Stories

Florida’s book bans—targeting everything from math books to Everywhere Babies—reveal the absurdity and hypocrisy of the culture wars. If “inappropriate” content is really the issue, it’s time to take a hard look at the filth, violence, and sexual innuendos hiding in plain sight inside the classroom’s most sacred cow: William Shakespeare.

When I was a kid, my mother would tell me, “One monkey don’t stop no show!” 

I was in kindergarten—snaggle-toothed, bright-eyed, and brown-skinned, with a head full of knocker-balls that clacked like high heels when I walked. Her words cut through the sound of my sobbing to stop the tears in my throat. 

Florida’s rejection of math textbooks is about a lot more than critical race theory.

Rather than read Hamlet with my AP English Literature and Composition students as has traditionally been the case, I suggested to this year’s class that we read something different—something local, current, and engaging. We ended the first semester reading Oakland-born Indigenous author Tommy Orange’s novel “There There,” set in the Bay Area and focused on a cast of Indigenous characters wrestling with their history and identity.

When my colleagues and I asked a group of pre-service teachers to graph and make a claim about data, the response we got surprised us.

“Data exploration is completely new to me,” said a college junior studying to become a K-6 teacher.

It immediately became clear we needed to back up a few steps. How can we expect our future teachers to teach their future students data skills they themselves never learned?

The recent announcement by the US Department of Education to propose radical changes to the process by which charter schools must follow to open new schools is a dismal reminder of our education system’s entrenchment of the status quo.

When brand-new kindergartners arrive at any Uncommon elementary school, one of the first chants they learn is, “I love math and math loves me! It’s as easy as 1,2,3! Just watch and you will see!” It’s the beginning of what their teachers hope will be a lifelong love affair with math.

This Eighth Grader Led Her School to Build an Anti-Racist Library

In this moment, shaped by both the global pandemic and enduring racial inequities, excellent educational opportunities that communities are rightly demandi