In my first Teaching US History post, I spoke about the concept of teaching students to “see both”–to realize that both the good and bad are tangled up in almost every topic in history or current event we study. I wrote:  Seeing both starts with us as educators. Regardless of our own political and historical…

Over the summer, I attended a professional development experience called the White Responsibility Teach-In. At this multi-day workshop, we heard from about a dozen leaders in the fields of education and anti-racism, but no voice was louder and bolder than that of Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race? One quote…

In one of the first assignments of the year, I asked my new eleventh grade American Studies students to “write ~2 pages on what America you live in.” The only other guidance I gave them was, “Some things you may think about are your location, citizenship, religion, race, class, gender, etc.” and “There is no…

If you’ve been following my posts at all this year, you likely have a good sense of who I am and what I value as an educator. In my first post, I advocated three hundred sixty degree understand of historical events and the cultivation of “healthy critical” students. I’ve promoted authenticity, through crafting thoughtful assessments…

I just wrapped up a week-long trip to Morocco with my senior Global Studies students. After a fall term of exploring what globalization is and a winter term case studying a country–this year, Morocco–the course is predicated on the idea that you can not even begin to grasp the inner workings of a nation-state without…

“…the social world is always a part of the classroom, that classrooms themselves are social spaces and essentially microcosms of the world outside their wall. All learning, then, happens in a social context because we are learning with and from one another.” –Joshua R. Eyler, How Humans Learn, p. 66 In the above passage, Eyler…

“Ms. Cotton, writing my paper was actually interesting,” my student said, with an air of incredulity, as she entered my classroom for our final meeting of the term. “Well, that was the whole point,” was my reply. Students have become accustomed to viewing school as a “grind,” days of sitting in class, taking notes, cramming…