Tim Swinehart

Tim Swinehart teaches at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and writes regularly for Rethinking Schools magazine, including “‘Don’t Take Our Voices Away’: A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change.”

All Content By This Author

A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis

Resource Types: Teaching Guides

Page Length: 400

Teaching Guide. Edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools. 2014. 400 pages.
Articles, student readings, and teaching activities to understand environmental problems and imagine solutions.

Stealing and Selling Nature: Why We Need to Reclaim “the Commons” in the Curriculum

By Tim Swinehart

From the Diggers of the 1600s in England to current-day female farmers in India, the value of sharing space for the benefit of the community transcends nations. However the "commons" are buried in chapters that champion industrial capitalism’s “progress” and “innovation."

Hurricane Sandy, and the superstorms that will follow, are not just acts of nature — they are products of a massive theft of the atmospheric commons shared by all life on the planet. Every dollar of profit made by fossil fuel companies relies on polluting our shared atmosphere with harmful greenhouse gases, stealing what belongs to us all. But if we don’t teach students the history of the commons, they’ll have a hard time recognizing what — and who — is responsible for today’s climate crisis.

‘Don’t Take Our Voices Away’: A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change

Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)

Page Length: 16

Teaching Activity. By Julie Treick O’Neill and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
A role play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change asks students to develop a list of demands to present to the rest of the world at a climate change meeting.