Category: Education

The spring issue of Rethinking Schools has a cover story that features one union’s journey toward disability justice and has a special “Educators Speak Out” section uplifting the voices of special education teachers, students, and parents.

The issue’s editorial focuses on the centennial of the Tulsa Massacre, and argues for reparations.

Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian also has an obituary of the late Karen Lewis, and editor Linda Christensen has an important article about teaching the “unbound” essay.

The labor writer Sarah Jaffe writes about how some social justice teachers have reinvented the pandemic classroom and Jessica Lovaas and Adam Sanchez describe how they teach a people’s history of the March on Washington.

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May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Check out these great book recommendations from YES! Magazine editor, Valerie Schloredt that, as she states, “bring the Asian American experience out of the margins.” In memoir and nonfiction, these authors navigate big themes and resist stereotypes. 

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Reviewed by Makai Kellogg

Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race is the book we’ve been waiting for! The team (Megan Madison, Jessica Ralli, and Isabel Roxas) did an incredible thing: they explained race and racism to young children. Not only did they do it in a few pages of a board book, but they also provided guidance to the adults who will read it to children. As soon as you open the book, the reader is greeted with colorful representations of the authors and illustrator, as well as a note on the purpose and function of the book. 

The last few pages provide developmental insight by using direct language to explain the “why and how” of having conversations about race, race-related observations, family diversity, identity terms, stereotypes, as well as prejudice, race, racism, empowerment, and activism.

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The latest edition of HRER highlights new efforts to develop a sustainable community of global human rights education research. Human rights education (HRE) developed in many forms as a field of practice in the second half of the twentieth century, promoted by non-governmental organizations, various UN initiatives, and other intergovernmental organizations, such as the Council of Europe. The first purpose of HRE was to promote human rights as a ‘common language of humanity’, as expressed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (UN, 1998). The UN Secretary-General’s address made nearly 50 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948), celebrated the lives of human rights leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jnr., for whom a guiding principle of struggle was non-violence.

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The Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton will convene the 2021 Social Practice of Human Rights Conference in December 2021 and will focus on the challenges and opportunities the pandemic has created for human rights advocacy. 

The Call for Proposals states that submissions are welcome on the following:

• New or refined tools, methods, and strategies for advocacy emerging during the pandemic, including in transnational advocacy and international institutions;
• Confronting historical legacies of abuse in moments of flux and transition, including reshaping public spaces (eg. memorials, schools) to advance justice;
• New forms of public-private partnerships in human rights and corporate-sector advocacy, including by labor and employee movements; and
• The emergence of intersectional advocacy groups, movements, and networks building relationships across borders and connecting issue areas that leverage this particular political moment.

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2021

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Educating for American Democracy (EAD) invites students to submit their original artwork to their K-12 Student Design Challenge Contest to illustrate their interpretation of EAD’s Roadmap for a chance to win a cash prize of up to $350. 

There are Five Design Challenges that will require students and educators to grapple with complex questions in civics and history—those that most would agree do not have a clear or right answer. While deep classroom conversations on the Five Design Challenges included in the Roadmap will require scaffolding and the support of carefully chosen content and instruction, we think students will have ideas or personal experiences that speak to these Design Challenges and want to offer them the ability to create original artwork to share their ideas for a chance to win a cash prize and have their original artwork featured on the Educating for American Democracy website.

Application Deadline: May 31, 2021

>> Learn more and submit artwork