One central aspect of a healthy democracy is the practice of democratic dissent. For the first time in many years, dissent is being widely practiced in town hall meetings and on street corners across the United States. Despite this presence, dissent is often suppressed or omitted in the prescribed, tested, hidden, and external curriculum of US…

In this essay, I examine the underlying assumptions of one secondary English teacher, Sara, who professes to teach for social justice, in an urban school. My primary concern arises from a need to clarify what it means to teach for social justice in specific locations, and to look closely at what assumptions teachers have as they teach secondary…