For the past seven weeks, I have been edging my way through Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I started it on the airplane on the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the National Writing Project’s Urban Sites Network Conference, and from page one I was captivated. But … Continue reading
Today marks sixteen years since my dad passed away. Diagnosed with juvenile onset diabetes around 1950, it is pretty amazing that he lived until 1996, until he was 61 years old. He was a diabetic for years before individuals tested their own blood sugar by pricking their fingers at home. Since his insulin shots were … Continue reading
There are many, many instances when my teaching life and my parenting life either overlap or stand in stark contrast to one another in painful or beautiful ways. These instances have only increased since my daughter entered pre-kindergarten this past fall in our neighborhood public school in Brooklyn. We live in an area that has … Continue reading
My last two conference presentations as a fledgling academic have been variations of the same topic: How do we teach about bullying in high school English classrooms to get students to think more critically about this topic? Bullying has been at the forefront of the media, and it was very much a part of my … Continue reading
