Sharif El-Mekki doesn’t often roll up his pant leg to reveal the scars on his lower leg where the gangrene set in and almost forced doctors to amputate his lower leg. He doesn’t talk about the 12 excruciatingly painful...
Category - Let’s Talk About It
The room is dimly lit when you enter, a short ramp leading you further into the darkness. Five prison cells await. Old. Wooden with iron bars and solid padlocks. Within, ghostly apparitions come into focus. Old women. Young...
I Started This School Year Talking About My History So My Students Could Discover Their Own Identity
I started this year with only two things on my mind: 1) helping my students develop positive racial identities and 2) building a community within a community. Last year, because of the events that happened in Charlottesville...
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”—Gloria Steinem Dear White People, Days ago, I, like many of you, watched in horror the vile display of bigotry and hatred, violence and terror that unfolded in...
I often describe myself as both an activist and a teacher. Why? Because I firmly believe that a quality education is a basic human right that has been historically and currently denied to so many students of color. And the things...
As a public school parent, I feel pressured to take a solemn oath of loyalty to free government schooling as if these schools are little temples of a high democratic order. I comply, mostly, uncomfortably, because whether I want...
When I saw this picture, I thought it is a dramatic illustration of the importance of little Black girls seeing themselves in children’s books! This picture of Michelle Obama is telling this girl that she can be anything she...
David Nixon has been homeless on and off for more than half of his life so far. This summer, the 21-year-old was living in an acquaintance’s home. A former ward of the state, Nixon had been evicted from his home in January...
If there is anything corrupt in the world of charter schools you can expect Mercedes Schneider to blog or write a book about it. Yesterday she wrote about a student walkout at a Sacramento charter founded by Michelle Rhee and...
“Black boys need to physically see positive images of themselves reflected back at them in children’s books.” Two years ago, I walked into a bookstore searching for a birthday gift for a young Black boy. When I approached a...