Each month, the Human Restoration Project chooses books that we believe are paramount for progressive educators to read. These are not necessarily categorized or numbered by importance, relevance to a certain topic, or release date. Instead, these are the books we’ve read recently to inform our own practice and publications.

When Nick and I came across this quote, we knew we had to learn about Haim Ginott. Ginott, a child psychologist and bestselling author, wrote a series of books in the ’60s and ’70s on parenting and teaching. …

Each month, the Human Restoration Project chooses books that we believe are paramount for progressive educators to read. These are not necessarily categorized or numbered by importance, relevance to a certain topic, or release date. Instead, these are the books we’ve read recently to inform our own practice and publications.

Manufacturing Happy Citizens: How the Science and Industry of Happiness Control Our Lives by Edgar Cabanas & Eva Illouz provides a convincing condemnation of “positive psychology”, the relatively recent scientific study of happiness. …

‘You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you’re at war and might get your head blown off any second.’

‘I more than resent it, sir. I’m absolutely incensed.’

‘You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate.’

‘Consciously, sir, consciously,’ Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. ‘I hate them consciously.’

‘You’re antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you…

Each month, the Human Restoration Project chooses books that we believe are paramount for progressive educators to read. These are not necessarily categorized or numbered by importance, relevance to a certain topic, or release date. Instead, these are the books we’ve read recently to inform our own practice and publications.

Published by the University of Pittsburgh, Radical Teacher is a self-described socialist, feminist, and anti-racist journal founded in 1975. Since 2013, the entire publication is accessible for free online, double peer-reviewed, and filled with in-depth articles. Radical Teacher offers a vast repository of information on incorporating social justice in K-college…

What does it mean to instill a liberatory pedagogy?

This is a recap of our asynchronous professional development session, where we worked as a cohort to develop actions and solutions for equitable practices in our classrooms. Instead of focusing on specific teaching strategies (e.g. learning student names, offering “high fives”, using a certain text), we spoke about specific actions to dismantle and transform systems in education. This session can be used as an anchor for future development in liberatory pedagogy. Feel free to complete the activities yourself!

This past week, Human Restoration Project has had the honor of presenting this workshop on ungrading and liberatory pedagogy at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020. Here’s an overview of the activities we covered, what we learned, and resources to share!

Introduction: What Does it Mean to Lead a Liberatory, Feedback-Driven Classroom? (by Nick Covington)

“Unprecedented” is a word that somehow manages to overstate and diminish every era, and its overuse in the last five years — let alone the last five months — should be enough for us to unanimously agree to excise this basically useless descriptor. To describe each moment of our continuously unfolding present as unprecedented is often a meaningless call to inaction…

(This post has been updated to reflect the full text of our recent podcast episode featuring this article.)

We’ll start with just acknowledging that COVID is a serious issue. Almost all school districts in the United States closed during mid-March. Using March 17th as an example, at that point there were 6,300 cases total in the US, with 108 deaths.

The previous day, there were 4,500 cases and 88 deaths. That’s a 40% increase in cases and 22% increase in deaths in one day. In response, on March 17th we saw the closure of schools from Oklahoma to Ohio.

As…

Each month, the Human Restoration Project chooses books that we believe are paramount for progressive educators to read. These are not necessarily categorized or numbered by importance, relevance to a certain topic, or release date. Instead, these are the books we’ve read recently to inform our own practice and publications.

“You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones!” And 18 Other Myths About Teachers, Teachers’ Unions, and Public Education by William Ayers, Crystal Laura, and Rick Ayers provides a quick-to-understand, ready-to-read breakdown of the common assaults against public education and its workers. At the moment, I find myself overwhelmed with everything going…