By Rory Varrato Doctoral candidate Philosophy and Education We must confront a perhaps unsettling fact: Donald Trump may be our opponent, but he is not our true enemy. Indeed, if we set our sights on Trump, we will surely fail. We will alienate his supporters — most of whom, as victims of our common foe,… Read More Rediscovering Democracy in America

EDITORS NOTE:  On November 21, Columbia University announced a plan to provide undocumented students with sanctuary and financial assistance in light of expected restrictions on immigration. Because Columbia and Teachers College are distinct entities in certain legal and financial domains, this announcement most likely does not currently apply to Teachers College. Dear President Susan Fuhrman… Read More Dear President Susan Fuhrman and Provost Tom James,

Safe spaces are, at their core, intentional spaces. And since when has intentionality of expression run in contradiction to free speech and academic thought? I’d argue that the opposite is true, that intentionality is an essential element to successful academic discourse and dialectic.… Read More Safe Spaces, Brave Steps

Kids need to learn and learning happens in School. Who could question such basic logic? But this is exactly what Akilah S. Richards, a Jamaican speaker, writer, entrepreneur and advocate of Unschooling, is proposing: let’s rethink the equation, can Education occur outside of institutional settings? If so, do we need schools at all?… Read More Can Unschooling Change the Idea of School

 By Christina Amendola The door shuffles open; and that’s when I first feel the words explode. Littered in pet- name-pronouns and adjectives, they are separate: gleaming and sparkling. They are the only hope at designating, in a sea of action and crippled adverbs. I know immediately that my only hope at survival is to make a… Read More The Words That were Always Ours

By Alena Cybart-Persenaire The longer I teach, the more challenging it becomes—for students. When I first started student teaching as a graduate student at TC in the English Education department, my high school students in the Bronx were nearly as old as my 21-year-old self. Some had been incarcerated or had given birth, and others… Read More Telling the Truth: How the Practice of High School Journalism Transitions Marginalized Youth to Future Opportunities

  By Josh Weiner I started street performing full-time after being arrested and expelled from college. In 1991, I was involved in a protest—a campus sit-in demanding university multicultural programs and more of these scholarships. After being arrested, my full student scholarship was revoked, and I returned to my hometown, NYC. It seemed like a good cause. Since then, I have… Read More Changing the Space: A Street Performing Routine, “Re-presenting the Tea”

I remember a child I taught years ago, as a preschool teacher of two-year olds. He was wonderfully social. He spoke at such lengths that he would literally fall asleep mid-sentence at naptime. Whether a teacher would sit and listen, or he was left with just himself for company, we would hear his words muddle as they eventually became breaths.… Read More More Than Between Education: Reflecting on Transitions in the Classroom