Poverty
How I Learned to Help My Students Talk About Hard Things
Up until a few years ago, I had struggled to find my voice as a teacher. I had internalized a set of classroom management principles best summed up by the common phrase: “Don’t smile until...
Charter Schools
We Have to Challenge What Innovation Really Looks Like, If We Want to Break the Cycles That Impact Our Students
When will we learn that traditional systems and customs may not be the answer to creating significant change within education for our Black and Brown students? Maybe we are stuck in tradition because...
Charter Schools
My Chicago Neighborhood Is Still Scarred 50 Years After MLK's Assassination, But My Students Give Me Hope
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, leading to an uprising in Chicago. The North Lawndale and East Garfield Park neighborhoods experienced most of the...
Poverty
Hope and Outrage: Lawmakers Would Rather Invest in Prisons Than Schools But Our Kids Are Fighting for Their Education
Outrage: These Politicians Bullshitting Third-Graders We all know politicians are full of it. But kids keep it real. So when third-graders ask why you’re putting more money into prisons than school,...
Politics
ICE Took My Students’ Parents Away
In my classroom there is a poster that says, “Follow your dreams, believe in yourself and never give up.” This poster is more than some frivolous decoration—it’s our mantra and our story. The hopes...
bias
It Doesn't Just Happen at Starbucks. Teachers Need Racial Bias Training Too.
Last week, two Black men were arrested for sitting in a Starbucks here in Philadelphia. They were waiting for a friend who arrived shortly after his friends had been handcuffed. The men were...
