Trying to reconcile education and the world we currently inhabit has led one teacher to shift the focus of his teaching to nurturing active participants in a diverse democracy.
This former high school history teacher now realizes that she failed her students by sticking to the subject matter and neglecting what’s most important about education. She’s worried her fellow educators might be failing too.
Dr. Shantá R. Robinson holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and an M.A. in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She earned her Ph.D. in educational studies at the University of Michigan, where she specialized in the sociology of education; qualitative methodologies; and issues of race, class and access in secondary schooling. She began her professional career as a high school history teacher in Charlotte. Robinson’s research interests include the role of social identity in marginalized students’ educational
Our democracy desperately needs diverse voices to engage in mature dialogue if we are to ever find compassionate solutions to our common problems. Schools must be where young people learn to do this.
T. Elijah Hawkes has been a public school principal for 13 years. He is currently principal at Randolph Union, in Randolph, Vermont. He was founding principal of the James Baldwin School in New York City. His writings about adolescence, public school and democracy have appeared in the Huffington Post, Education Week, Kappan, Schools: Studies in Education, and in two books published by Rethinking Schools: The New Teacher Book and Rethinking Sexism, Gender and Sexuality. You can follow him on Twitter @ElijahHawkes.
After being asked to advocate for a student, this teacher realizes a gap in her work: the importance of representation and empathy for the LGBT students in her school’s community. And she takes action.
Jessyca is an English teacher at Carman-Ainsworth High School in Flint, Michigan, who has used her voice and her story to inspire students and move them to action. Her students have been inspired to use creative expression to channel their responses to multiple social issues. In 2017, her students developed a collaboration with students in Lansing, Michigan, finding the power of their collective voices to advocate for clean water during the Flint water crisis. Along with teaching a course on social activism and research, she is a soccer coach at CAHS and has written two books, Simply: A