Parents
If You Give White Teachers Guns, I'm Pulling My Black Son out of School
On December 14, 2012, a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children and six adults. My firstborn son was 9 months old. At the time, kindergarten...
Poverty
Coffee Break: Memphis Education Leader Natalie McKinney Is Doing the Right Thing for Families for the Right Reasons
Last fall, former Shelby County Schools policy director Natalie McKinney assumed leadership of Whole Child Strategies, a nonprofit created to help Memphis neighborhood leaders use data and coordinate...
Politics
A Bullet Took My Student and I Want to Remember Him by Saving Other Lives
Take a moment and think back to when you were 12 years old. See life through the eyes of your 12-year-old self. What were you most excited about? What did you dream about, what were your hopes and...
Diversity
He Was Tortured by Police and Sent to Prison for 24 Years for a Crime He Didn't Commit. Now He’s Telling His Story to Students.
As a teenager on the streets of Chicago’s South Side, Darrell Cannon learned not to trust the police—a lesson that continues to resonate for young Black men today. “They abused their...
School Funding
We Can Prevent School Shootings Without Arming Teachers
My study of school shootings began in 1998 when I evaluated a 14-year-old boy who carried out a shooting in Paducah, Kentucky. He had been bullied for years at school and he struggled with...
Politics
My Students Are Asking for a Lot More Than Just Lockdown Drills
Seventeen years ago, I was a first-year teacher working alone in my classroom when a police officer came to my door. He told me to “get low” and to come with him to the auditorium. There, I found all...