Rethinking Schools publishes some of the best educational materials for teachers who want to open their students’ eyes to the world around them.
One of their most recent publications is titled Teaching for Black Lives. This volume of essays, teacher experiences, and lesson ideas is essential reading for all teachers at this moment in our history. It lays out the the bias in textbooks, in disciplinary actions, and in how schools are organized and administered.
The book is divided into five sections, each of which deals with major issues that have led us to this moment of protest and renewed awareness of the efforts we must make to forge a just society in the face of open-bias and hate.
The sections are:
- Making Black Lives Matter in Our Schools
- Enslavement, Civil Rights, and Black Liberation
- Gentrification, Displacement and Anti-Blackness
- Discipline, the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and Mass Incarceration
- Teaching Blackness, Loving Blackness, and Exploring Identity
Here is a excerpt from the introduction the the book:
Teaching for Black Lives grows directly out of the movement for Black lives. We recognize that anti-Black racism constructs Black people, and Blackness generally, as not counting as human life. The chapters here in Teaching for Black Lives push back directly against this construction by not only providing educators with critical perspectives on the role of schools in perpetuating anti-Blackness, but also by offering educators concrete examples of what it looks like to humanize Black people in curriculum, teaching, and policy. Throughout the book, we demonstrate how teachers can connect the curriculum to young people’s lives and root their concerns and daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms are set up. We also highlight the hope and beauty of student activism and collective action.
For more information, free curriculum plans, and a link to buy the book, visit
Teaching for Black Lives
