pedagogies

Who Gets to Be on the Bus?: Tracing Conceptions of Race in and around The Magic School Bus from 1986 to 2018 (2021)

Author critiques MSB for its superficial focus on multiculturalism with whiteness as the dominant frame. Even though the visual representations of MSB characters in the Netflix reboot have changed, the cultural stereotypes have stagnated since the 1980s. Read more

James Baldwin's Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil (2017)

Clint Smith is inspired by James Baldwin's 'A Talk to Teachers' (1963) to become political in his high school English classroom in the aftermath of the Charlottesville shooting in 2017. The incident provoked the...Read more

Lesson Plan: “The Black Scientific Renaissance of the 1970s-90s:” African American Scientists at Bell Laboratories

This lesson plan is downloaded from the American Institute of Physics' (AIP) Center for the History of Physics to teach about the 1980s and 1990s' "Black renaissance" in Bell Labs, stimulated by the Bell Labs’ Cooperative Research Fellowship Program. Read more

The Role of Genre in a Text: Reading through the Waterworks (2004)

Authors discuss the interplay of different genres in the children's book The Magic School Bus: At the Waterworks (1996) with Ms. Frizzle as their science teacher. Read more

Strife in the Schools: Education Dept. Logs Record Number of Discrimination Complaints

"The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights logged a record number of discrimination complaints in the past year". Journalist Erica L. Green writes about a number of school districts in the U.S. where "race-conscious" pedagogy and curricula has come under fire from conservative parents...Read more

Recognizing Ms. Frizzle's Own Magic (2017)

A science communicator remains inspired by Ms. Frizzle's motto of "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!". Read more

Subscribe to pedagogies