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Belle Chesler

Belle Chesler is a visual arts teacher in Beaverton, Oregon.

Articles by this author

8th Grade Girl on Zoom With Teacher, Wellsville, New York. (Photo: Barrie Fanton/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

How One Teacher and Her Students Dealt With a World Unraveling Amid Smoke and Death

The pandemic served as a stark reminder of at least two things: that the nuclear family is not enough and that schools can't be its sole safety net.

Belle Chesler · Jun 1, 2021

A kid wears a face mask and a backpack in Kips Bay as the city continues Phase 4 of re-opening following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus on August 15, 2020 in New York City. (Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images)

The “Great” Reopening

It’s as if they want America's schools to fail.

Belle Chesler · Aug 20, 2020

Perhaps it’s a rare opportunity to acknowledge that our nation’s public schools should not be left so alone to provide food, mental health care, and digital connectivity for our nation’s children. That should be, in a fashion almost unimaginable in America today, the role of the larger society. (Photo: Ryan Stanton/flickr/cc)

This Empire Has No Clothes: In the Classroom That Zoom Built

Teaching across an abyss of silence.

Belle Chesler · May 11, 2020

Teachers rallied at Manzanita Community School in Oakland on Thursday as about 3,000 educators went on strike to demand fair pay and more investment in public schools. (Photo: @CTAJulian/Twitter)

Defunding Children, A National Crisis of the Soul

Making American schools less great again

Belle Chesler · Apr 18, 2019

I’m still mired in the past, shaken by the spectacle of the Kavanaugh hearings, and pulled across the decades into the darkest crevasses of my memories. (Photo: Screenshot)

The Kavanaugh Hearings Just Won't Leave Me Alone

The media’s moving on, but I’m not

Belle Chesler · Oct 18, 2018

"Asking them to accept the depressing realities of the society we’re bequeathing to them without expecting them to respond, let alone protest, is tantamount to teaching without listening."(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Students as Teachers: Facing the World Adults Are Wrecking

What happens when a teachers stops and listens to her students.

Belle Chesler · Apr 19, 2018

At the beginning of the semester, I gave my new students a questionnaire about their lives. One of them answered the question “What is one thing that really stresses you out?” by writing: “What really stresses me out is the fact that I might die in this building.”(Screengrab from NBC)

Will an AR-15 Succeed Where the American Dream Failed?

High school students: The canaries in the coal mine of American disaster.

Belle Chesler · Mar 6, 2018

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