My dear friend Evan Serpick is the amazing editor in chief of the Baltimore City Paper and just did a feature story on a local musician in Baltimore named Dan Deacon. I, of course, had never heard of Dan Deacon before (sorry, Dan, that really doesn’t mean anything), but Evan watched Dan make this AMAZING … Continue reading
My years in the classroom were filled with educational jargon. When you work in a failing school, educational reform movements and their key words are birthed into your classroom after gestating in what I imagine to be windowless rooms where policymakers stare at data. One hot term that circulated was academic rigor. Upon being observed, … Continue reading
No doubt, teaching in urban schools can wear you down. I can’t even tell you how many times I have sat in my classroom and cried, cursed, or just stared at my bulletin boards that needed updating, paralyzed and practically drooling on myself from exhaustion, frustration, or anger. Everyone has their own methods for coping … Continue reading
Just read Lena Dunham’s tribute to Nora Ephron in The New Yorker Magazine as recommended by this week’s Approval Matrix in New York Magazine. It was beautiful. But one quote struck me, it was a piece of advice that Lena gleaned from Nora during their brief friendship: “You cannot wait around for someone to give … Continue reading
Today’s my birthday. I’m 38. I have always loved my birthday and felt like it was a big deal to make to the next year. It might make me sound like a morose little girl, but I distinctly remember turning 10 and feeling amazed that I had made it into double digits. I remember thinking, … Continue reading
I am not sure how I became a White teacher of all kids of color. Honestly. It was never my objective as an educator to teach classrooms filled with all minority students (can we really even use that term “minority” anymore since children of color now represent more than half of America’s population under the … Continue reading
