¡Hola a todos! I hope you enjoy this week’s resources.
– Check out Rethinking School’s New way of teaching Columbus: Putting him on trial for murder. “‘It begins on the premise that there’s this monstrous crime in the years after 1492 when perhaps as many as 3 million or more Taínos on the island of Hispaniola lost their lives,’ says Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools and the co-director of the Zinn Education Project. ‘It asks students to wrestle with the responsibility in this.’
— Also from Rethinking Schools: there’s a second edition of one of our favorite books: Reading, Writing, and Rising Up by Linda Christensen. To learn more about what prompted this re-release and its importance for education today, read this interview with Christensen “on the second edition…what role the classroom played in revision, and what needs to change in how we teach.”
– Thanks to an interesting initiative in Washington, DC, we can gain a quick glimpse into how third graders are coping with and processing current issues around the world. Check out how The World According to Washington’s Third-Graders to hear how the students “were generous, thoughtful and eager to talk about everything under the sun: personal experiences with racism, environmental policy, whether it’s a good idea to clone dinosaurs.” It’s a good reminder that young children think deeply about the same issues as adults.
–If you get a chance, you should read why when students are traumatized, teachers are too. One teacher expresses, “When you’re learning to be a teacher, you think it’s just about lesson plans, curriculum, and seating charts. I was blindsided by the emotional aspect of teaching—I didn’t know how to handle it.”
— There is a soft bigotry of having to change your name. “… There’s a difference between a name you can choose for yourself and a name that’s given to you because other people can’t be bothered with pronouncing it, even if the same sounds exist in the English tongue.”
-Lastly, here is a list of books to help kids understand the fight for racial equality, with an emphasis on the history of the US. Thanks to Penguin House for putting together these “resources to help us move beyond tokens and icons to a deeper understanding of our history and its legacy, toward our own marches for liberty and justice for all.
Abrazos,
Alin Badillo
Image: A Splash of Color. Reprinted from Flickr username Tanguy Domenge under CC©.
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