In 14 minutes, social studies and ELA educators can take advantage of a haunting new titled Ellis about the buildings on the island between New York and New Jersey. Ellis Island served as a United States immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The 2015 film is now available on Youtube and stars Robert De Niro. The setting […]
Social Justice
Teaching Children Living in Poverty
Children who live in http://theeducatorsroom.com/2013/05/working-in-a-high-poverty-environment/poverty need additional support when they attend school. According to a recent article in the Washington Post a majority of public school students are living in poverty. This is based on statistics from the 2013-2014 school year which showed that the number of students receiving free or reduced lunch is now […]
What Do You Do When The Teacher Is The Bully?
by:John Sucich Early in my teaching career, I was told by an administrator that she had asked one of my students how he would describe me. “Strict,” was the student’s reply. It was all very matter-of-fact. The administrator was just letting me know, not sending me any kind of message. And the student had me […]
A Sit Down with BadAss Teachers
Some of the most vocal teachers today are self-professed Badass Teachers, or BATs for short. They’re full of opinions with action to match. We at TER sat down with Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director and Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. Executive Director to learn more about this movement. Jake Miller, The Educator’s Room: How did Badass Teachers […]
Race and Your School: Why Educators Must Read Between the World and Me
Why Educators Must Read ‘Between the World and Me’ “No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of ‘personal responsibility’ in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility. The point of this language of ‘intention’ and ‘personal responsibility’ is broad exoneration. Mistakes […]
Terror, Terrorism, and the Teaching of Social Studies
“We are not used to live with such bewildering uncertainty” wrote Jessica Stern in a New York Times editorial How Terror Hardens Us on Sunday (12/6/15) after the San Bernardino, California, shootings. Stern, an adult, was writing about adults collectively when she used the pronoun”we.” That same bewildering uncertainty also confronts our children, our students in schools. That bewildering uncertainty is happening at […]
Why NYC Students Seeing 'Hamilton' Is a Big Deal
On October 27th, a joint collaboration of The Rockefeller Foundation, The Gilder Lehrman Foundation, producer Jeffrey Seller, creator (and star) Lin-Manuel Miranda, and New York City public schools announced that they will provide a means for more than 20,000 eleventh graders to not just watch Hamilton, the hottest, most ground-breaking musical in decades – but to actually go […]
Police, Black Students, and Teachers
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the video clip of Ben Fields, Richland County (SC) school resource officer, where he picked up a young lady (who was black) and pulled her from her chair. I’ve done so because it astounds me that this situation occurred in our schools, but what also stuns […]