Yet another example of an activist leading classrooms and helping to build the school-to-activism pipeline. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Val DiGiorgio, chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, accused me, a...
Category - Let’s Talk About It
One teacher reflects on what he and other white educators need to understand as they work to build anti-racist practices and identities. Last year, I realized that I didn’t have my first black teacher until I went to college...
While some folks are lamenting that Philly did not become Amazon City II, I, for one, am not (apparently, neither is Will Bunch from the Inquirer). To see that a coalition of businessmen and political leaders came together to...
In all my writing about public schools you’ll find a consistent claim that public schools are insufficient to the task of educating black children. That message angers people, especially those working in district public schools...
Increasingly, schools are returning to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in order to better understand how to support students. As anyone who has taken an introductory psychology course knows well, Maslow’s psychological theory...
From the moment I first heard Jahana Hayes speak, I knew that she was special. Riding back from a track meet, I came across her 2016 National Teacher of the Year YouTube video. I was feeling overwhelmed as I was preparing for an...
While The Hate U Give is a best-selling book and top-rated film, I’m getting some real pushback from my administration about having my students read the book and see the film in my English Language Arts class, despite its...
I was recently in Hartford, Connecticut, at the invitation of Mama Gwen Samuel, an activist who works on behalf and with the community. I wasn’t prepared for what I was to encounter; callousness of Black bourgeois, disregard...
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This is one of my favorite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes, but it leaves out a crucial point: the arc will not bend by itself. Someone has got to be...
The #SchoolToActivismPipeline is real. When Nasiha Thompson-King was given a temporary reprieve and allowed to continue playing basketball for Mastery Charter last February, mere days after a referee would not allow her to enter...