills.

As one first-year teacher wrote, “Being

new to teaching, the greatest thing

about the Literacy Project has been ...

learning tons about everything, soak-

ing up as much as I can. Up to this

point, I really had a limited collection

of strategies to use.”

During the first summer of the lit-

eracy camp, I told my colleagues that

I was less interested in the curriculum

guides we produced than the process of

teachers working together and learning

from each other. Mistake. The guides

are also important. They are the writ-

ten legacy of our summer work. But

the guides also indicate our curricu-

lar weaknesses and blind spots. Some

are brilliant. Others limp along with

too many Internet downloads and

not enough inspired teaching. Some

miss the point. After each summer, I

reviewed the guides to see what les-

sons we learned and what we missed

as we create our work for the following

summer.

If we purchased guides for the books

or distributed anthologies with ques-

tions and writings mapped out for the

teachers, we would miss these oppor-

tunities to learn together to build cur-

Teachers engaged in

conversations about racism in their city and learned how to teach about it at the same

time.

Beyond the Classroom 199

lum specialist, I met regularly with the

high school literacy leaders, a group

composed of one language arts liaison

from every comprehensive and alterna-

tive high school. Together, we decided

to commit our professional develop-

ment days to disseminating the cur-

riculum guides developed during the

summer, sharing strategies, discussing

the impact of district or state initiatives

on our classrooms (like high school

reform), or bringing in occasional

speakers to address hot issues, like

untracking.

A few years ago we started develop-

ing interdisciplinary workshops with

social studies, ESL, and special educa-

tion teachers. These days broke us out

of our classrooms and content areas to

share our practice, but also helped us

disseminate the curriculum we devel-

oped each summer. During this time,

we engaged as intellectuals with other

teachers in meaningful discussions

about our content—and the world.

Instead of sitting in rows, listening to

some “expert” tell us about effective

classroom practice, we experienced it

with our colleagues.

For example, on a recent profes-

sional development day, Carmel Ross

and Lisa Walker, two of the teachers

who developed curriculum for the

novel Bronx Masquerade, shared one

of the strategies from their summer

work. They led participants on a trea-

sure hunt, a prereading activity that

develops background knowledge prior

to entering a unit of study. Their inter-

active workshop taught about the main

characters of the Harlem Renaissance

and demonstrated how to get “TAG,

ELL, SPED, and Johnny out of their

seats and into your curriculum.”

In another workshop, Hyung Nam, a

social studies teacher, led language arts,

social studies, and ESL colleagues in

a lesson on “Institutional Racism and

Segregation in the Post-Civil Rights

Era and in Portland.” His lesson cen-

district—and school—administrators

and curriculum leaders have intimate

knowledge of teachers’ practice. Just

putting teacher X in front of the faculty

will not lead to the kind of professional

development I am advocating. Cur-

riculum leaders must take the effort

to listen to teachers’ conversations

when they talk about their classrooms

and their students, they must observe

teachers at work with students and col-

leagues, and they must look for exem-

plary practice and curricular expertise.

Ultimately, they must have a vision of

professional development that puts

classroom teachers at the center. n

Linda Christensen ([email protected]) is

director of the Oregon Writing Project at

Lewis and Clark College and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine.

tered on two central questions: How

do segregation and racial disparities

persist after the Civil Rights Era? How

does Portland’s history with segrega-

tion and environmental racism com-

pare to the national history? Hyung’s

lessons explored the multiple causes of

racial segregation and environmental

racism while helping students under-

stand how institutional racism is per-

petuated today. His workshop included

a mock trial and examination of local

history with ongoing segregation and

racism. Teachers not only learned

new pedagogy, they walked away with

information, including handouts and

historical documents on the structural

features of racism to use with their stu-

dents. They experienced learning by

participating in the trial, not by read-

ing about it. They engaged in conver-

sations about racism in their city and

learned how to teach about it at the

same time.

Teachers who present—and over

the years we have worked to enlist as

many teachers as presenters as pos-

sible—learn twice as much. They not

only engage as participants in the

workshops throughout the day, they

also gain clarity about their own prac-

tice by sharing it with other teachers.

In presenting to their colleagues, they

teach their lessons, but they also teach

the underlying assumptions about

good pedagogy and content knowledge

that animate their work.

Teacher-centered professional

development doesn’t happen unless

Teacher-centered professional development doesn’t happen unless

district—and school—administrators and curriculum leaders have intimate

knowledge of teachers’ practice.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn200

equity Claims for nClb Don’t Pass the test by stan karp

ever since the “No Child Left Behind” legislation* was passed in 2001, supporters have made a series of claims about how the law

will help kids, parents, and schools,

especially in poor communities. The

real impact that NCLB is having on

schools and classrooms is considerably

different from these claims:

Claim: Annual standardized testing is

the key to bringing school improve-

ment and accountability to all schools.

“For too long,” says the Department

of Education, “America’s education

system has not been accountable for

results and too many children have

been locked in underachieving schools

and left behind. … Testing will raise

expectations for all students and ensure

that no child slips through the cracks.”

Reality: The huge increase in feder-

ally mandated testing will hurt school

performance, not improve it. Over

the past two decades, most states and

local districts already have dramati-

cally increased the use of standardized

tests without solving the problems of

poor schools. NCLB requires states to

develop literally millions of new tests

at a cost of more than $7 billion. With

states spending only about $20 per stu-

dent developing these tests, many are

unreliable and inappropriately used.

As one researcher noted, “There is

more public oversight of the pet indus-

try and the food we feed our dogs than

there is for the quality of tests we make

our kids take.”

Many studies show that standard-

ized testing does not lead to lasting

increases in student achievement.

Researchers at Arizona State Univer-

sity completed the largest study ever

done on the issue. They concluded

that “high-stakes” testing “that decides

whether students graduate, teachers

win bonuses and schools are shut-

tered, an approach already in place in

more than half the nation, does little

to improve achievement and may actu-

ally worsen academic performance and

dropout rates.”

When schools become obsessed

with test scores, they narrow the focus

of what teachers do in classrooms and

limit their ability to serve the broader

needs of children and their commu-

nities. Overreliance on testing diverts

attention and resources from more

promising school improvement strat-

egies like smaller class size, creative

curriculum reform, and collaborative

professional development. High-stakes

tests push struggling students out of

school, and encourage schools to adopt

inappropriate practices for younger

children in an effort to “get them ready

for the tests.” Overuse of testing can

S Tu

A R

T g O

LD E

n B

E R

Beyond the Classroom 201

also encourage cheating scandals and

makes schools and students vulnerable

to inaccurate and, at times, corrupt

practices by commercial testing firms.

Claim: The new law will use test scores

to hold schools accountable for serving

all students. For the first time, the spot-

light will be put on achievement gaps

that schools have traditionally cov-

ered up, and schools will be forced to

address inequalities in student achieve-

ment that they have failed to deal with

in the past.

Reality: The comparative reporting

of student scores by subgroups does

put a useful and important spotlight

on achievement gaps. But NCLB uses

these gaps to label schools as “failures,”

without providing the resources or

support needed to eliminate them. The

law includes an unrealistic and under-

funded federal mandate that by 2014,

100 percent of all students, including

special education students and English

language learners, must be proficient

on state tests. Schools that don’t meet

increasingly unreachable test score tar-

gets face an escalating series of sanc-

tions that have no record of success

as school improvement strategies, but

do promote privatization and “mar-

ket reform” of public education, for

example by moving resources away

from the neediest schools to pay pri-

vate, for-profit companies to provide

“supplemental tutoring.“ Instead of

an appropriate educational strategy,

these policies leave schools and chil-

dren behind as the federal government

retreats from the nation’s historic com-

mitment to improving universal public

schooling for all kids.

Inequality in test scores is one indi-

cator of school performance. But test

scores also reflect other inequalities in

resources and opportunities that exist

in the larger society and in schools

themselves. The federal government

has not made wiping out inequality a

ously been left behind.

Reality: The inclusion of special edu-

cation and Limited English Proficient

students in the testing calculations

makes it harder for schools to reach the

unreasonable “adequate yearly prog-

ress” targets, but it does nothing to

improve educational services to these

children. The law’s punitive preoccupa-

tion with high-stakes testing is narrow-

ing the focus of curricula and impov-

erishing educational experiences for

all children. It is also forcing students

to take inappropriate and unhelpful

mandated assessments, like tests in lan-

guages they don’t understand.

If the federal government wanted

to help special needs students, it would

fully fund the Individuals with Disabil-

ities Education Act (IDEA), as called

for repeatedly by education advocates.

(The federal government currently

provides less than half the funding

authorized by the IDEA.) It would also

support effective bilingual education

programs for English language learn-

ers and encourage assessment practices

that promote content learning and

language acquisition simultaneously.

Instead, the new regulations greatly

restrict the use of effective bilingual

education programs and promote a

kind of “English only” intolerance.

Claim: The new federal law gives par-

ents in failing schools more choices.

Reality: The law theoretically gives

parents the right to take students out

of struggling schools and to leave those

schools behind. But it does not guaran-

high priority when it comes to tax pol-

icy, unemployment policy, minimum

wage policies, health or child welfare

policies. The Bush administration tried

to cut food stamp programs, tempo-

rary assistance for needy families, child

nutrition, foster care, child support

enforcement, health insurance pro-

grams for children, and childcare grants

to states. Why are standardized test

scores in public schools the only area

of public policy in which the admin-

istration has mandated 100% equality

among all population groups? Can you

imagine the federal government saying

all crime must be eliminated in 12 years

or we’ll privatize the police? All citizens

must be healthy in 12 years or we will

shut down the healthcare system?

Some politicians seem to be trying

to turn the problems of poor schools

into a campaign to destroy public edu-

cation. We need to ask when the same

politicians who oppose civil rights,

affirmative action, more spending for

social programs, and universal health

care suddenly became champions of

poor black and brown children and

their families.

Claim: The new law mandates that

students historically exempt from the

testing pool, such as special educa-

tion students and English language

learners, must now take tests and have

their scores counted. These groups also

must achieve “100 percent proficiency”

within 12 years. This will force schools

to improve student achievement for

groups of students who have previ-

when schools become obsessed with test scores, they limit their ability to serve the broader needs of children

and their communities.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn202

tee them any new places to go. In dis-

tricts where some schools are labeled

“failing” and some are not, the new

law may force increased class sizes by

transferring students without creating

new capacity. NCLB does not invest

in building new schools in failing dis-

tricts. It does not make rich districts

open their doors to students from poor

districts. NCLB’s transfer policies don’t

give poor parents any more control

over school bureaucracies than food

stamps give them over the supermar-

kets. They are a “supply-side” fraud

that seems designed to manufacture a

demand for vouchers and ultimately to

transfer funds and students to profit-

making private school corporations.

NCLB also obligates schools that

don’t make “adequate yearly progress”

for three years to provide “supplemen-

tal tutoring” services. The majority of

approved providers for these services

are private companies that do not

have to meet the same “highly quali-

fied” standards as public school teach-

ers. They stand to profit from largely

unregulated and unmonitored access

to potentially $2 billion in public funds

each year. Some districts have had to

eliminate their own tutoring programs

in order to pay for more expensive pri-

vate programs that serve fewer kids.

For example, to comply with NCLB,

Southtown, Ill., eliminated a tutoring

program that served 250 students with

certified teachers in small classes of 10

and replaced it with a more expensive

program that pays Sylvan Learning

Center to serve 50 to 60 students.

Claim: NCLB gives poor schools more

resources to improve.

Reality: NCLB dramatically increases

mandates for school and student per-

formance, but it has been funded at

tens of billions of dollars below origi-

nally promised levels (and over 10

times less than the federal government

spent on the war in Iraq through 2006).

more difficult and more costly reforms

that real school improvement requires.

Some advocates for children and

schools, desperate for signs of hope

amidst the wasteland of social and

economic policies emanating from

Washington, have struggled mightily

to find positives in NCLB. They point

to the pressure on schools to account

for all students, the promise of better

choices for parents in the poorest com-

munities, the emphasis on improv-

ing teacher qualifications. But years

of inconsistent and underfinanced

implementation have kept none of

these promises. Reasonable people may

continue to differ on various aspects

of NCLB, but the core of the law has

been laid inescapably bare: tests, more

tests, and punitive sanctions that create

a misleading impression of systematic

failure and that hurt public education

far more than they help those who have

been poorly served by it.

NCLB needs to be transformed

from a test, punish, and privatize law

into a real school improvement law.

The obsessive reliance on standard-

ized testing, the punitive sanctions, the

chaotic transfer plans, the gross under-

funding, and the educational malprac-

tice that the law imposes on special

education and bilingual students all

need major revision. Only if and when

that happens can “no child left behind”

become a legitimate rallying cry for

schools and their advocates. n

*For more on the impact of NCLB

and proposals to change the law,

visit www.rethinkingschools.org and

www.fairtest.org.

Stan Karp ([email protected]) taught

English and journalism for 30 years in

Paterson, N.J. He is currently director of the

Secondary Reform Project at the Education

Law Center in Newark, N.J., and an editor

of Rethinking Schools magazine.

A study of 20 states of the school

services, remedial programs, and other

expenditures needed to reach NCLB

mandates found that it would take

about a 30 percent annual increase in

current school spending for states to

come close to meeting the law’s own

narrow test-score goals. That’s about

$130 billion a year, or about 10 times

current funding for Title I programs.

The estimated costs of just developing

and administering the additional tests

that NCLB requires may be more than

twice what the law provides.

NCLB does provide for a special

school improvement fund, but the

President has never requested, and

Congress has never authorized, any

money for it. Instead, NCLB “school

improvement funds” are taken by

diverting funds from Title I—the sin-

gle largest federal education program,

originally designed to support schools

with high concentrations of poor stu-

dents—to state education departments

to develop plans to implement NCLB

sanctions. The result is what the Center

for Education Policy recently called “a

shell game, in which states take funds

away from districts with the greatest

concentrations of low-income chil-

dren and give them to other districts”

to finance the imposition of NCLB

penalties.

Claim: The law puts real pressure on

districts to change bureaucratic busi-

ness-as-usual, which is why it is gener-

ating so much heat.

Reality: NCLB is increasing educa-

tional bureaucracy instead of reducing

it. It moves educational decision mak-

ing away from classrooms, schools, and

local communities, where it belongs,

and puts it in the hands of state and

national politicians and bureaucrats.

The law promotes one-size-fits-all

“solutions” to complicated problems of

educational and social inequality and

substitutes standards and tests for the

mailto:stan.karp%40gmail.com?subject=

http://www.fairtest.org

Beyond the Classroom 203

why standardized tests are bad by terry meier

According to this argument, children

of color and low-income students tend

to perform less well on standardized

tests because they receive an inferior

education.

Two false assumptions support this

view. One is that standardized tests are

a valid measure of excellence. The sec-

ond is that standardized tests can be

used to improve education, especially

for low-income students and students

of color.

Standardized achievement tests tend

to focus on mechanical, lower-order

skills and to reward students’ rapid rec-

ognition of factual information. For

tests, with students of color bearing the

brunt of that discrimination. Across

age groups, standardized tests discrim-

inate against low-income students and

students of color. While girls tend to do

better on standardized tests at an early

age, by high school and college their

scores are on average below those of

males, according to FairTest, a national

group based in Cambridge, Mass., that

lobbies against the growing use of stan-

dardized tests.

Advocates of testing argue that

standardized achievement tests do not

create inequities within schools, they

merely reflect preexisting inequities.

no phenomenon poses a greater threat to educational equity, and ultimately to the quality of education in this country, than the

escalating use of standardized achieve-

ment tests.

Fueled by public concern that

schools are less rigorous than they used

to be, standardized tests are increas-

ingly prescribed as the “get tough”

medicine needed to return excellence

to our classrooms. Across the country,

standardized tests are now routinely

used to determine how and when stu-

dents advance, from 1st grade through

graduate school.

Standardized tests, which are noto-

rious for their discriminatory effect

on students of color, clearly threaten

whatever small measures of educa-

tional equity have been won in recent

decades. What is less obvious is that

standardized tests threaten the educa-

tional experience of all children.

Because standardized tests are a

constant reality in students’ lives, it is

essential that parents understand the

biases and limitations of such tests. Yet,

as in so many other educational areas,

parents are often excluded from the

debate because they are deemed unable

to understand the issue’s complexity.

Tests are called “standardized” when

the same test is given under similar

conditions to large groups of students,

whether districtwide, statewide, or

nationwide. Most standardized tests

ask multiple-choice questions and are

corrected by a computer which recog-

nizes only one “right” answer.

Decades of research have docu-

mented the biases in standardized

D Av

ID m

c LIm

A n

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn204

example, standardized reading tests

for young children stress phonics and

the recognition of individual words.

Research on learning to read, however,

has shown the importance of integrat-

ing oral language, writing, reading, and

spelling in a meaningful context that

emphasizes children understanding

what they read, not merely sounding out

words. Similarly, research on teaching

math stresses the importance of young

children learning concepts through

firsthand experience, while achievement

tests for young children define math as

knowing one’s numbers.

Thus teachers face the dilemma of

providing instruction that they know

fosters a student’s understanding, ver-

sus drilling students in isolated skills

and facts that will help them do well on

standardized tests.

It’s not that students don’t need

to work on isolated skills sometimes,

especially when they’re first learning to

read and write. But such work is only

a means to the larger end of applying

those skills in a meaningful context.

Removed from context as they are

on standardized tests, such skills are

meaningless. Held up as a measure of

achievement, they become mistaken

for what is most important instead of

what is ultimately trivial.

There is little, if any, connection

between quality instruction and stan-

dardized test performance. Consider,

for example, a successful high school

English class in which students learn to

write thoughtful, original essays in clear,

concise language about topics they gen-

uinely care about and that draw on their

experiences. Assume that the teacher

taught students to edit their work so

that grammatical errors were rare.

Yet what does the American Col-

lege Testing (ACT) Program test?

Whether a student knows if the word

“pioneered” is preferable to “started up

by,” or if “prove to be” is preferable to

“come to be,” or if “reach my destina-

tion” is preferable to “get there.”

The point is that the choice is stylis-

tic, dependent upon what one is trying

to say and to whom. Removed from real

life, the choice is meaningless. It reveals

nothing about a student’s competence

in reading and writing.

Consider another example, from a

standardized reading achievement test

where the child was asked to determine

the “right” answer in the following

selection:

Father said: Once there was a land

where boys and girls never grew up.

They were always growing. What was

Father telling?

The truth A lie A story

Any of these could be the “right”

answer. If the father were speaking

metaphorically, referring to mental and

not physical growth, he could be tell-

ing the truth. It could also be a lie, for

in black speech the word “lie” can also

mean a joke or a story. And, of course,

its initial “once” signals the conven-

tions of fiction/fairy tales. (Hoover,

Politzer, and Taylor, 1987, p. 91)

Standardized tests also ignore the

skills and abilities needed to function in

a complex, pluralistic society—such as

the ability to work collectively in various

social and cultural contexts, to adjust to

change, to understand the perspectives

of others, to persevere, to motivate, to

solve problems in a real-life context, to

lead, to value moral integrity and social

commitment. As Harvard psychologist

Howard Gardner points out, “there are

hundreds and hundreds of ways to suc-

ceed, and many different abilities that

will help you get there.”

It is tragic that at the time when

many developmental psychologists

stress a broad and complex conception

of intelligence and ability, and when

one needs multiple talents to function

effectively in the world, we have come

to define excellence in our schools

within the narrow parameters of what

can be measured by standardized tests.

Clearly, standardized tests neither

measure excellence nor foster it in our

schools. So why the emphasis on such

tests?

The fundamental reason is that the

tests provide a seemingly objective

basis upon which to allocate limited

educational resources—to decide who

gets into the best classes, high schools,

or colleges. To that end, test items are

deliberately selected so as to maximize

differences between high and low scor-

ers. By design, only some people will do

well on the tests.

There can be little doubt that if a

large percentage of white middle-class

students performed poorly on stan-

dardized tests, the test results would

be viewed as invalid and discrimina-

tory. There is no similar concern for

students of color, despite some 25 years

of extensive documentation of cultural

bias in standardized testing.

Those who argue that it is possible

to make standardized tests less discrim-

inatory by removing their cultural bias

seriously underestimate the enormity

of their task. What is a “culture-fair”

test in a multicultural society? And

who could design such a test? The truth

is that any knowledge worth having is

inextricably linked to culture and to

context—and thus can’t be reduced to

measurement on a standardized test.

In the final analysis, the most funda-

mental question to be answered about

standardized testing is not why stu-

dents of color tend to perform less well

than white students, or even what can

be done about it. Rather, the funda-

mental question is what is wrong with

a society which allocates its educational

resources on the basis of tests which

not only fail to measure excellence, but

which discriminate against the vast

majority of its minority population? n

Terry Meier is an associate professor in

the Wheelock College Graduate School in

Boston.

Beyond the Classroom 205

my grandmothers were strong. they followed plows and bent to toil. they moved through fields sowing seed. they touched the earth and grain grew. they were full of sturdiness and singing. my grandmothers were strong.

my grandmothers are full of memories smelling of soap and onions and wet clay with veins rolling roughly over quick hands they have many clean words to say. my grandmothers were strong. why am i not as they?

Margaret walker was one of the youngest African-American poets to publish a full volume of poetry. She won the Yale Younger Poet award in 1942 for her book For My People, her master’s thesis at the University of Iowa. (See p. 212 for lesson ideas.)

lineage

by margaret walker

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn206

v iviana, who had lived in the United States for only two years, walked nervously to the speak- er’s podium at a press conference on

the steps of her high school. Although

she was remarkably confident in her

ability to communicate with friends

and classmates in English, she hesitated

to deliver a speech in English to several

hundred people. As the crowd of par-

ents, students, community members,

clergy, politicians, and press listened,

she began to speak.

“My name is Viviana Pastrana,” she

began. “I am a sophomore and I am

an immigrant with papers, with per-

mission to live here. I am a member

of a group called Students United for

Immigrant Rights because I want to

support immigrants and struggle with

them, especially with undocumented

immigrant students.”

She continued, telling the story of a

friend, an undocumented immigrant

who has been in the United States most

of her life, and who will not be able to

afford a university education in Wis-

consin simply because of her immigra-

tion status.

Viviana is a student at William

Horlick High School in Racine, Wis.,

where we both teach. Al is a history and

sociology teacher at Horlick, and Ryan

teaches English as a second language to

mainly Mexican immigrant students.

Horlick has a diverse student body.

About 18 percent of the students are

Latino, 24 percent African-American,

2 percent Asian, and 56 percent Euro-

pean-American. More than 20 per-

ized groups become actively engaged,

academically successful, and to rise to

positions of leadership in the school

and the community.

the group’s Origins Students United for Immigrant Rights

evolved out of a lesson that Al pre-

sented to students in his Latino-Amer-

ican History class. The class initially

attracted mainly second- and third-

generation Chicano students, along

with a handful of immigrant students.

Students viewed the PBS video series

Matters of Race (available at www.pbs.

org/mattersofrace). One segment was

about a dramatic increase in numbers

of Mexican immigrant workers moving

cent of the students qualify for free or

reduced lunch. The Racine community

as a whole has similar demographics.

Over the past two school years, stu-

dents have created change within their

school and their community through

their work in a student organization

called Students United for Immigrant

Rights that addresses social issues that

closely affect them and their friends

and families. Giving students oppor-

tunities to organize and become active

around the issue of immigrant rights

has helped change the culture of our

school and created and strengthened

bonds among students, families, the

school, and the community. It has

also helped students from marginal-

students mobilize for immigrant Rights by Ryan knudson and al levie

a L Le

v ie

Carla Rotger (left) and Juan Marquez lead a march of 1,500 students and community members calling for a referendum on school spending.

http://www.pbs.org/mattersofrace

Beyond the Classroom 207

to a small town in the southern United

States. The students were appalled at

the depictions of open racism on the

part of white townspeople in the film.

This led to a class discussion on the

struggles that immigrants face both in

the South and around Racine. At the

students’ urging, Al took a personal

day the very next day to participate in a

rally with several students. At the rally,

Al met people from Voces de la Fron-

tera (Voices of the Border), an immi-

grant workers’ group from Milwaukee;

this connection would prove mutually

beneficial.

The event drew coverage in the

Racine Journal-Times, which printed

anti-immigrant letters. Richard Peter-

son’s letter read, “Hello, what don’t you

understand? You are here illegally, why

should you get any justice?” This letter

set up a classroom discussion/response

activity where students wrote individ-

ual and group rebuttals. The Journal-

Times printed all of the students’ let-

ters on its op-ed page. Readers took the

students’ letters seriously, and weighed

in both positively and negatively in

response. In effect, Latino-American

History students became the catalyst

for a community discussion on immi-

grant rights that was carried out on the

op-ed page of the Journal-Times.

Soon thereafter, Christine Neu-

mann-Ortiz, the director of Voces de la

Frontera, contacted Al to tell him that

state Rep. Pedro Colón of Milwaukee

had introduced a bill in the Wisconsin

Assembly that would allow undocu-

mented immigrant students to attend

state institutions of higher education

at resident tuition rates. Al invited two

representatives of Voces de la Frontera

to speak to the Latino-American His-

tory class about the issue and the leg-

islation. Ryan brought his English as

a second language (ESL) students to

the talk, and again, students wanted to

take action. They arranged a field trip

to Madison for a legislative committee

hearing on the bill (AB 95). Students

prepared testimony to deliver on behalf

of undocumented immigrant students.

At the hearing, an undocumented

immigrant student named Marylu

Garcia made a strong argument in

favor of the bill. “Some people say that

immigrants should not receive any

governmental help because they don’t

pay their taxes, and that they are taking

away from the United States illegally,”

she said. “The reality is that immi-

grants do pay their taxes. But they are

not able to collect them. So how can

they be stealing money, when they are

actually giving it away? Immigrants

take the worst, low-paying jobs that no

citizens want. And you call that fair?

When immigrants are actually being

exploited?” As the local press picked

up on the issue, the students became

known as strong proponents of the bill,

which never made it out of committee.

Shortly thereafter, with financial

assistance from Voces de la Frontera,

Al, his wife Jennifer, Voces de la Fron-

tera leader and longstanding commu-

nity activist Maria Morales, and seven

of the most active students traveled

to Washington, D.C. The Center for

Community Change organized three

days of activities centering on the

DREAM Act and Student Adjustment

Act. These federal acts would offer

undocumented students a pathway to

citizenship, in-state tuition for college,

and opportunities to apply for federal

financial aid. Students trained in lob-

bying techniques and spent a day lob-

bying elected representatives.

They participated in a mock gradu-

ation ceremony at the U.S. Capitol and

marched to the Department of Educa-

tion to deliver letters highlighting the

fact that thousands of dreams were

being denied because of lack of access

to higher education. The Washington

Post interviewed Xavier Marquez and

Marylu Garcia and featured Xavier’s

picture on the front page the follow-

ing day. The assistance of community

groups made it possible to choose stu-

dents based on academic achievement

in their Latino-American History class,

their past participation in immigrant

rights activities, and their future com-

mitment to working for immigrant

rights.

Marylu Garcia shared her testimony

at the DREAM Act rally.

Afterward, students who partici-

pated in the trip to Washington orga-

nized a Cinco de Mayo celebration at

Horlick High School. The event was

partly a fundraiser to pay for the Wash-

ington trip, partly a celebration of

Latino heritage, and partly an opportu-

nity for students to report to the com-

munity what they had been doing. The

theme of the event was “Latino-Ameri-

can History Students Making History.”

Local Latino leaders spoke, community

members prepared a Mexican meal,

and students spoke and created dis-

plays about all of the events they had

participated in. Hundreds of Latino

students, family members, community

members, and school officials came

together for the first time for a school

event.

The publicity about the Washington

trip and the Cinco de Mayo celebra-

This work has helped change the culture of our school and strengthened bonds

among students, families, and the community.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn208

Rights became the student affiliate of

Voces de la Frontera. Being connected

to Voces gave Students United financial

resources and staff support on immi-

grant issues. It also became a conduit to

the community outside of school. The

club began meeting informally to plan

the next event, a Mexican Indepen-

dence Day celebration in September. By

the following school year, we had estab-

lished a monthly meeting schedule. At

our first meeting in September, we held

elections for officers. Between two and

four students competed for each posi-

tion. Our executive board is made up

of a president, vice president, secretary,

treasurer, and two immigrant student

liaisons. The immigrant student liaison

positions exist to encourage greater par-

ticipation by immigrant students and

to ensure that two immigrant students

will sit on the board. Between 20 and

40 members attend the monthly after-

school meetings, which are chaired by

the president or vice president. Discus-

sions focus on anything from ideas for

political action to plans for a student

barbecue. As the club has grown and

received local attention, other teachers

tion triggered anti-immigrant com-

ments from a community member at

a Racine Board of Education meet-

ing. The speaker also called for Al’s

dismissal, saying that he was teach-

ing children to “raise hell.” Upset

about the field trips to Madison and

Washington, Renee Bradley, a com-

munity member, asked, “What, I ask

you, does this have to do with Latin

American history? Absolutely noth-

ing. This has to do with an immi-

gration issue. And because Mr. Levie

feels too passionately about it, he is

using and abusing his position as a

teacher to advance his political views.

… This is unacceptable. He is taking

these children out of school to learn

how to rally for immigrant rights?

That’s not appropriate.” She added

that, “Of course, [the students] are

going to feel passionate about [immi-

grant rights]. Half of them are illegally

in the country.” (Actually, all but two

were U.S. citizens, so passion for the

issue didn’t necessarily correlate to

immigrant status.)

Al gave the students who partici-

pated in the Washington trip a copy of

the meeting transcript and asked them

to show their parents. Maria Morales,

the president of the Racine chapter of

Voces de la Frontera, called a meeting

with the parents where they decided

to go to the next school board meet-

ing to let the board know they appre-

ciated the school board’s giving their

children the opportunity to participate

in the trip. Kids and parents thanked

the board for allowing them to partici-

pate, and students explained what they

had learned as a result of the trip. The

students’ and parents’ approach was a

marked contrast to the shrill testimony

of the anti-immigrant speaker, and

the issue of Al’s dismissal died at that

meeting.

At a debriefing meeting to discuss

the Cinco de Mayo event, students

agreed they wanted to continue work-

ing on immigration issues even after

the Latino-American History class

ended. Ryan suggested forming an

official school club. Several students

arranged a meeting with the school’s

directing principal, Nola Starling-

Ratliff, who gave permission. The stu-

dents asked us to become club advisors,

and Students United for Immigrant

a L Le

v ie

Students hold a protest and mock graduation ceremony.

vivian worked as hard—and with as much pride—to support immigrants’ rights as she would have on any term

paper or presentation.

Beyond the Classroom 209

girls who can speak English with Chi-

canos and Spanish with immigrants.

She talked to everybody and intro-

duced immigrants to Chicanos.”

Estela began hanging out in Ryan’s

ESL classroom between classes, chat-

ting in Spanish with immigrant stu-

dents. Marylu gives credit to Xavier

Marquez, saying that members of both

groups feel that they are better than

members of the other group and that

they have to be like Xavier—“willing

to talk to everybody.” Not surprisingly,

Estela, Xavier, and other students who

reached out were eventually elected

to leadership positions, treasurer and

president, respectively, and are now

working together to promote the club

to both Chicanos and immigrants. This

is not to say that the rift has been totally

healed, because it hasn’t. But where a

year ago there was no collaboration at

all, we are now seeing friendships form.

For immigrant students, action

on immigrant issues has obvious

and immediate importance. It is also

important to the families of the Chi-

cano students, who have either faced

the same struggles, or know people

who have. The leadership of Students

United places a large importance on

continuing to unite the club’s mem-

bers. Xavier says, “All Latinos face rac-

ism, both U.S. citizens and immigrants.

When we unite we can finally make

things better for ourselves, our com-

munity, and our country.” Maria Vital

says, “We have come together because

we need to do things united.”

The relationship between the school

have begun asking about forming chap-

ters in their schools.

Since its inception, Students United

for Immigrant Rights has been active.

Students wore graduation caps and

gowns to demonstrate for granting

of in-state tuition for undocumented

students and traveled twice to Milwau-

kee for visits by President Bush and

the Republican Congressman F. James

Sensenbrenner. When Mark Belling, a

conservative Milwaukee talk radio per-

sonality, referred to Mexican Ameri-

cans as “wetbacks” on the air, Luisa

Morales, the communications director

of Students United, wrote a position

paper that was published as a guest

editorial in the Racine Journal-Times.

Luisa also delivered the students’ posi-

tion in a speech before Milwaukee Area

Technical College officials asking them

to pull more than $57,000 in adver-

tising from Belling’s radio station.

Recently students held a mock gradu-

ation rally and press conference at our

high school, participated in a rally at

Casa de la Esperanza in Waukesha, and

traveled to Madison to lobby lawmak-

ers to keep pro-immigrant education

provisions in the state budget. At the

invitation of State Representative Pedro

Colón, Al and Xavier Marquez trav-

eled to Madison to deliver testimony

about the same provisions. All of these

events featured state and local lawmak-

ers delivering statements in support of

extending educational opportunities to

undocumented immigrant students. At

two events, immigrant students deliv-

ered heartfelt speeches in favor of in-

state tuition, and opposing the REAL

ID act, a measure that would deny

drivers’ licenses to undocumented

immigrants.

the Changing Culture Since beginning to organize students

around the issue of immigrant rights,

we have noticed changes in the inter-

personal dynamics between immi-

grant and Chicano students. Before

students began getting involved, there

was mutual distrust and misunder-

standing between immigrant students

and Chicano students (those whose

parents or grandparents were Mexi-

can immigrants, but who themselves

were born in the United States). Immi-

grant students saw Chicano students

as sometimes being ashamed of their

heritage because they often spoke little

or no Spanish, and often seemed more

American than Latino. The Chicano

students often avoided helping or even

talking to immigrant students. Many

immigrant students refused to take

bilingual English classes because many

Chicano students took them. Accord-

ing to Marylu Garcia, “The Chicanos

were not going to talk to the Mexi-

cans unless the Mexicans went to them

first. Both groups have a lot of pride,

and neither group wants to give it up.”

Physical altercations in the hallways

and the cafeteria were not uncommon.

As teachers who were trying to unite

and organize students, this realization

troubled us.

When the Chicano students in Al’s

Latino-American History class began

taking action, Ryan began encouraging

his immigrant students to get involved.

Soon a handful of members of both

groups began reaching out to the other

group, making a point to involve each

other in discussions, saying hello in the

hallways. Maria Vital, an immigrant

student, credits Estela Cabrera, a Chi-

cana student, with helping to break

down barriers: “Estela is one of the

State and local lawmakers delivered statements in support of extending

educational opportunities to undocumented immigrant students.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn210

and Latino students is also beginning

to change. Horlick directing principal

Starling-Ratliff says, “We have seen a

dramatic reduction in the Latino sus-

pension rate. [The students’ activism]

has broken down divisions among stu-

dents and elevated the level of thinking.

They talk and act on issues that are real

to themselves and their communities.”

Students United for Immigrant

Rights leaders are now in hot demand,

being actively recruited for leadership

positions in other groups. Xavier has

become a leader in student govern-

ment, and took a very visible role in

a fight to pass a school referendum.

History teacher Jacqueline Loiacono

saw Xavier in the hallway one day and

invited him into her class to talk about

harnessing anger to bring about posi-

tive change. She says, “He was in the

hallway for a different reason, but he

jumped right in. He was a life example

of the community organizing that we

had been discussing. The kids were just

staring at him in awe. One student even

wrote about him in her final exam, he

made such an impression.”

Student leaders are being recognized

for their newfound skills and their

mature attitudes and interpersonal

communication skills, all of which they

attribute to their involvement in Stu-

dents United for Immigrant Rights. As

Latino students have seen their peers in

positions of leadership, they seem be

taking more pride in their school, and

realizing that being involved in school

while trying to create change in society

is actually a good thing. Viviana says,

“Supporting the rights of immigrant

students has made students want to

come to school more.”

When Viviana developed the speech

she later delivered to Wisconsin legis-

lators, members of advocacy groups,

and the general public, she worked as

hard—and with as much pride—as she

would have on any term paper or pre-

sentation. Her family drove 40 miles

in the snow to hear her speak. She has

earned the respect of her immigrant

peers, Chicano students, and other stu-

dents and staff, who previously knew

her only as a student with limited Eng-

lish proficiency, struggling to succeed

in school.

It seems to us that by helping stu-

dents understand the struggles they

face, and by teaching them to organize

around those issues, we have earned the

respect and trust of our students. As a

result, many students have responded

by improving their attendance, and

increasing their dedication to aca-

demic success. As Marylu said, “Being

involved in the club has helped me see

that my weaknesses weren’t as weak as

I thought. The club helped me learn

about my ability to make my voice

heard.” Marylu often comes to class

with new information on immigration

issues and asks if she can write about

it, initiative that she rarely displayed

before joining the club.

One of our most important goals

in helping to organize Students United

for Immigrant Rights was to involve

Latino families in the school. The lack

of involvement in school by Latino

families was something that concerned

teachers and administrators alike.

Because we invite families to all Stu-

dents United events, parents are begin-

ning to get more involved and seem to

feel more comfortable in a school set-

ting. They also are encouraging their

children to put more of a priority on

education. Families seem excited about

the possibilities that active involvement

gives their children.

A shift was apparent when Al’s

job was on the line and many parents

showed up at the Board of Education

meeting to support him. It is now com-

mon for parents, even those who speak

no English, to show up at Students

United meetings. Some parents are as

dedicated as their children, partici-

pating in every activity that Students

United offers and volunteering to do

more. One parent shows up at events

that her children don’t even attend.

Students United for Immigrant

Rights continues to grow. We have

started a chapter at Park High School

in Racine. A few teachers from other

districts have contacted us asking

how they can set up similar organiza-

tions. Several events have increased the

group’s exposure, and the club attracts

more students from more diverse back-

grounds. At a recent cookout, it was

encouraging to see so many students

from different ethnic backgrounds

coming for hotdogs and hamburgers,

playing volleyball, and throwing water

balloons. And, as a clipboard circulated,

many students signed up to spend the

first few weeks of summer break plan-

ning and taking action with Students

United for Immigrant Rights. n

Ryan Knudson and Al Levie teach at

William Horlick High School in Racine,

Wis.

As Latino students have seen their peers in positions of leadership, they

seem be taking more pride in their school.

S u

S a

n L

in a

R u

g g

Le S

ResOuRCes we can thoroughly “rethink our classrooms,” but if we lack resources, we’ll be less effective in turning our ideas into reality. In this chapter we offer lists of quality materials helpful to any teacher interested in promoting social justice. Do not be misled when we indicate that certain materials are oriented to age groups other than those you work with. High school students can benefit greatly from looking at books intended for younger children, while teachers can adapt more sophisticated materials for use with children in the lower grades.

we also include a teaching guide that offers ideas on how to use the poems throughout this book.

PART SIx

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn212

Poetry teaching guide by linda Christensen

Poetry is by turns playful, respectful, angry, and politi-cal. Because poetry is so closely related to music, it provides students

an easy slide into writing. Advice?

Leave the critic at the door until stu-

dents feel connected and comfortable.

After each assignment, ask students to

circle up their desks and read-around

their poems. (Sometimes cookies and

milk make these special occasions—

even in a high school classroom.)

Family Poems

Lineage, p. 205; Father Was a Musician,

p. 83; Forgiving My Father, p. 35.

Family poems are a way for students

to bring their homes and their lives

into the classroom. They also provide

an opportunity for students to praise a

loved one—a mother, father, brother,

aunt, grandparent, or someone who

has played that role in their lives. Parent

relationships are rarely easy, so allow-

ing students a range of choices is help-

ful. Sometimes students have angry

feelings that need to be expressed as

well. “Forgiving My Father” might not

praise a family member, but it is a legit-

imate expression of anger. Beginning

poets often write “ghost poems”—

vague poems full of abstractions about

their love for their mother, friend, or

pet. This poetry assignment forces

them to become concrete by describ-

ing details from photographs, clothing

their ghosts.

1. A few days before this activity tell

students that they will be writing about

a person in their family. (Be sensitive

to the fact that some students may not

have a traditional two-parent family.

how Walker indicates the kind of work

her grandmothers did, the details about

their hands, “smelling of soap and wet

clay.” Try to get them to note that she

uses the sense of smell as well as the

sense of sight. Watson uses sound. You

might point out her use of language—

“halting only to mend a chord or two.”

We don’t literally mend music, but her

words allow us to see her father going

back over a musical passage.

4. Encourage students to remember

details about their person. Ask: What

do you remember them doing? Gar-

dening? Cooking? Painting? Polishing

the car? Fishing? Was there a certain

dress, hat, shirt, style of pants that

makes you remember them? Did they

have any habits? Did they play with

their glasses, smoke a pipe, burn the

biscuits? Did they repeat sayings?

5. When their “pump is primed,” turn

off the lights in the classroom or find

Talk about how families might have dif-

ferent formations.) Encourage students

to bring some pictures from home. The

pictures should include family mem-

bers they might want to write about.

Some students will forget the pictures,

but they can still write using the ques-

tions below as prompts.

2. As a warm-up, ask students to

share their pictures in pairs or in small

groups, depending on the size and

comfort level of the class. This sharing

will happen anyway; initiate it before

the activity so it won’t interrupt while

students are writing.

3. Have students read the three poetry

selections out loud. Sometimes it helps

if you read the poetry first. Read with

passion, then ask a student to read it

again. Ask students, “What do we learn

about this person? What lines show us

what the person is like?” If students

don’t mention it themselves, I point out

resources 213

lips, eyes, hands. They might have their

own pictures to look at while writing.

(Poems and photos make a wonderful

bulletin board.)

3. Older students like the sassy tone

of Clifton’s poem. They could look in

mirrors and begin their poems, “what

the mirror says.” Sometimes students

feel awkward praising themselves, but

may find one attribute to praise.

Ballad/Story Poems

To the Young Who Want to Die, p. 186.

This is an angry poem. It shouts; there

are no pretty pansies waiting to be

picked here. This poem breaks stu-

dents’ stereotypes that poetry has to be

some kind of signal to break from

brainstorming to writing. It helps if

you write too.

Praise Poems

My Hair Is Long, p. 18; what the mirror

said, p. 76.

Many poets find it necessary to praise

themselves because the standards of

beauty in the dominant culture are

European-American or set by the

fashion industry. For example, Lucille

Clifton and Maya Angelou praise big

women—going against the norm of

beauty that holds thinness as the stan-

dard. Writing praise poems gives stu-

dents a positive way to look at them-

selves, but these poems also speak

against the negative portrayals too

often associated with their neighbor-

hood, race, gender, nationality, size,

school. Follow the guidelines for the

parent poem, but ask students to write

praise poems about themselves.

1. Ask students to think of something

about themselves, their school, com-

munity, or culture that deserves praise,

but may not receive it. Ask a few stu-

dents to share ideas so they can help

shake loose ideas for classmates.

2. Read “My Hair Is Long” out loud

and have students look at the poet’s list

of comparisons. Ask what comparisons

they would use to describe their hair,

how to Do Read-arounds In Rethinking Our Classrooms we’ve talked a lot about students sharing their lives, but they need a safe space to start. The read-around is the classroom equivalent to quilt making or barn raising. It is the public space—the zocolo or town square—of my room. During our read-around, we socialize together and create community, but we also teach and learn from each other.

We always sit in a circle for the read-around, so every student is visible. At the beginning of the year, I ask students to write a compliment for each reader. I make it clear that no one is allowed to make critical comments about a paper. We focus on the positive—on what works. As each person reads, classmates take notes and give positive feedback to the writer. Sometimes, we formally hand out the notes to each writer. We also applaud each writer for having the courage to read in front of the class.

I require that all students read some assignments like the poem “Where I’m From” (see the Rethinking Schools book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up). I also offer to read pieces anonymously for shy or reluctant

students. Some students are eager; their hands are always in the air. Other students are too cool; this is why I give them points for sharing. They can maintain their smooth façade, and act like they are just reading for the extra credit. Sometimes students want to share, but they need to be coaxed.

I ask students to respond to the content of the piece—what they like about the arguments, the ideas. They respond to its style. I ask them to be specific. What line, what phrase did they like? Did they like the imagery, the repetition? Instead of working on a deficit model—what’s wrong with this piece—we work on a positive model: What’s right? What can we learn from it?

During the read-around, students provide each other accessible models of writing. I encourage them to listen for what “works” in their peers’ pieces, to take notes on what they like, and then to use those techniques in their own writing. During the read-around I point out particular writing strategies. I might note how Aaron used a list in his poem or how Brandon opened his essay with an anecdotal introduction.

I might ask Alisha to re-read a section of her essay so that we can notice her transitions. I do this consistently in each read-around to bring students’ attention to the writers’ tools.

Before we begin the read-around, I point out particular ways they can respond:

n Respond to the writer’s style of writing. What do you like about how the piece was written? Do you like the rhyme? The repeating lines? The humor? (Later, these points can change, particularly if you are focusing on a specific skill—like introductions, transitions, evidence, and imagery.)

n Respond to the writer’s content. What did the writer say that you liked? Did you like the way Ayanna used a story about her mother to point out how gender roles have changed?

n Respond by sharing a memory that surfaced for you. Did you have a similar experience? Did this remind you of something from your life?

n As the writer reads, write down lines, ideas, words or phrases that you like. Remember: You must compliment the writer.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn214

bomb victim and an Enola Gay pilot.

But the poem can also point out simi-

larities between people who might not

appear to have much in common on

the surface: for example, a Salvadoran

immigrant and an African Ameri-

can whose family migrated from the

South. The dialogue poem also works

with literature. While studying Grapes

of Wrath, for example, students could

write a dialogue between the machines

pushing over homes and the families

forced off their lands.

1. Before class starts, choose two stu-

dents to prepare a dramatic reading.

Assign one student the bold-faced part,

the other student the regular typeface.

2. Read the poem as a dialogue. To

convey the power of the poem, the

student readers can stand in opposite

corners of the room and, in full voice,

recite the lines back and forth.

3. Distribute copies of the poem to

the entire class. If you are using “Two

Women,” provide students some back-

ground information about Chile to

explain the references in the poem.

4. Elicit response to the poem. Discuss

what makes it so powerful. Point out

the subtle differences in lines—how

even the addition of one or two words

underscores the deep inequality of

the two women’s lives: “We had to eat

rice”—“We had rice.”

5. As a group, brainstorm possible

topics for a unit you are currently

studying. Think about what the dif-

ferent pairs might say. Model the first

few lines of a dialogue poem by elicit-

ing lines from the students on a com-

mon topic. In partners or alone, write

dialogue poems based on the content

studied in class. n

about “lovely” things.

1. Ask students to read the poem out

loud. This makes for dramatic reading.

You might give it to students to read

in advance so they can practice. This

poem is even better if students can

memorize and act it out.

2. After the poem is read, ask for reac-

tions. What’s going on in the poem? Ask

someone to summarize the “story” of

the poem. You might even ask how this

poem differs from “typical” poems.

3. Ask students to make two columns

on their paper. (It helps to model this

on the board or overhead.) At the top

of one column write: People Who Make

Me Angry; at the top of the other write:

Things That Make Me Angry. You

might write down a few items under

each category to get them started.

4. Ask them to circle one or two of the

topics. Some students may be able to

write their poems at this point. Oth-

ers might need to get more details.

Have them write it first as a letter. They

can put the name of the person at the

beginning, “Dear Aunt Macy” or “Dear

Joe Camel” or “Dear Budget Cutters,”

then write why they are angry. Encour-

age them to tell the story. “I am angry

because ...”

5. Encourage or demonstrate how to

cut a paragraph down to a poem by

lining it out and picking out their best

lines or details for the poem. Some-

times it helps to work with a partner.

Ancestor/Heritage Poems

To My People with Retinitis Pigmentosa,

p. 51; In Memory of Crossing the Colum-

bia, p. 172; Lineage, p. 205.

Students belong to many intersecting

communities: family, school, region,

race, nationality, sports, and as Jim

Jackson demonstrates, even the com-

munity of people who share a disease.

This poetry lesson invites students to

talk about their particular history. It’s

especially powerful during a unit on

families or autobiography.

1. Begin by asking students to describe

all of the communities they belong to.

Then ask them to list those commu-

nities. Model this on the board with

your own diverse memberships. Stu-

dents might share their lists as a way of

expanding ideas.

2. Ask for volunteers to read the poetry

aloud. Read the poems through at least

twice.

3. After reading each poem, talk about

it. What community did this writer

describe? Do they have a sense of why

heritage is important to the poet?

Note the strong imagery in Elizabeth

Woody’s description of her heritage.

She recalls the location as well as her

ties to her Navajo ancestors.

4. Ask students to choose one of the

communities they noted and list some

ideas about it. Some students who

belong to more than one racial group

may choose to write about that. Rob-

ert Smith, a senior at Jefferson High

School, wrote: “What are you if you’re

not black and you’re not white?/ I

am both, so how could I choose just

one?/… I am not a blank space between

black and white …/I am a black man

who has never touched the sands of

Africa./I am a European looking for

riches./ I am a slave stripped away from

his home …/I am the red faces who

walked the Trail of Tears./ I am my

mother’s father whose face is covered

by a white hood./ I am the German

soldier who spilled my Jewish blood./

I am the South African Republic that

beat my black grandmother. …”

Dialogue Poems

Honeybees, p. 55; Two Women, p. 128.

Dialogue poems are effective to use

where controversy or different opin-

ions might arise: a plantation owner

and an enslaved person, Hiroshima

resources 215

Videos

Unless otherwise noted, these films

are available in video stores (though

sometimes it requires a bit of hunting)

and are appropriate for students in

high school and, in many cases, middle

school. Many are available from the

webstore for Teaching for Change:

bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org.

Battle of Algiers (121 min.)

This is a troubling film that describes

the Algerian struggle against French

colonialism. Made just a few years

after independence, the film features

many of the actual participants of the

war and only one professional actor,

in the role of a French military official

in Algiers. Although it would be a mis-

take to view the film as a celebration of

terrorism, the film certainly demands

that the audience consider the causes

of terrorism. Battle of Algiers has now

been released as a box-set of DVDs that

includes several helpful background

documentaries on the making of the

film, its social context, and the impact

the film had after its release.

Breaker Morant (approx. 115 min.)

A feature film about the Australian

role in the Boer War in South Africa.

However, the issues it raises allow us to

use it during a unit on Vietnam. Three

Australians are tried for war crimes

against white Afrikaner civilians. The

film poses questions about the culpa-

bility of individuals caught in an evil

enterprise of “empire building.”

Hearts and Minds (112 min.)

This powerful Academy Award–win-

ning documentary about the war in

Vietnam is a metaphorical collage of

interviews, battle footage, and daily

life. Students need a good deal of back-

ground about the war prior to viewing,

but if they’re prepared, it can be an

extraordinarily rich resource. Some of

the scenes and individuals are unfor-

gettable, as our students, years later,

testify. Note: A scene in a Saigon brothel

is sexually explicit. The filmmakers

included it in part to explore the war’s

effect on Vietnamese women, as well

as U.S. soldiers’ attitudes towards these

women.

Eyes on the Prize—Fighting Back:

1957–1962 and

Eyes on the Prize—A Nation of Law?

1968–1971

(60 min. each)

The entire PBS Eyes on the Prize series

on the history of the Civil Rights Move-

ment is worthwhile. These two episodes

are especially dramatic ones. The first

recounts the struggle to desegregate

Central High School in Little Rock,

Ark., and the University of Mississippi.

The second covers the police murder

of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred

Hampton and the Attica Prison upris-

ing in New York state. Fighting Back is

a compelling mixture of documentary

footage and candid interviews with

participants. Our students are par-

ticularly moved by the stories of the

youngsters who volunteered to inte-

grate Central High and are amazed and

outraged at the vicious resistance they

encountered.

In 1969, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover

labeled the Black Panther Party the

number-one threat to the internal

security of the United States. The FBI

called the Panthers’ free breakfast for

children program a “nefarious activity.”

A Nation of Law? is a troubling video

about established authority’s concept

of “order” and the measures it will take

to preserve that order.

Breaker Morant.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn216

The Killing Floor (118 min.)

Two African-American men migrate

from the country to Chicago during

World War I and work in a packing

house. They respond differently to

the challenges presented. The film

deals forthrightly and effectively with

racism in the workplace and the union

and ends with the 1919 riots and

their aftermath.

Matewan (100 min.)

John Sayles’s feature film about a

strike in a mining town in Appalachia.

Mine owners bring in black workers

in an attempt to break the

strike. Can Italian immigrants, white

Appalachians, and African Americans

work together? Should they even

bother to try? An engaging and

well-crafted film. (The short essay

“Why Matewan?” from John Sayles’s

book Thinking in Pictures: The Making

of the Movie Matewan can also be used

in class.)

Modern Times (85 min.)

We use only the first 20 minutes of this

Chaplin classic in a unit on the history

of work and workers. It’s a wonderful

resource to discuss the psychological

effects of assembly line work. In one

hilarious scene, Chaplin as the Little

Tramp is assaulted by an automatic

Video teaching strategies by bill bigelow and linda Christensen In Portland, Ore., we have a network of informal video lending libraries. Teachers call each other to locate videos and DvDs that can offer our classes an added dimension of humanity and immediacy—“What do you have on South Africa/the women’s movement/vietnam?” It’s not unusual to discover a wonderful resource, totally new to us, that has been in someone’s curriculum for years.

Different videos lend themselves to different teaching strategies. We’ve found announcing the assignment before viewing helps keep students focused and better prepares them for post-viewing discussion. here are a few of the activities we’ve initiated using some of the “videos with a conscience” listed here.

Interior Monologue With students, we brainstorm the dilemmas or choices faced by various characters in a movie: Frank, in The Killing Floor, when he decides to cross the picket line set up by white union members; Danny, in Matewan, when company thugs threaten to kill him if he reveals their plans; Breaker morant, when he is convicted of war

crimes; molly, in A World Apart, when her mother is “detained” by South African police; etc. Students then write a character’s interior monologue—that individual’s thoughts and feelings during a particular event. Afterwards, in a circle, we encourage students to read their pieces and suggest that they take notes on a particular question. For example, with A World Apart, students can reflect on how people in South Africa maintained their hope in the face of such enormous injustice. The question or questions posed allow students to draw additional insights from the group portrait of the collected interior monologues. See p. 126 for more on interior monologues.

Poetry Instead of, or in addition to, interior monologues, students can be encouraged to write poems. Our student mira wrote, “Poetry made history come to life. When we wrote after [the film on the vietnam war] Hearts and Minds, I was there. I was a soldier. I identified with what was going on. I felt their feelings. I got more involved. This wasn’t just history. This was life. Poetry helped me examine

why the war happened because I got inside the people who witnessed it.” In Hearts and Minds, we asked students to note powerful images or quotes from the people interviewed. Afterwards, students shared a number of these and we distributed a sheet of film quotes that we’d collected. We then offered a series of poems to suggest different structures students might borrow. Several of these were from Yusef komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau, and vietnamese poems from the anthology Of Quiet Courage.

We followed the read-around of students’ pieces with a discussion of the issues raised. The result was a much higher degree of student empathy than had we simply discussed the film without writing, or assigned the writing without giving students a chance to hear each other’s pieces.

Critique With films like The Santa Fe Trail or cartoons like Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, or The Little Mermaid, we distribute “critical viewing” questions for students to think about. For example: 1. Who makes decisions? 2. Who follows orders?

Modern Times.

resources 217

as Anglo miners work in pairs, while

Mexican Americans are forced to work

alone.

But this is especially a feminist

story, as women insist that their issues

for indoor plumbing and hot water

in the company-owned housing also

be included as a demand of the all-

male union. This struggle comes to a

head as Esperanza, wife of one of the

strike activists, confronts her husband,

Ramon, about his failure to treat her as

an equal: “Have you learned nothing

from this strike? Why are you afraid to

have me at your side? … Do you feel

better having someone lower than you?

eating machine being tested by the

company in an attempt to make the

workday more efficient. This excerpt is

also useful to prompt students to reflect

on how the structure of the workplace

affects workers’ relationships with each

other.

Remember My Lai (60 min.)

This is an extraordinary documen-

tary about the My Lai massacre that

first aired as a PBS “Frontline.” This is

much more complex and morally riv-

eting than a simple retelling of what

happened. Interviewed are partici-

pants, both U.S. and Vietnamese. Sig-

nificantly, and rarely mentioned, some

Americans disobeyed orders that day.

Who they were and what they did is

included here. (Check libraries—not

available from PBS.)

Salt of the Earth (94 min.)

Made in 1953, and set in “Zinctown,

New Mexico,” Salt of the Earth uses a

combination of actors and nonpro-

fessional community people to tell its

story. And a great story it is. Sparked

by a mine accident, the workers, mostly

Mexican Americans, go on strike.

Safety is the issue, but is inextrica-

bly linked with racial discrimination

3. Who speaks? 4. Who is silent? 5. What causes conflict and how is it solved? 6. What role does money and/or material possessions play in the story/ history? 7. What roles are women, men, people of color, the differently abled, working- class people, and the poor given? 8. Why do you think the video contains the biases that it does? Who benefits and who suffers from the images and values promoted in this video? The last question is a difficult one, but it’s important that as we teach students critical skills, we encourage them to think about the deeper “why?” questions, encourage them to push beyond simply describing what may be wrong with a given piece of media. In this instance, raising the question is more important than arriving at the “correct” answer. After viewing, we may discuss the film based on these questions or we might encourage them to write from their observations. using their notes, drawing on experiences in their own lives, and incorporating insights from readings, students can write critical essays. Another possibility is to allow students to reconstruct a given story from a more equitable, more

multicultural standpoint.

Trial A number of the films included here deal with violations of human rights, discrimination, and bigotry: homophobia and anti-gay violence in The Times of Harvey Milk; the unprovoked murder of Black Panthers Fred hampton and mark clark in Eyes on the Prize; the imprisonment and abuse of poltical prisoners by British authorities in northern Ireland; and the massacre of civilians in Remember My Lai. Determining “guilt” can encourage students to reflect on complex ethical, political, and historical questions. For example, in Remember My Lai, we divide the class into five groups representing Lt. calley, u.S. soldiers who carried out calley’s orders to shoot civilians, Lt. calley’s superior officers, the vietnamese national Liberation Front, and the “system,” as represented by u.S. corporate and government leaders. They all stand accused of the murder of innocent civilians at my Lai, and each group gets an indictment listing charges against them. The teacher plays the prosecutor. Each “defendant” is prosecuted and argues against the charges, at times pointing an accusing finger at one or more of the other groups. Stepping out of their roles, students assign amounts of guilt

or innocence to each group. Who’s responsible? The ones who pulled the triggers? The ones who gave the orders? The ones who sent them there in the first place?

Tea Party Some films require more concentration or background than others, and a “tea party” activity can work well as a pre-viewing activity. For example, the film Battle of Algiers, about Algerian resistance to French colonialism, is in black and white, is subtitled and actually begins at the end of the story before it circles back. As an introduction to the individuals and issues students will encounter in the film, we distribute short roles of some of the characters— e.g., Ali la Pointe, the criminal-turned- revolutionary who attacks French authorities in Algiers; and col. Phillipe mathieu, the French commander who designs the ruthless counterinsurgency campaign against the Algerian nationalists. In role, students encounter some of the key individuals they will meet in the film and get a preview of the film’s drama and difficult moral issues. For more on the use of tea parties, see the Rethinking Schools books Reading, Writing and Rising Up (p. 115), Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 2 (p. 37); and The Line Between Us (p. 43).

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn218

Whose neck shall I stand on to make

me feel superior? … I want to rise and

push everything up as I go.”

Salt of the Earth celebrates the pos-

sibility of people being able to create a

very different, very much better soci-

ety through solidarity and collective

action. When we first showed the film

a number of years ago, we worried that

students would be put-off by a black-

and-white film that had quite a bit of

amateurish acting and melodramatic

music. We were wrong. What the film

lacks in polish, it more than makes up

for in substance. And most students

recognize that. [See S. J. Childs’s article

on the use of this film with her stu-

dents, p. 141.]

Santa Fe Trail (approx. 100 min.)

Starring Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan,

and Olivia de Haviland, this 1940 film

slanders the Abolition movement and

John Brown. Errol Flynn, as the future

Confederate general Jeb Stuart, is the

good guy who throughout the film

maintains that the South will solve

its problems if only left alone to work

them out. We use the film during a unit

on U.S. slavery and slave resistance to

encourage students to critique the ways

the media can manipulate history.

Some Mother’s Son (112 min. )

From start to finish, students are riveted

by this poignant dramatization of the

hunger strikes initiated by imprisoned

Irish Republican Army members in

1981. Based on true events, it explores

the struggle in Northern Ireland from

the standpoint of two mothers of IRA

prisoners, each of whom responds very

differently to her son’s political involve-

ment and incarceration. Although this

film was unfairly slapped with an R

rating for some harsh language and

violence, this should not deter teach-

ers who want to expose students to the

complexities of the Irish “Troubles.”

Thousand Pieces of Gold (105 min.)

This feature film is a generally decent

adaptation of Ruthann Lum McCunn’s

novel about Lalu Nathoy, a Chinese-

American pioneer woman. Set in the

1870s on the West Coast, Thousand

Pieces of Gold subtly compares Lalu’s

situation and the legal status of Chi-

nese Americans with the enslavement

of African Americans. We combine the

video with the novel, some pieces from

The Big Aiiieeee!, The Forbidden Stitch,

and Making Waves: An Anthology of

Writings by and About Asian American

Women.

The Times of Harvey Milk (90 min.)

A sad but inspirational look at the life

and death of San Francisco Supervi-

sor Harvey Milk and at the gay rights

movement. Milk was the first openly

gay elected official in the United States.

This is a good film to begin to chip

away at students’ homophobia. It’s per-

sonal, funny, sad, and infuriating.

Union Maids (55 min.) and

Seeing Red (100 min.)

Two documentaries, both nominated

for Academy Awards, from filmmak-

ers Jim Klein and Julia Reichert. With

interviews, music, and archival foot-

age, Union Maids tells the story of three

women who helped build industrial

unions in the 1930s and 1940s. The

three are great storytellers. It’s lively

history, a must-use. With more char-

acters, but with the same humor and

drama, Seeing Red chronicles the rise

and fall of the U.S. Communist Party.

It’s hard to imagine teaching about the

McCarthy period without using this

film.

A World Apart (114 min.)

A feature film based on the life of

white South African Ruth First—a

member of the then-outlawed African

National Congress. It’s especially effec-

tive with students in high school and

middle school because the events are

seen largely through the eyes of First’s

daughter, who appears to be about

twelve. Some background is necessary,

but the film effectively explores the

terrain of government repression, the

risks of political activism, and the toll

on the life of one family. So many of

the commercial films on South Africa

have white protagonists—A Dry White

Season and Cry Freedom, for example—

but given that limitation, we think this

may be the best of them.

In addition to the videos listed

above, children’s cartoon stories—

such as Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid,

Beauty and the Beast, Popeye, and Snow

White—are useful in prompting stu-

dents of all ages to think about social

messages imparted in different media.

Because no student feels that a car-

toon is over his or her head, it’s a stu-

dent-friendly medium that helps kids

develop critical thinking skills. Some

of the older cartoons are even more

helpful in this respect, as they do not

have the multicultural veneer of some

of the more recent Hollywood cartoon

releases. See “Critique,” above. —Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen

resources 219

books for young People

Contributors to Rethinking Our Class-

rooms recommended these books for

addressing social justice themes with

students.

early Childhood

Recommended by Ann Pelo, an early

childhood educator at Hilltop Early

Childhood Center in Seattle:

Swimmy, by Leo Lionni. New York:

Knopf Children’s Paperbacks, 1963.

Swimmy is a fish, left alone, sad, and

afraid after his companions are eaten

by a much larger fish. After a lonely

stretch of time, he comes across a school

of fish just like his own. They’re not

swimming, though, but hiding behind

rocks and weeds, afraid of being eaten.

Swimmy organizes the fish, teaching

them to swim together in the shape

of a giant fish. Together they travel

the ocean, unafraid of the bigger fish

because of their collective power. This

simple story is a jumping-off point for

conversations with very young chil-

dren about the power of organizing

as a community, strategizing together

to overcome challenges, and pooling

effort and resources.

The Streets Are Free / La calle es libre,

by Kurusa, illustrated by Monika Dop-

pert. Toronto: Annick, 1985. Children

in a crowded barrio in Caracas, Ven-

ezuela have no place to play tag, soccer,

baseball, or leapfrog. They try to play

in the streets, but are scolded by adults

aware of the danger. “The streets are

free!” the children protest. Their col-

lective anger and determination lead

them to city hall, where they ask that an

abandoned lot be converted to a park

and playground. The children’s bold

act rallies their community. Eventually,

the city bureaucrats concede and the

empty lot is given to them, and every-

one works together to create the park.

This book is based on the true story of

the San Jose de la Urbina in Caracas.

When I read it with young children, we

talk about the importance of naming

injustice collectively and working with

a community to create change. Chil-

dren are dazzled by this story of the

power of children, often exclaiming,

“This really happened, right?”

Sí, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can! Janitors

Strike in L.A., by Diana Cohn, illus-

trated by Francisco Delgado. El Paso,

Texas: Cinco Puntos Press, 2002. Carli-

tos’s mother is a janitor in Los Angeles

who becomes active in the Justice for

Janitors campaign. When the campaign

organizes a strike, the mother becomes

a community leader. At school, Carli-

tos discovers that some of the other

children’s parents are also on strike. He

suggests to his teacher that they make

a trip to the picket line. When the day

of their trip arrives, Carlitos is proud

to join the strikers, holding his sign,

“I love my Mama. She is a janitor.” His

mother continues to work with Jus-

tice for Janitors after her own strike is

settled. This story makes visible both

the people who clean offices and hotels

and the movement for justice for jani-

tors and other low-income workers.

It introduces young children to these

people and opens questions for them

to consider: Who cleans our building?

Are they treated fairly? Why don’t we

ever see them? Can we meet them? It

also sparks conversations about the

power of collective political action and

organized campaigns. It includes an

essay by Luis J. Rodriguez.

Freedom Summer, by Deborah Wiles.

New York: Atheneum Books, 2001.

This potent story of the friendship

between an African-American boy and

a white boy unfolds in the deep South

as civil rights legislation is enacted.

Joe and John Henry are eager to swim

together in the town pool now that

desegregation laws have been passed.

The boys are stunned when they arrive

at the pool to see it being filled in with

cement. This moment is a turning

point for both boys, and arm-in-arm

they take a bold step into anti-racist

activism. When I read this with pre-

schoolers, we tell the story sometimes

from Joe’s perspective and sometimes

from John Henry’s perspective, to give

the kids opportunities to experience

the injustice of racism and the power

of activism from the vantage points of

white people and African Americans.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn220

Recommended by Katie Kissinger, an early

childhood consultant in Boring, Oreg.:

Skin Again, by bell hooks, illustrated

by Chris Raschka. New York: Hyper-

ion / Jump at the Sun, 2004. This is a

picture book with limited words and

a powerful message, which makes it

usable with very young children all the

way through adults. It is my favorite

book to read as a closing to my work-

shops about having important and

more comfortable conversations with

children about skin color differences.

bell hooks’s primary message in Skin

Again is that we all have different col-

ors of skin that we can feel great about,

but “skin is only a covering, it cannot

tell our story.” The book is another

wonderful gift from the woman who

has written so much about liberatory

education and teaching for freedom

with adults.

(Editors’note: Don’t forget Kissinger’s

excellent bilingual book, All the Colors We

Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin

Color, Redleaf Press, 1994.)

elementary school

Recommended by Mary Cowhey, who

teaches 2nd grade at Jackson Street School

in Northampton, Mass.:

I Will Be Your Friend: Songs and Activ-

ities for Young Peacemakers, book and

CD. Montgomery, Ala.: Teaching Tol-

erance, 2003. This book and CD con-

tain 23 activities and 26 great songs,

including “1492,” “Paz y Libertad,”

“What Can One Little Person Do?” and

“Freedom, Oh Freedom.” Although

I can’t carry a tune (the CD bails me

out), I recognize the power of singing

songs about friendship, peace, free-

dom and the struggle for justice both

in the streets and in the classroom. I go

back to this resource again and again

all year. It is available for free from

www.teachingtolerance.org.

Peace Begins with You, by K. Scho-

les. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books,

1990. This is a gentle, soft-spoken,

but powerful book about peace that I

use with my 1st- and 2nd-graders. It

addresses the reality of human conflict,

from the personal level of family and

friends to the global level. It talks hon-

estly about the need to negotiate and

compromise and shows that solutions

are not easy to reach or perfect but are

a better choice than violence.

Hey, Little Ant!, by Phillip and Han-

nah Hoose. Berkeley, Calif.: Tricycle

Press, 1998. This humorously illus-

trated story, written in verse, depicts

a debate between a boy who is about

to squish an ant on the sidewalk and

an ant, who thinks he shouldn’t do it.

The two parts can be sung as a song

or done as a great choral reading. I use

this story with 1st- and 2nd-graders

as well as adults, as a springboard for

philosophical discussions about the

nature of power.

Recommended by Rachel Cloues, who

teaches 4th grade at Sanchez Elementary

School in San Francisco:

The Librarian of Basra: A True Story

from Iraq, by Jeanette Winter. San

Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, 2004. This

beautiful, illustrated story of a dedi-

cated librarian in war-torn Iraq speaks

to me and my students of the devastat-

ing effects of war and the power of hope

and community. It is an incredibly

accessible story with which to prompt

discussions of war and peace, educa-

tion, and democracy. I like to share it

with my class before we visit a public

or school library because it reminds us

all of how lucky we are to have access to

books and education.

A Day’s Work, by Eve Bunting, illus-

trated by Ronald Himler. New York:

Houghton Mifflin / Clarion, 1994. A

teacher concerned with social justice

can never go wrong with a book by Eve

Bunting! This one is a heart-rending

story of Francisco, who lives in Cali-

fornia, and his recently arrived (and

presumably undocumented) grandfa-

ther, who speaks only Spanish. Bun-

ting gracefully addresses the difficulty

of being a day worker, including such

issues as fair pay, honesty, pride, and

respect. As the interpreter, Francisco

lies to their employer about his grand-

father’s gardening experience in order

to get them hired. They mistakenly

pull up plants instead of weeds and

must make amends in order to earn

their pay. This is a sophisticated story

with many angles and perspectives to

explore with children at almost any

grade level. My 4th-grade students,

mostly immigrants themselves, sym-

pathize with Francisco’s hard job as an

interpreter for adults.

The People Shall Continue, by Simon

Ortiz, illustrated by Sharol Graves.

San Francisco: Children’s Book Press,

1988. An honest overview of Native

American history told in a rhythmic

style suggesting the oral traditions of

the people whose story it is. Beginning

with a combination of creation myths

and presenting a Native perspective of

historical events in the United States

up to the present day, The People Shall

Continue is an excellent read-aloud

for classes learning about U.S. history,

Native America, and different tribes. In

my classes, students have discussed and

http://www.teachingtolerance.org

resources 221

brought to New England and struggles

to return to his homeland. I use this

in literature circles every year with my

5th-graders, who find it fast-paced and

riveting. The story is rich in historical

detail. The first several chapters are set

in Africa and help pierce stereotypes

of what Africa was like in the 17th and

18th centuries. A secondary character,

a white indentured servant, allows for

comparisons between the oppression

of enslaved Africans and poor whites.

For an extension activity, I use Virginia

Hamilton’s retelling of Equiano’s story

in The People Could Fly and Tom Feel-

ing’s amazing drawings in The Middle

Passage. The Capitve is also great to use

a whole-class read-aloud.

Dragon’s Gate, by Laurence Yep. New

York: Harper Collins, 1993. I use this

book in literature circles when my 5th-

grade class studies immigration and/

or post–Civil War American history.

The main character is a Chinese youth

who comes to America in search of the

“golden mountain,” only to be thrown

into the intolerable working conditions

of building the transcontinental rail-

road. Issues of racism, working-class

solidarity, unions, and courage are all

dramatized various parts of the story.

I like to read this book as an introduc-

tion and conclusion to units about

Native America.

The Sneetches and Other Stories, by

Dr. Seuss. New York: Random House,

1961. A classic and perhaps overlooked

story for teaching about racism, dis-

crimination, and/or peer pressure.

The playful Sneetches finally learn that

whether or not they have “stars upon

thars,” they all share the same beach

and must get along with one another.

I like to emphasize Sylvester McMon-

key McBean’s role as a businessman

capitalizing on the Sneetches’ low self-

image and connect the story to units

on advertising and economics.

This short story never fails to gen-

erate discussion about treating people

fairly no matter what they look like.

Recommended by Kelley Dawson Salas,

who teaches 4th grade at La Escuela

Fratney in Milwaukee, Wis., and is an

editor of Rethinking Schools magazine:

América Is Her Name / La llaman

América, by Luis Rodríguez, illus-

trated by Carlos Vázquez. Willimantic,

Conn.: Curbstone Press, 1998. América

is a girl from Oaxaca, Mexico, who has

moved to Chicago and is floundering

in school. She hears her teacher tell

another teacher she’s “illegal” and gets

the idea that she doesn’t belong in the

United States. After a guest poet visits

América’s class, she begins to find her

voice by writing about her experiences

back home, but her father ridicules

her work, telling her it’s no use since

she’ll spend her life cleaning, work-

ing, and raising kids. América contin-

ues to write anyway, and eventually

achieves academic success and a sense

of belonging. I find this story useful for

helping students question stereotypes

of immigrants and encouraging chil-

dren to think broadly about their pos-

sibilities in life.

My Name Is Jorge on Both Sides of

the River, by Jane Medina, illustrated

by Fabricio Vanden Broeck. Hones-

dale, Pa.: Boyds Mills Press, 1999. This

bilingual poetry book shares common

themes in immigrant children’s lives

through the experiences of the nar-

rator, Jorge. Jorge makes friends with

English- and Spanish-speaking kids at

his new school, tries new foods offered

to him by his Anglo peers, and feels

proud when he recites poetry to his

class. He also wonders why his grades

are worse in the United States than in

Mexico, feels insulted when a class-

mate calls his English-as-a-second-

language class “Mexican dummy time,”

and leaves the public library without a

library card after the librarian insults

his mom for being illiterate. A moving,

engaging, and funny book that helps

students explore the joys and difficul-

ties in the lives of immigrant children.

Friends from the Other Side / Ami-

gos del otro lado, by Gloria Anzaldúa,

illustrated by Consuelo Méndez. San

Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 1993.

In this bilingual book, a Mexican-

American girl named Prietita befriends

a recent Mexican immigrant named

Joaquín. She stands up to her cousin

and his friends when they tell Joaquín,

“Go back where you came from.” When

the Border Patrol comes looking for

“illegals,” she hides Joaquín and his

mom so they won’t be caught. I use

this book to help students learn about

xenophobia and how to be an ally.

Recommended by Bob Peterson, who

teaches 5th grade at La Escuela Fratney

in Milwaukee, Wis., and is an editor of

Rethinking Schools magazine:

The Captive, by Joyce Hansen. New

York: Scholastic, 1994. Inspired by the

true story The Life of Olaudah Equiano

or Gustavus Vass, the African, this book

is written from the perspective of a

young African who is kidnapped and

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn222

bound up in a beautifully written novel

that my students love. The richness of

the story offers many extension ideas.

One that has been particularly effective

for me is to have the students assume

they are the main character and write

back to their mother (who stayed in

China) about life in the new America.

This is part of Yep’s Golden Mountain

Chronicles; the other one I’d highly

recommend is The Traitor, which takes

place in Wyoming in 1885 and tells the

story of the conflict between white and

Chinese miners.

The Fragile Flag, by Jane Langton. New

York: Harper and Row, 1984. Often, the

children in my 5th-grade classroom

want to do something about the injus-

tices that come to light when we discuss

a current event issue or other subject.

The Fragile Flag is a modern-day fan-

tasy in which a group of children lead a

massive march on the White House to

stop the new “Peace Missile.” It’s a great

chapter book to read as a read-aloud

or in literature circles. For extension

activities, I have students discuss the

book in the context of past and present

peace movements, the military budget,

and the role of children in past social

movements—using video The Chil-

dren’s March (available from Teaching

Tolerance), which highlights the chil-

dren’s role in the 1963 Birmingham

civil rights struggle.

Richard Wright and the Library Card,

by William Miller, illustrated by Greg-

ory Christie. New York: Lee & Low

Books, 1997. A wonderfully illustrated

book that describes the great African-

American author Richard Wright’s

attempt to get access to all-white librar-

ies. I use this book as a read-aloud at

the beginning of the school year to

spark a discussion of the importance

of reading and how social movements

and struggles have been necessary

to secure the right to access libraries

and schools. I also tell the story of the

struggle of women to get an education,

using the example of Elizabeth Black-

well, who had to fight her way into

medical school in the mid-1840s. This

book is also a good way to introduce

Wright’s works to older students.

high school

Recommended by Linda Christensen,

who teaches 11th and 12th grades at

Grant High School in Portland, Oregon,

and is an editor of Rethinking Schools

magazine:

Hope Was Here, by Jane Bauer. New

York: Penguin / Puffin, 2002. I look

for books that honor blue-collar work.

Hope Was There, an adolescent novel

by Joan Bauer, not only respects wait-

resses, it also demonstrates how high

school students can become political

activists. Hope, the main character in

Bauer’s novel, raises waitressing to both

a religion and an art. She understands

how to connect with people through

service. She doesn’t dismiss the impor-

tance of her work or underestimate

the humanity of her customers. But

Bauer’s novel is about more than wait-

ressing. It’s also about a high school girl

whose mother and father abandoned

her and about young people who work

to elect a short-order cook as mayor of

Mulhoney, Wis. I could see using this

novel with 5th-grade through high

school students as a precursor to a unit

on working for change in a school or

a community. This book is hopeful. In

an age of despair, we need to give stu-

dents models for how to make change.

Kindred, by Octavia Butler. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1979. I have used Kin-

dred in a variety of ways over the years

in American Literature—both as a

stand-alone text and as part of a slav-

ery/resistance literature circle. Butler,

an award-winning novelist, uses ele-

ments of science fiction to transport

Dana, an African-American woman

who lives in California in 1976, to

save her white ancestor. Butler exam-

ines how slavery destroys both blacks

and whites, but through her storytell-

ing she also examines literacy, gender

roles, power and resistance. My 11th-

and 12th-grade students find the work

compelling to read; however, the novel

contains vivid depictions of violence,

racism, and racial epithets.

Spoken Soul, by John Rickford and

Russell Rickford. New York: John Wiley

& Sons, 2000. Although Spoken Soul

tells the story of African-American Ver-

nacular English (Ebonics), it reads like

a novel. I use chapters of the book dur-

ing my unit on the politics of language,

but I also use it when I teach Their Eyes

Were Watching God and Fences.

Thousand Pieces of Gold, by Ruthann

Lum McCunn. Boston: Beacon, 2004.

This historical novel tells the story of

Lalu/Polly—a Chinese woman who

is sold/stolen into slavery. I like the

way McCunn marries history and fic-

tion, teaching students about Chinese

exclusion laws and Chinese immigra-

tion into the Northwest during the late

resources 223

1800s. The strength of this book is its

thematic development of social justice

issues including gender equality and

slavery. This book can be used with

grades 10, 11, and 12.

Warriors Don’t Cry, by Melba Patillo

Beals. New York: Simon & Schuster,

1995. In this autobiography, Melba

Patillo Beals, one of the Little Rock

students who integrated Central High

School in 1957, recounts her struggle

to overcome segregation and institu-

tionalized racism. Blending adult com-

mentary with teenage experience, this

book hooks students into one of the

most compelling civil rights battles in

our nation’s history. The text reads eas-

ily, but does not spare the details of the

physical and psychological abuse suf-

fered. I love teaching this book. I use it

in high school, but it could be used in

middle school as well. One caution is

that racial epithets are used in the text.

Various ages

Recommended by Leonore Gordon, a social

worker who works with children in New

York City:

Rising Voices: Writings of Young

Native Americans, edited by Arlene

Hirschfelder and Beverly R. Singer.

New York: Atheneum Books, 1992. This

gem of a book contains poetry writ-

ten by young American Indian poets

ranging from early elementary school

through high school. Through the the

candid, poignant voices of the poets

in Rising Voices, a landscape emerges

of racism, past and present, towards

the Native peoples; thus, many of the

poems became a spur to class discus-

sion about chunks of American history

not taught often enough. I have used

this book countless times to teach low-

income, mostly black and Hispanic

5th- and 6th-graders in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The poems offer a powerful glimpse

into their authors’ lives, and the read-

ings are short enough to leave time

for discussion about the issues raised.

My students have exchanged letters,

poems, books, and even food with

these poets, whose environments range

from the red soil of New Mexico to the

lakes of northern Minnesota. My stu-

dents’ poems about their surroundings

stood in stark contrast to the poems

written by their pen-pals about watch-

ing eagles fly across open fields.

Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai. New

York: Harcourt, 1997. This book is a

“double-feature”: As a history lesson, it

tracks the emergence and explosion of

tensions within Sri Lanka through the

eyes of a young boy. As a “coming-out

story,” it depicts his shift from child-

hood games to early-adolescent aware-

ness of his attraction to other boys.

This tender, sensitive view of the world

of a Sri Lankan boy who prefers play-

acting weddings to playing baseball

reveals how a civil war affects young

people who are already busy enough

trying to get through childhood and

adolescence. It also teaches about the

terrible consequences visited upon

families during civil war. Sound famil-

iar? Sudan? Romeo and Juliet? Darfur?

Iraq? We’d better get to work helping

our students communicate across cul-

tures as early as possible! This novel

opens a doorway to dialogue about dif-

ferences of all kinds with our middle

school and high school charges.

She Would Not Be Moved: How We

Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the

Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Her-

bert Kohl. New York: The New Press,

2005. Essential reading, especially for

elementary school teachers who year

after year pass on to their impression-

able students an image of Rosa Parks as

a weary older black woman who just

decides she finally has to sit down, and

then, presto!, the birth of a civil rights

movement. Kohl blows this all into the

sky as he tells the real story of Rosa

Parks and the organized planning of

a whole community that preceded the

actual day of Parks’s refusal to get up

from a seat intended for a white per-

son. The best part? We gain even more

admiration for the late, great, indomi-

table Mrs. Parks.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn224

Curricula and teaching Resources

All starred resources are available

from Rethinking Schools,

www.rethinkingschools.org, 800-669-4192.

Affirming Diversity: The Sociopo-

litical Context of Multicultural Edu-

cation, Second Edition, Sonia Nieto.

White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1996. Of

the scores of books on multicultural

education, Nieto’s is one worth reading.

The central message of this 422-page

book is that multicultural education

is essential to promote the academic

achievement of students of color; it is

a message that comes through power-

fully in her clear explanations of related

issues of bilingual education and criti-

cal pedagogy and her numerous case

studies that give voice to students of

different backgrounds.

Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for

Empowering Young Children, Louise

Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task

Force. Washington, D.C.: National

Association for the Education of Young

Children, 1989. Perhaps the best book

for the early child/primary level on

how to teach about all forms of bias

and what to do about it.

*Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A

Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist,

Multicultural Education and Staff

Development, New Edition, edited

by Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart, and

Margo Okazawa-Rey. Washington,

D.C.: Teaching for Change, 2006. A

remarkable collection of lesson plans

and staff development activities as well

as critical examinations of key equity

issues such as bilingual education

and tracking. Contains an extensive

resource guide of teaching and learning

resources and many helpful websites.

BRIDGE, Building a Race and Immi-

gration Dialogue in the Global Econ-

omy, edited by Eunice Hyunhye Cho,

Francisco Argüelles Paz y Puente,

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, and Sasha

Khokha. Oakland, CA: National Net-

work for Immigrant and Refugee

Rights, 2004. Although aimed at edu-

cators working with adults, rather than

at classroom teachers, this is an imagi-

native and critical resource for teaching

about immigration. One of the guide’s

strengths is to ground immigration

in the context of race and globaliza-

tion. The book also has a substantial

and helpful section on immigration

throughout U.S. history.

Caribbean Connections series, edited

by Catherine Sunshine. Washington,

D.C.: Teaching for Change/EPICA,

1991 (volumes published by various

publishers). Stories, interviews, songs,

drama, and oral histories, accompa-

nied by lesson plans for secondary lan-

guage arts and social studies. Separate

volumes on: Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the

Dominican Republic, Regional Over-

view, and Moving North.

Colonialism in the Americas: A Criti-

cal Look (1991) and Colonialism in

Asia: A Critical Look (1993), Susan

Gage. Victoria, BC: VIDEA. Sophisti-

cated descriptions of colonialism in

an easy-to-read, comic book format.

Through dialogue and cartoons, each

booklet traces the development of

colonialism and its legacy. Teaching

ideas are included in each volume.

Education Is Politics: Critical Teach-

ing Across Differences, K-12, edited

by Ira Shor and Caroline Pari. New

York: Boynton/Cook, 1999. In memory

of Paulo Freire, the essays in this col-

lection describe critical practices by

teachers committed to transformation

in and beyond the classroom. They

show culturally diverse educators con-

structively taking sides and refusing to

fit students or themselves quietly into

the status quo.

The Field Guide to the Global Econ-

omy, Second Edition, Sarah Anderson

and John Cavanagh with Thea Lee.

New York: The New Press, 2005, second

edition. Illustrated with charts, graphs,

and political cartoons, this accessible

and engaging guide reveals the harm-

ful effects of corporate-driven global-

ization. It explains current trends in

the global economy, the driving forces

behind globalization, and the orga-

http://www.teachingforchange.org

resources 225

nizations and individuals working to

reverse these destructive forces.

Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution: An

Inquiry into the Civil War and Recon-

struction, The American Social History

Project. New York: The New Press, 1996.

Lively prose, primary documents, illus-

trations, and photographs bring this

key period of U.S. history to life and

invite students to study Reconstruction

in depth. This 302-page book includes

exercises and discussion questions. By

the authors of Who Built America?

Keepers of the Earth: Native Ameri-

can Stories and Environmental Activ-

ities for Children, Michael J. Caduto

and Joseph Bruchac. Golden, CO: Ful-

crum Inc., 1988. Features a collection

of North American Indian stories and

related hands-on activities designed to

inspire children. An interdisciplinary

approach to teaching about the earth

and Native-American cultures.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgen-

der Rights: A Human Rights Perspec-

tive, David M. Donahue. Minneapolis:

Human Rights Resource Center, Uni-

versity of Minnesota, 2000. This cur-

riculum encourages thoughtful exami-

nation and responsible action about

sexual identity issues within the con-

text of human rights. Helps learners

see their responsibility to take action to

promote and protect the human rights

of all.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything

Your American History Textbook

Got Wrong, James W. Loewen. New

York: New Press, 1994. Loewen’s book

is an entertaining and eye-opening de-

mything of key aspects of American

history. It’s both an effective critique of

some of the most widely used history

texts and an alternative history.

*The Line Between Us: Teach-

ing About the Border and Mexican

Immigration, Bill Bigelow. Milwau-

kee: Rethinking Schools, 2006. This is

the best resource for teaching about

the roots of Mexican migration to the

United States and the human and eco-

logical consequences of “free trade” in

Mexico. The book includes a narrative

of how Bigelow’s students respond to

learning about these issues as well as

full lesson plans for role plays, simula-

tions, short stories, poetry, and back-

ground readings.

Making the Peace: A Violence Pre-

vention Curriculum, Paul Kivel and

Allen Creighton. Alameda, CA: Hunter

House, 1997. A comprehensive teach-

ing handbook with all the informa-

tion needed to implement a 15-session

core curriculum. It offers step-by-step

instructions for sessions, anticipates

difficult issues that may arise, and sug-

gests ideas for follow-up both within

the classroom and within the school or

youth program.

*The New Teacher Book: Finding Pur-

pose, Balance, and Hope During Your

First Years in the Classroom, Second

Edition, edited by Terry Burant, Linda

Christensen, Kelley Dawson Salas,

and Stephanie Walters. Milwaukee:

Rethinking Schools, 2010. The first

few years of many teachers’ careers

are fraught with uncertainty, anxi-

ety, and frustration. This book offers

new teachers encouragement and lots

of practical advice in getting off to a

good start in their careers, dealing with

students and pedagogy, and connect-

ing their classroom work to the world

beyond school. It’s a guidebook on how

to live one’s ideals when the schools

and school systems we work in don’t

always support those ideals.

*Open Minds to Equality: A Source-

book of Learning Activities to Affirm

Diversity and Promote Equity, Third

Edition, Nancy Schniedewind and

Ellen Davidson. Milwaukee: Rethink-

ing Schools, 2006. This resource both

inspires teachers to teach for justice

and provides classroom-ready ideas

that work. The lessons integrate vari-

ous curricular areas and are presented

in a sequential fashion. Includes an

excellent resource bibliography. Also by

Schniedewind and Davidson is Coop-

erative Learning, Cooperative Lives: A

Sourcebook for Learning Activities for

Building a Peaceful World, W.C. Brown

Company, 1987.

Peters Projection World Map, New

York: Friendship Press. This is a map,

not a book, but it comes with a teach-

ing guide. It presents all countries

according to their true size. Traditional

Mercator projection maps distort sizes,

making Europe appear much larger

than it actually is. A New View of the

World by Ward Kaiser is a handbook

on the Peters map.

Portion of Peters Projection Map.

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn226

by Deborah Wei and Rachael Kamel.

Philadelphia: American Friends Ser-

vice Committee, 1998. In 1898, the

United States annexed the Pacific

Islands of Guam, Hawai’i, and Samoa,

as well as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the

Philippines. This major event in U.S.

history is barely mentioned in school

textbooks. Resistance in Paradise fills

the gap with over 50 lesson plans, role

plays, and readings for grades 9–12.

Includes illustrations, cartoons, maps,

and photographs.

*Rethinking Columbus, Second Edi-

tion, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob

Peterson. Milwaukee: Rethinking

Schools, 1998. This widely acclaimed

book asks educators to think about

the racial and cultural biases in tradi-

tional tales of “discovery” and provides

numerous teaching ideas that encourage

students to think critically about these

myths. An essential volume for teacher

education. Greatly expanded from the

first edition, which sold almost a quar-

ter of a million copies. A Rethinking

Columbus slide show is available from

www.teachingforchange.org.

*Rethinking Early Childhood Educa-

tion, edited by Ann Pelo. Milwaukee:

Rethinking Schools, 2008. Early child-

hood is when we develop our core

dispositions—the habits of thinking

that shape how we live. This anthol-

ogy shows how educators can nurture

empathy, an ecological consciousness,

curiosity, collaboration, and activism

in young children. The book includes

inspiring stories about social justice

teaching with young children from

childcare teachers, early-grade school

teachers, scholars, and parents.

*Rethinking Globalization: Teach-

ing for Justice in an Unjust World,

edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peter-

son. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools,

2002. The book includes chapters on

the colonial roots of global inequality,

*A People’s History for the Class-

room, by Bill Bigelow. Milwaukee:

Rethinking Schools, 2008. This col-

lection of exemplary teaching articles

and lesson plans emphasizes the role

of working people, women, people of

color, and organized social movements

in shaping history. Through improvi-

sations, role plays, imaginative writing,

and critical reading activities, students

are introduced to a more accurate,

complex, and engaging understanding

of U.S. history than is found in tradi-

tional textbooks and curricula.

A People’s History of the United

States: 1492–Present, Howard Zinn.

New York: HarperCollins, 1995

(revised). The best single-volume his-

tory of the United States. No teacher

should be without a copy. Some sec-

tions are readable by high school

students.

*The Power in Our Hands: A Cur-

riculum on the History of Work and

Workers in the United States, Bill Big-

elow and Norm Diamond. New York:

Monthly Review Press, 1988. Role plays

and writing activities help students

explore issues about work and social

change. An essential curriculum for

history and economics teachers or for

school-to-work programs.

*Putting the Movement Back into

Civil Rights Teaching, edited by Deb-

orah Menkart, Alana D. Murray, and

Jenice L. View. Washington, DC: Teach-

ing for Change and Poverty & Race

Research Action Council (PRRAC),

2004. This comprehensive volume

offers lesson plans and articles to help

K–12 teachers focus on the activist

dimension of the Civil Rights Move-

ment—too often taught as the cre-

ation of Great Leaders. This collection

focuses our curricular attention on the

grassroots nature of the Civil Rights

struggles.

*Reading, Writing, and Rising Up:

Teaching About Social Justice and

the Power of the Written Word, Linda

Christensen. Milwaukee: Rethinking

Schools, 2000. In this practical, inspi-

rational book, Christensen draws on

her long career as a high school teacher

to describe her vision of teaching read-

ing, writing, and language courses that

are rooted in an unwavering focus on

social justice. Includes essays, lesson

plans, and a remarkable collection of

student writing.

Readings for Diversity and Social

Justice: An Anthology on Racism,

Antisemitism, Sexism, Heterosexism,

Ableism & Classism, edited by Mauri-

anne Adams, et al. London: Routledge,

2000. An invaluable anthology of over

ninety readings by some of the fore-

most scholars in the fields of educa-

tion and social justice, including Glo-

ria Anzaldúa, Patricia Hill Collins, bell

hooks, Michael Omi, Ronald Takaki,

Beverly Daniel Tatum, Cornel West,

and Iris Marion Young. Covers the

scope of social oppressions, emphasiz-

ing interactions among racism, sexism,

classism, anti-Semitism, heterosexism,

and ableism.

Resistance in Paradise: Rethinking

100 Years of U.S. Involvement in the

Caribbean and the Pacific, edited

resources 227

the global economy, sweatshops, child

labor, global food issues, the environ-

ment, and teaching for hope. This is the

only teaching resource that approaches

globalization with depth and breadth.

Includes role plays, interviews, poetry,

stories, background readings, cartoons,

audiovisual resources, and extensive

teaching ideas.

*Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching

Social Justice by the Numbers, edited

by Eric Gutstein and Bob Peterson.

Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools, 2005.

This unique collection of more than 30

articles shows teachers how to weave

social justice principles throughout the

math curriculum, and how to integrate

social justice math into other curricu-

lar areas as well. The book offers teach-

ing ideas, lesson plans, and reflections

by practicing classroom teachers and

distinguished mathematics educators.

*Rethinking Multicultural Educa-

tion: Teaching for Racial and Cultural

Justice, edited by Wayne Au. Milwau-

kee: Rethinking Schools, 2009. Collects

the best articles dealing with race and

culture in the classroom that have ap-

peared in Rethinking Schools magazine

over the years. Moving beyond a sim-

plistic focus on heroes and holidays,

it demonstrates a powerful vision of

anti-racist, social justice education.

Practical, rich in story, and analytically

sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Educa-

tion reclaims multicultural education

as part of a larger struggle for justice

and against racism, colonization, and

cultural oppression—in schools and

society.

*Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teach-

ing for Equity and Justice, Volume 1,

Second Edition, edited by Wayne Au,

Bill Bigelow, and Stan Karp. Milwau-

kee: Rethinking Schools, 2007. This

collection includes creative teaching

ideas, classroom narratives, and hands-

on examples of ways teachers can pro-

mote values of community, justice, and

equality—and build academic skills.

*Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teach-

ing for Equity and Justice, Volume 2,

edited by Stan Karp, Brenda Harvey,

Larry Miller and Bill Bigelow. Milwau-

kee: Rethinking Schools, 2001. Supple-

ments and extends many of the themes

in the first volume of Rethinking Our

Classrooms. Practical from-the-class-

room stories from teachers about how

they attempt to teach for social justice.

*Rethinking Popular Culture and

Media, edited by Elizabeth Mar-

shall and Özlem Sensoy. Milwaukee:

Rethinking Schools, 2011. This pro-

vocative collection of articles begins

with the idea that the “popular” in

classrooms and in the everyday lives

of teachers and students is fundamen-

tally political. It includes outstanding

articles by elementary and secondary

public school teachers, scholars, and

activists who examine how and what

popular toys, books, films, music, and

other media “teach.” These thoughtful

essays offer strong critiques and practi-

cal teaching strategies for educators at

every level.

Scarves of Many Colors: Muslim

Women and the Veil. Audiotape by

Joan Bohorfoush and Diana Dicker-

son. Curriculum by Bill Bigelow, San-

dra Childs, Norm Diamond, Diana

Dickerson, and Jan Haaken. Washing-

ton, DC: Teaching for Change, 2000.

This award-winning audiotape and

curriculum engage students in think-

ing critically about stereotypes of “cov-

ered” Islamic women. The audiotape

introduces a range of U.S. and Middle

Eastern women who tell stories and

offer insight. The curriculum offers

four classroom-tested lessons, includ-

ing a role play/tribunal on “Women

and the Veil,” with accompanying stu-

dent handouts. A lively addition to

any Global Studies, psychology, sociol-

ogy, women’s studies, world history, or

teacher education curriculum.

Teaching About Asian Pacific Ameri-

cans: Effective Activities, Strategies,

and Assignments for Classrooms and

Communities, edited by Edith Wen-

Chu Chen and Glenn Omatsu. Lan-

ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,

2006. This collection of imaginative,

participatory classroom lesson plans

and background information provides

an overview of the hidden history and

contemporary issues facing Asian-

Pacific Americans and Pacific Island-

ers. It fills a void in textbooks and

traditional curricula, which generally

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn228

local to national level, and present new

visions for the 21st century. Addresses

the history of teacher unionism and

connects issues of teacher unions,

classroom reform, local communities,

and social justice.

Voices of a People’s History of the

United States, edited by Anthony

Arnove and Howard Zinn. New York:

Seven Stories Press, 2004. This book

offers source documents that amplify

the themes in Howard Zinn’s classic,

A People’s History of the United States,

including diary excerpts, speeches,

poems, original news articles, and

more. Each chapter “shadows” the

original book, providing lots of class-

room-friendly material.

Who Are the Arabs: The Arab World

in the Classroom, Steve Tamari. Wash-

ington, DC: Center for Contemporary

Arab Studies, Georgetown University,

1999. History, poetry, photographs,

maps, short stories, and articles by

and about the Arab-speaking world.

This 12-page booklet is available free if

requested along with an order for other

titles from Teaching for Change.

That’s Not Fair: A Teacher’s Guide to

Activism with Young Children, Ann

Pelo and Fran Davidson. St. Paul, MN:

Redleaf Press, 2000. Children have a

natural sense of what’s fair and what’s

not. This book helps teachers learn to

use this characteristic to develop chil-

dren’s belief that they can change the

world for the better. Includes real-life

stories of activist children, combined

with teachers’ experiences and reflec-

tions, as well as original songs for chil-

dren and a resource list for both adults

and children.

*Transforming Teacher Unions:

Fighting for Better Schools and Social

Justice, edited by Bob Peterson and

Michael Charney. Milwaukee: Rethink-

ing Schools, 1999. A vital tool for any-

one working in or with teacher unions

today. The 25 articles look at exemplary

practices of teacher unions from the

ignore the diversity and depth of the

Asian-American experience.

Teaching for Diversity and Social Jus-

tice: A Sourcebook, edited by Mauri-

anne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat

Griffin. New York: Routledge, 1997. A

compilation of course syllabi, lessons,

and resources for college courses and

staff development on issues of racism,

sexism, classism, anti-Semitism, het-

erosexism, and ableism.

Teaching Economics as if People Mat-

tered: A High School Curriculum

Guide to the New Economy, Tamara

Sober Giecek. Boston: United for a

Fair Economy, 2000. Field-tested by

high school teachers, this innovative

economics curriculum looks at the

human implications of economic poli-

cies. These 21 lesson plans are designed

to stimulate dialogue and encourage

active student participation in the high

school or college classroom.

*Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-

imagining the Language Arts Class-

room, by Linda Christensen. Milwau-

kee: Rethinking Schools, 2009. This

book sings with hope—born of Chris-

tensen’s more than 30 years as a class-

room teacher, language arts specialist,

and teacher educator. In it she demon-

strates how to draw on students’ lives

and the world to teach poetry, essays,

narratives, and critical literacy skills.

Practical, inspirational, passionate, it

is a must-have book for anyone who

wants concrete examples of what it

really means to teach for social justice.

resources 229

Periodicals

Adbusters: www.adbusters.org; 1243 West 7th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6H 1B7; 800-663-1243. Canadian journal that promotes critical thinking about con- sumer culture. See Organizations.

ColorLines Magazine: www.colorlines. com; 900 Alice St. Suite 400, Oakland, CA 94607; 510-653-3415. Published six times a year. Award-winning magazine covering race, culture, and community organizing, focusing on issues affecting communities of color.

Dollars and Sense: www.dollarsandsense.org; 29 Winter St., Boston, MA 02108; 617-447-2177. Easy- to-understand articles on the economy from a critical perspective. Indispensable for economics teachers.

The Ecologist: www.theecologist.org; 102D Lana House Studios, 116-118 Commercial St., Spitalfields, London, E1 6NF, UK. Challenges basic assumptions about “development,” “progress,” and “growth,” helping students and teach- ers consider the environmental conse- quences of globalization.

FairTest Examiner: www.fairtest.org/ newsletter. See Organizations: National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

Green Teacher: www.greenteacher.com; PO Box 452, Niagra Falls, NY 14304; 888-804-1486. Emphasizes hands-on education on environmental issues.

In These Times: www.inthesetimes. com; 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60647; 773-772-0100. Monthly news magazine that promotes an anti-corpo- rate perspective on national and interna- tional issues.

Labor Notes: www.labornotes.org; 7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, MI 48210; 313-

842-6262. Excellent monthly newsletter

dealing with ongoing union and rank-

and-file activities.

Middle East Report: www.merip.org; 1500 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 119,

Washington, DC 20005; 202-223-3677.

Astute analyses of events in the Middle

East since 1971.

Monthly Review: www.monthlyreview. org; 146 W. 29th St. #6W, New York, NY

10001; 212-691-2555. Thoughtful social-

ist monthly providing Marxist analyses

of global issues. Important publisher of

progressive books.

The Nation: www.thenation.com; 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003; 212-

209-5400. Weekly. Valuable articles on

world and national events from a pro-

gressive perspective.

New Internationalist: www.newint.org; PO Box 1062, Niagara Falls, NY 14304;

905-946-0407. Colorful monthly maga-

zine on global inequality. Reproducible

for students. Themes include child labor,

global warming, the AIDS crisis, etc.

New Youth Connections: www.youthcomm.org; 224 W. 29th St.,

New York, NY 10001; 212-279-0708.

Monthly newspaper written by high

school students. Also publishes Foster

Care Youth United.

NACLA Report: www.nacla.org; North American Congress on Latin America,

38 Greene St. 4th Floor, New York, NY

10113; 646-613-1440. 6 issues a year.

Detailed analyses on Latin American and

Caribbean issues.

Our Schools / Our Selves: www.policyalternatives.ca; Canadian

Centre for Policy Alternatives, Suite 205,

75 Albert St., Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1P

5E7; 613-563-1341. Covers schools and

global economic trends, environmen-

tal activism, feminism, commercialism,

labor, the arts, and more.

The Progressive: www.progressive.org; 409 East Main St., Madison, WI 53703;

608-257-4626. The Progressive is an

eclectic social justice monthly magazine.

It features columns by Howard Zinn and

Barbara Ehrenreich, and analytical arti-

cles, interviews, reviews, and reports on

activism.

Radical Teacher: www.radicalteacher. org; Univ. of IL Press, Journals Division,

1325 S. Oak St., Champaign, IL 61820.

Offers many valuable articles and teach-

ing ideas from a critical standpoint.

Rethinking Schools: www.rethinkingschools.org; 1001 E.

Keefe Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53212; 800-

669-4192; fax: 414-964-7220. Quarterly

magazine focusing on social justice and

equity. Covers policy issues like No Child

Left Behind, charter schools, and teacher

unionism as well as on exemplary K-12

teaching. (See also Curricula and Teach-

ing Resources.)

Teaching Tolerance: www.teachingtolerance.org; 400 Wash-

ington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104;

334-956-8200. Mailed twice a year to

teachers at no charge, provides accessible

articles and a valuable resource section.

Published by Southern Poverty Law Cen-

ter. Offers free teaching materials on the

Civil Rights Movement and other peace

and social justice subjects.

Z Magazine: www.zmag.org/zmag; 11 issues a year. Covers current events from

a critical perspective. See also Organizations.

http://www.adbusters.org

http://www.colorlines.com

http://www.dollarsandsense.org

http://www.theecologist.org

http://www.fairtest.org/newsletter

http://www.greenteacher.com

http://www.inthesetimes.com

http://www.labornotes.org

http://www.merip.org

http://www.monthlyreview.org

http://www.thenation.com

http://www.newint.org

http://www.youthcomm.org

http://www.nacla.org

http://www.policyalternatives.ca

http://www.progressive.org

http://www.radicalteacher.org

http://www.teachingtolerance.org

http://www.zmag.org/zmag

Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn230

Organizations

See also Teacher Activist Groups, p. 193.

Adbusters Media Foundation: www.

adbusters.org; 1243 West 7th Ave.,

Vancouver, BC, V6H 1B7, Canada; 604-

736-9401. Adbusters describes itself as

“a global network of artists, activists,

writers, pranksters, students, educators

and entrepreneurs who want to advance

the new social activist movement of the

information age.” Adbusters publishes

a magazine of the same name, spon-

sors Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff

Week, produces clever “uncommer-

cials” and seeks to agitate so that folks

“get mad about corporate disinforma-

tion, injustices in the global economy,

and any industry that pollutes our

physical or mental commons.”

American Federation of Teachers:

www.aft.org; 555 New Jersey Ave., NW,

Washington, DC 20001; 202-879-4400.

Resources and information from one

of the national teachers unions.

The Applied Research Center: www.

arc.org; 900 Alice St. Suite 400, Oak-

land, CA 94607; 510-653-3415. ARC

is an important public policy, educa-

tional and research institute whose

work emphasizes issues of race and

social change. Publishes the acclaimed

ColorLines Magazine—see the listing

under Periodicals.

Campaign for a Commerical-Free

Childhood: commericalfreechildhood.

org; 89 South St., #404, Boston, MA

02111; 202-333-9220. A national net-

work that advocates for government

policies that limit corporate market-

ers’ access to children. Promotes the

national screen-free week each April.

Includes fact sheets, sample posters,

holiday guides, and resources.

Center for Community Change: www.

communitychange.org; 1536 U St.

NW, Washington, DC 20009; 202-339-

9300, toll-free: 877-777-1536. Center

for Community Change brings atten-

tion to national issues of poverty and

offers organizing expertise to address

issues ranging from public housing

to immigration to public schools. Its

Education Team supports grassroots

organizing for public school reform

and publishes valuable reports and the

“Education Organizing” newsletter.

Children’s Defense Fund:

www.childrensdefense.org; 25 E St.

NW, Washington, DC 20001; 800-233-

1200. This website offers a great deal

of information about the CDF and its

positions on critical issues affecting

children, especially minorities and the

disabled. Also includes position papers

and background materials on many

topics, and a host of links to other

resources on the web.

Corporate Watch: www.corpwatch.

org; P.O. Box 29198, San Francisco, CA

94129; 415-800-4004. A must-visit site

for activists who want to keep tabs on

the behavior of corporations. Lots of

timely news and impressive archives of

corporate misdeeds.

Economic Policy Institute:

www.epinet.org; 1333 H St. NW, Suite

300, East Tower, Washington, DC

20005; 202-775-8810. The mission

of the Economic Policy Institute is to

provide high-quality research and edu-

cation in order to promote a prosper-

ous, fair, and sustainable economy. The

Institute stresses real-world analysis

and a concern for the living standards

of working people.

Facing History and Ourselves: www.

facing.org; 16 Hurd Rd., Brookline, MA

02445; 617-232-1595. An education

project that targets hatred, prejudice,

racism, and indifference by focusing on

teaching students about the Holocaust.

Resources, workshops, and newsletter.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting:

www.fair.org; 104 W. 27th St., Suite

10B New York, NY 10001; 212-633-

6700. FAIR is a national media watch

group that has been offering well-doc-

umented criticism of media bias and

censorship since 1986. FAIR publishes

the indispensable Extra!, an award-

winning magazine of media criticism,

and regular updates, available via their

listserv. FAIR also produces a weekly

radio program, CounterSpin. An

excellent source to get students think-

ing critically about media coverage of

world events.

Food First/Institute for Food and

Development Policy: www.foodfirst.

org; 398 60th St., Oakland, CA 94618;

510-654-4400. Since its founding in

1975, Food First has published some

of the most useful books on food and

hunger issues. Through their publi-

cations and activism they continue

to offer leadership to the struggle for

reforming the global food system from

the bottom up. Their catalog is online

at their website.

http://www.adbusters.org

http://www.aft.org

http://www.arc.org

http://www.communitychange.org

http://www.childrensdefense.org

http://www.corpwatch.org

http://www.epinet.org

http://www.facing.org

http://www.fair.org

http://www.foodfirst.org

resources 231

Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Net-

work (GLSEN): www.glsen.org; 90

Broad St. 2nd Floor, New York, New

York 10004; 212-727-0135. GLSEN

is the leading national organization

fighting to end antigay bias in K-12

schools. The organization offers many

useful resources. The GLSEN-initiated

student organizing project provides

support to young people as they “form

and lead gay-straight alliances—help-

ing them to change their own school

environments from the inside out.”

Global Exchange:

www.globalexchange.org; 2017 Mis-

sion St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, Cali-

fornia 94110; 415-255-7296. Global

Exchange is a human rights organi-

zation dedicated to promoting envi-

ronmental, political, and social justice

around the world. In the late ’90s it was

perhaps the most important organiza-

tion drawing attention to Nike’s sweat-

shop abuses. Their expansive website is

a valuable student resource for learning

about any important global issue.

Media Education Foundation:

www.mediaed.org; 60 Masonic St.,

Northampton, MA 01060; 800-897-

0089. The Media Education Foundation

is a nonprofit educational organization

devoted to media research and produc-

tion of resources to aid educators and

others in fostering analytical media

literacy. They have produced some

extraordinary, classroom-friendly vid-

eos on critical issues.

Morningside Center for Teaching

Social Responsibility:

www.MorningsideCenter.org; 475

Riverside Dr. Suite 550, New York,

NY 10115; 212-870-3318. Formerly

ESR Metro, has been an outstanding

resource for workshops and teaching

materials about peace, justice, and con-

flict resolution.

National Association for the

Education of Young Children:

www.naeyc.org; 1313 L St. NW,

Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005;

800-424-2460. Publishes Young Chil-

dren and other useful materials.

National Association for Multicul-

tural Education: www.nameorg.org;

2100 M St.. Suite 170-245, Washing-

ton, DC 20037; 206-679-6263. NAME

provides resources and support that

help educators promote “a philosophy

of inclusion that embraces the basic

tenets of cultural pluralism,” and “pro-

moting cultural and ethnic diversity as

a national strength.”

National Center for Fair & Open Test-

ing (FairTest): www.fairtest.org; P.O.

Box 300204, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130;

617-477-9792. The major clearing-

house for information and activism on

countering testing injustice and staying

abreast of No Child Left Behind devel-

opments. See especially FairTest Exam-

iner, a quarterly newsletter on assess-

ment issues.

National Clearinghouse for English

Language Acquisition and Language

Instructional Educational Programs:

www.ncela.gwu.edu; 2011 Eye St. NW,

Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006; 800-

321-6223. News, discussion groups,

and resources for educators working

with linguistically and culturally diverse

students.

National Education Association:

www.nea.org; 1201 16th St. NW, Wash-

ington, DC 20036; 202-833-4000. The

nation’s largest teachers union.

National Women’s History Project:

www.nwhp.org; 3440 Airway Dr. Suite

F, Santa Rosa, CA 95403; 707-636-

2888. The project has a variety of K-12

curriculum materials, and also holds

workshops and training seminars.

New Mexico Media Literacy Project:

www.nmmlp.org; 6400 Wyoming Blvd.

NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109;

505-828-3129. Excellent materials on

critical media literacy teaching.

Public Education Network (PEN):

www.publiceducation.org; 601 Thir-

teenth St. NW, Suite 710 South, Wash-

ington, DC 20005-3808; 202-628-

7460. PEN is a national association

of local education funds (LEFs) and

individuals working to advance public

school reform in low-income com-

munities. PEN seeks to build public

demand and mobilize resources for

quality public education for all chil-

dren. PEN’s weekly emailed “News-

blast” is a widely used resource and is

free upon request.

Rainforest Action Network: http://

ran.org; 221 Pine St., 5th Floor, San

Francisco, CA 94104; 415-398-4404.

RAN works to protect the earth’s

rainforests and support the rights of

their inhabitants through education,

grassroots organizing, and nonviolent

direct action. Theirs is a must-visit

comprehensive website that includes a

wealth of information, including ideas

for activities and activism with stu-

dents, classroom-friendly factsheets,

and links to indigenous rainforest

groups.

Resource Center of the Americas:

www.americas.org; 3019 Minnehaha

Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55406; 612-

276-0788. The Resource Center pro-

vides information and develops pro-

grams that demonstrate connections

between people of Latin America, the

Caribbean, and the United States. Over

the years they have published a great

deal of curriculum in this area. Their

website includes an online catalog of

these and other classroom materials,

along with resources on critical issues

about the Americas.

Sexuality Information and Educa-

tion Council of the United States

(SIECUS): www.siecus.org; SIECUS

NY Office, 90 John St., Suite 704,

New York, NY 10038; 212-819-9770.

http://www.glsen.org

http://www.globalexchange.org

http://www.mediaed.org

http://www.MorningsideCenter.org

http://www.naeyc.org

http://www.nameorg.org

http://www.fairtest.org

http://www.ncela.gwu.edu

http://www.nea.org

http://www.nwhp.org

http://www.nmmlp.org

http://www.publiceducation.org

http://ran.org

http://www.americas.org

http://www.siecus.org

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Rethinking OuR ClassROOms, VOlume 1, new editiOn232

ity education, sexual health, and sex-

ual rights for over 40 years. SIECUS

advocates for the right of all people

to accurate information, comprehen-

sive education about sexuality, and

sexual health services and works to

create a world that ensures social jus-

tice and sexual rights. Excellent source

of research and educational materials,

including K–12 curricula.

Teaching for Change:

www.teachingforchange.org; PO Box

73038, Washington, DC 20056-3038;

800-763-9131. Publisher of excellent

multicultural, social justice teaching

materials, such as the widely used col-

lection, Beyond Heroes and Holidays. A

great resource for social justice teacher

materials is Teaching for Change’s Bus-

boys and Poets Bookstore and website:

bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org.

United for a Fair Economy: www.

faireconomy.org; 29 Winter St., Bos-

ton, MA 02108; 617-423-2148. UFE

provides numerous resources to orga-

nizations and individuals working to

address the widening income and asset

gap in the United States and around

the world. They publish useful training

and curriculum materials, and their

Poetry Credits “Lions,” by Langston Hughes. The

Sweet and Sour Animal Book, Oxford

University Press, New York, 1994.

Reprinted by permission of Harold

Ober Associates Incorporated.

“Ode to My Socks,” by Pablo Neruda.

Reprinted by permission of University

of California Press. Selected Odes of

Pablo Neruda, trans./ed. Margaret Saye

the University of California, Fundación

Pablo Neruda.

“My Hair Is Long,” by Loyen Red-

hawk Gali. Reprinted by permission of

the author.

“Honeybees,” by Paul Fleischman.

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices,

HarperCollins, New York, 1988.

Reprinted by permission of Harper-

Collins Children’s Books.

“what the mirror said,” by Lucille

Clifton. two-headed woman. Copyright

Press. Reprinted by permission of Cur-

tis Brown, Ltd.

“Father Was a Musician,” by Dyan

Watson, student at Jefferson High

School. From Rites of Passage, Jefferson

High School Literary Magazine, Port-

land, Ore., 1990-1991. Reprinted by

permission of the author.

“Forgiving My Father,” by Justin

Morris. From Rites of Passage, Jefferson

High School Literary Magazine, Port-

land, Ore., 1994-95. Reprinted by per-

mission of the author.

“Rayford’s Song,” by Lawson Inada.

Legends from Camp, Coffee House

Press, Minneapolis, 1992. Reprinted by

permission of the author.

“Rebellion Against the North Side,”

by Naomi Shahib Nye. Hugging the

Jukebox, Breitenbush, Portland, 1984.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Funeral of Martin Luther

King, Jr.,” by Nikki Giovanni. Black

Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement

Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permis-

sion of HarperCollins Publishers. Wil-

liam Morrow.

website features an economics library,

research library, and fact sheets.

ZCom/Z Magazine: www.zmag.org; 18

Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543;

508-548-9063. Z Net is one of the most

amazing websites we know of. Forums,

commentaries from around the world,

song lyrics for 530 songs-with-a-con-

science, courses, analyses on global

issues of all kinds. Many precollege stu-

dents might find some of the writing a

bit hard-going, but there is an awful lot

here. Z Magazine is available the old-

fashioned way—see Periodicals.

“At This Point on the Page,” by

William Stafford. The Way It Is: New

& Selected Poems, Graywolf, St. Paul,

Minn., 1998. Reprinted by permission

of Kim Stafford.

“In Memory of Crossing the Colum-

bia,” by Elizabeth Woody. Seven Hands,

Seven Hearts: Prose and Poetry. Eighth

Mountain Press, Portland, Oreg., 1994.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

“To the Young Who Want to Die,” by

Gwendolyn Brooks. The Near Johan-

nesburg Boy. Third World Press, Chi-

cago, 1987. Reprinted with permission.

“Lineage,” by Margaret Walker.

This Is My Century: New and Collected

Walker. Reprinted by permission of the

University of Georgia Press, Athens,

Georgia.

http://www.teachingforchange.org

http://www.faireconomy.org

http://www.zmag.org

index 233

index

a African American xi, 9, 11, 21,

23, 33, 43, 50, 63, 65, 66, 71, 74, 107, 127, 133, 152, 158, 159,160, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 186, 205, 206, 214, 216, 219, 222

anti-racist v, x, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 181, 183, 184, 219

Asian American 218, 227

assessment 66, 88, 190, 192, 201, 230

Au, Wayne 114

b Bigelow, Bill 68, 85, 100, 116, 126,

130, 133, 216

black 6, 10, 11, 20, 21, 23, 51, 87, 109, 127, 134, 139, 141, 143, 144, 156, 158, 159, 160, 175, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 201, 204, 214, 216, 217, 218, 223. See also African American.

Bravo, Ellen 118

Brooks, Gwendolyn 186

Bruchac, Joseph 175

“Building Community from Chaos” 47

C Calderón, Héctor 161

Capellaro, Catherine 161

cartoons 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 30, 102, 115, 218

“Celebrating the Joy in Daily Events” 12

“Celebrating the Student’s Voice” 124

Central America 98, 105, 131

“The Challenge of Classroom Disci- pline” 41

child labor 80, 81, 226, 228

Childs, S. J. 141

Christensen, Linda 3, 12, 47, 53, 124, 126, 146, 154, 155, 195 ,212, 216

Civil Rights Movement 10, 81, 169, 171, 215, 226, 228

Clark, L. C. 151

class v, x, xi, 3, 6, 17, 47, 48, 63, 67, 70, 74, 75, 82, 86, 87, 103, 128, 131, 137, 140, 145, 154, 157, 179, 183, 184, 188, 189, 190, 193, 221, 226

Clifton, Lucille 76

Cloues, Rachel 97

Colón, Jesús 113

“Coping with TV: Some Lesson Ideas” 93

Council on Interracial Books for Chil- dren 10

Cowhey, Mary 173

“Creating Classrooms for Equity and Social Justice” x

critical literacy 53, 116

D “The Day Sondra Took Over” 109

Dean, Jana 57

Delpit, Lisa 158

dialogue journal 4, 6, 48, 50

Diamond, Norm 100

disability 82, 201

discipline 66, 67, 110, 112, 192

“Discipline: No Quick Fix” 53

e early childhood 8, 20, 25, 36, 78, 167,

219

economics 58, 101, 162, 164, 221, 226, 227, 228, 231

elementary v, 16, 28, 41, 42, 52, 6 3 , 6 7 , 7 2 , 9 5 , 1 1 7 , 1 5 3 , 168, 173, 174, 195, 223

Ellwood, Cynthia M. 109

English as a second language 50, 198, 199, 206, 207, 209

“Equity Claims for NCLB Don’t Pass the Test” 200

“Expectations and ‘At-Risk’ Children” 151

F “Father Was a Musician” 83

Fleischman, Paul 55

“Flirting vs. Sexual Harassment” 121

“Food Is Not for Play” 167

”Forgiving My Father” 35

“The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.” 144

g Gali, Loyen Redhawk 18

games 15, 16, 21, 38, 39, 48, 50, 52, 68, 78, 79, 88, 94, 155, 223

gender x, 6, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 47, 48, 50, 51, 75, 94, 107, 115, 118, 119, 124, 141, 142, 143, 145, 164, 173, 174, 183, 184, 188, 190, 197, 213, 222, 223

“Getting Off the Track” 68

Giovanni, Nikki 144

Gordon, Leonore 95

Gutstein, Eric 106

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h “Haiku and Hiroshima” 114

Hannon, Jean 167

“Heather’s Moms Got Married” 173

“Helping Students Deal with Anger” 43

Hersh, Susan 103

high school 28, 54, 68, 74, 75, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 95, 102, 106, 111, 116, 117, 118, 120, 132, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140, 176, 185, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 203, 204, 206, 209, 212, 215, 218, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228

Hilliard III, Asa G. 152

history x, 4, 22, 24, 29, 31, 33, 34, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 84, 88, 95, 100, 116, 124, 126, 131, 132, 133, 139, 140, 142, 145, 156, 161, 162, 166, 169, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 196, 199, 206, 208, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227

“Holding Nyla” 25

homophobia 47, 77, 95, 96, 156, 217, 218

“Honeybees” 55

“How to Do Read-Arounds” 213

Hughes, Langston 2

i “I Won’t Learn from You!” 165

immigrants 81, 98, 108, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140, 182, 206, 207, 208, 209, 216, 220, 221

immigration v, 50, 116, 133, 206, 208, 210, 221, 222, 224, 229

“In Memory of Crossing the Colum- bia” 172

Inada, Lawson 125

interior monologues 50, 127, 131, 216

k Karp, Stan 188, 200

kindergarten 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 37, 81, 93, 158, 160, 167

Kissinger, Katie 25

Knudson, Ryan 206

Kohl, Herbert 165, 168

l language arts 99, 162, 195, 197,

198, 199, 224, 227

“Language Prison” 155

Latino(a) 11, 21, 23, 24, 43, 86, 106, 107, 161, 166, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210

“Learning from Worms” 97

Lee, Enid 15

Levie, Al 206

“Lineage” 205

“Lions” 2

“Little Things Are Big” 113

m math 21, 29, 30, 33, 38, 63, 64,

65, 66, 67, 87, 93, 99, 103, 106, 107, 108, 116, 130, 152, 161, 162, 195, 204, 226, 227

“Math, SATs, and Racial Profiling” 106

Meier, Terry 203

Mexican War 179, 180

middle school 49, 58, 62, 63, 64, 67, 106, 215, 218, 223

military v, x, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 115, 129, 166, 179, 180, 215, 222, 227

Miller, Larry 118

Miner, Barbara 15, 179

Morris, Justin 35

“My Dirty Little Secret” 146

“My Hair Is Long” 18

“My Mom’s Job Is Important” 80

n Native American 5, 32, 72, 79,

126, 175, 176, 177, 178, 220, 225

Neruda, Pablo 13

No Child Left Behind v, 86, 91, 189, 195, 200, 228, 230

Nye, Naomi Shihab 194

O “Oda a los calcetines” 13

“Ode to My Socks” 13

“The Organic Goodie Simulation” 100

Osinsky, Marcie 84

P Pelo, Ann 36

Peterson, Bob 28, 41, 93, 103, 116

“Playing with Gender” 36

poems

“At This Point on the Page” 150

“Father Was a Musician” 83

“Forgiving My Father” 35

“The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.” 144

index 235

“grabbing sand” 115

“Honeybees” 55

“In Memory of Crossing the Colum- bia” 172

“Language Prison” 155

“Lineage” 205

“Lions” 2

“Little children scream” 115

“looking for her mother” 115

“My Hair Is Long” 18

“My Street at Night” 29

“Oda a los calcetines” 13

“Ode to My Socks” 13

“Rayford’s Song” 125

“Reality” 115

“Rebellion Against the North Side” 194

“red sky floats above” 115

“screams the sound of souls” 115

“To My People with Retinitis Pig- mentosa” 51

“To the Young Who Want to Die” 186

“Two Women” 128

“what the mirror said” 76

poetry 12, 30, 33, 34, 56, 69, 70, 115, 124, 149, 150, 157, 176, 177, 186, 196, 197, 205, 212, 213, 214, 221, 223, 225, 226, 227

“Poetry Teaching Guide” 212

“The Politics of Children’s Literature” 168

“Promoting Social Imagination Through Interior Monologues” 126

R race iv, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 21, 22,

23, 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 47, 50, 51, 67, 74, 75, 86, 94, 107, 115, 132, 140, 145, 160, 164, 169, 181, 182, 183, 184, 188, 189, 190, 206, 213, 214, 224, 228, 229

“Race and Respect Among Young Children” 20

racism 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 47, 63, 75, 77, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 139, 153, 166, 168, 169, 170, 183, 188, 191, 197, 198, 199, 207, 209, 216, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229

“Rayford’s Song” 125

read-arounds 12, 124, 147

“Rebellion Against the North Side” 194

resource lists

Books for Young People 219

Curricula and Teaching Resources 224

Organizations 229

Periodicals 228

Teacher Activist Groups 193

Videos 215

“Rethinking ‘The Three Little Pigs’” 8

role plays x, 23, 50, 68, 70, 119, 120, 130, 131, 132, 196, 197, 225, 226

“Role Plays: Show, Don’t Tell” 130

s Salas, Kelley Dawson 43

“‘Salt of the Earth’ Grounds Students in Hope” 141

science v, x, 21, 29, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 86, 97, 99, 108, 116, 130, 134, 161, 179, 196, 222

“Seeing Color” 158

segregation 168, 169, 170, 171, 181, 199, 223

sexism 7, 10, 17, 38, 63, 75, 77, 183, 191, 226, 227

sexual harassment viii, 118, 121, 123

sexuality 174, 231

Sjostrom, Lisa 121

slavery 24, 31, 32, 70, 72, 73, 117, 124, 130, 131, 162, 179, 181, 182, 183, 218, 222, 223

social studies x, 30, 33, 62, 68, 75, 90, 92, 95, 102, 103, 116, 117, 130, 132, 135, 198, 199, 224, 227

“Songs That Promote Justice” 33

Stein, Nan 121

Strawhun, Beatriz T. Font 63

“Students as Textbook Detectives” 116

“Students Mobilize for Immigrant Rights” 206

“Students Use Math to Confront Overcrowding” 63

t “Taking Multicultural, Anti-Racist

Education Seriously” 15

“Teachers and Cultural Styles” 152

“Teachers Teaching Teachers” 195

“Teaching About Global Warming in Truck Country” 57

“Teaching for Social Justice” 28

“Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?” 154

television 7, 29, 31, 41, 93, 94, 98, 153, 180, 230

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“10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books for Racism and Sexism” 10

Tenorio, Rita 20

testing viii, 107, 133, 200, 204, 224, 228, 230

“Testing, Tracking, and Toeing the Line” 133

“There’s More to Heroes Than He- Man” 84

“Thoughts on Teaching Native Ameri- can Literature” 175

“To the Young Who Want to Die” 186

tracking xi, 19, 22, 42, 48, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 133, 134, 135, 137, 157, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 224

Turner, Erin E. 63

“Two Women” 128

u “Unlearning the Myths That Bind

Us” 3

“Using Pictures to Combat Bias” 78

V videos 215

“Video Teaching Strategies” 216

Vietnam War 216

violence xi, 4, 7, 9, 29, 30, 31, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 63, 69, 70, 94, 105, 123, 144, 188, 217, 218, 220, 222

w Walker, Margaret 205

war v, 17, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92, 114, 116, 117, 126, 127, 139, 179, 180, 182, 202, 215, 216, 220, 223, 227

Watson, Dyan 83

“What Can Teachers Do About Sexual Harassment?” 118

“What Do We Say When We Hear ‘Faggot’?” 95

“what the mirror said” 76

“When Small Is Beautiful” 161

“Why Standardized Tests Are Bad” 203

“Why Students Should Study History” 179

“Why We Need to Go Beyond the Classroom” 188

Witt, Matt 80

Wolpert, Ellen 8, 78

Woody, Elizabeth 172

“World Poverty and World Resources” 103

Z Zinn, Howard 179, 182, 218

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• Two years: $29.95 (Save $17.65 off cover price!)

• One year: $19.95 (Save $3.85 off cover price!)

See our website for combined digital/print subscription options.

Print subscriptions to Canada and Mexico add $5 per year. Other international print subscriptions add $10 per year.

Use our special discount coupon in the back!