To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible — and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people — must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.
- James Baldwin, “A Talk to…
Book Review — How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
“The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division.” — Jason Stanley
As a high school history teacher, I studied fascism before, most commonly in the context of the most horrific events of the 20th century — the Armenian genocide during World War I, the genocide of up to two million Cambodian citizens at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and, the most recognized example, the Nazi Holocaust.
I learned and, for the most part, until recently, taught about these incidents as though they were historical and social aberrations. …
I am terrified of the moral apathy, the death of the heart that is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. And this means they have become, in themselves, moral monsters.” — James Baldwin
I finished reading Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. and began writing this essay in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake and the fog of the Republican National Convention. That was over six weeks ago. Since then the onslaught of attacks…
I want to tell a story about educators in the time of COVID. It is a simple story about 386 clear plastic bags, filled with the hope and promise of education as community. It is the story of my school, ARISE High School, in Oakland, California — and it is the story of myriad schools and educators around the world building bridges toward learning with the tools they have. From a distance. But close to the heart.
When my non-educator friends and family ask me how my school is doing, I try to paint an image that is as honest…
It is all grey
When it comes to school discipline, very little is black and white. Grey pervades like clouds in a November sky. The sneaky and pernicious trick of punitive school discipline policies is that they make us believe that discipline can be simplified into right and wrong, victim and perpetrator, a flatland formed of rules and progressive behavior management systems where the correct response can be easily located on a chart somewhere on the wall or in the ed. code. They provide responses to student behavior that are simplistic and rigid. …
Trevor Gardner
Trevor is a teacher/school leader focused on restorative justice and equity, and the author of Discipline Over Punishment and Leading in the Belly of the Beast.
