A Total Surprise: “Are you going to wear that again on Friday?” Debbie asked me one afternoon. An odd sort of a question I thought, especially coming from Debbie. Everyone knows that I wear a white shirt and black pants to school every day. This was our school uniform at the time. The kids were… Continue reading SURPRISE! Teaching Is Serious Business — At Least Most of the Time.
This post is by Joy Prescott, a fourth-grade math teacher at Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School in Florida and the 2019 Florida Department of Education Teacher of the Year. It was originally published at National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Over the course of almost two centuries, Florida’s Seminoles endured three wars with the U.S. government, resisted numerous… Continue reading Rekindling the Heritage of an Unconquered Indian Tribe
Last week I wrote a very personal post about the connections between our nation’s education and criminal justice systems. I was accused by a reader of not grounding my assertions in research, thus voiding my post’s truth or relevance. I reminded the reader that I’d written a blog post, not a research paper. However, this… Continue reading The Life-Changing Benefits of Black Teachers for Black Students
On Tuesday, October 30th, I received one of the greatest gifts of my life: After serving 19 and a half years of a 20-to-life sentence, my husband John Dukes was released from prison. Each day he’s home is a blessing. Each day he’s home also highlights the challenges that formerly incarcerated people face along their… Continue reading A Personal Perspective Into The School-To-Prison Pipeline: John Is Home!
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 obvious cultural and societal relevance. This confirms my premise that White administrators are often disconnected from… Continue reading The Hate I Get About “The Hate U Give.”
The other day I was watching a video on Instagram where a little girl in daycare/pre-kindergarten was telling her teacher how she needs a day off from her (the teacher) and these “kids” that get on her nerves. I was in stitches watching it and I thought to myself, “this little girl is really smart!”… Continue reading Looking Past The Attitude: What Black Teachers See In Black Students That Other Teachers Don’t.
Last year’s post on NYC’s Top 10 Elementary Schools By Test Scores: What Makes Them Special – And How You Can Get In proved such a reader favorite, we’ve updated it! Because many schools make a return appearance, we’ve expanded our list to the top 25, and added details about how some of them get… Continue reading NYC’s Top 25 Elementary Schools for 2018 & How You Can Get In!
Let’s just call her Betsy DeVoid. Our secretary of education earns a name-change because of her predilection for voiding laws that protect our most disenfranchised students. First it was rescissions to the civil rights regulations that protect students with disabilities. Now it’s the 2014 Obama administration’s school discipline guidance, also based on civil rights law, that requires… Continue reading Is Betsy DeVos on the Verge of Removing Civil Rights Protections for Students of Color?
This is a guest post by Jose Romero, a high school senior in New York. He aspires to become a fifth-grade teacher, so he can give kids the support he received from his mentors and teachers of color. It has appeared in TNTP and on Education Post. For 10 years—the first decade I was in school—all… Continue reading NYC High School Student Explains Why A Diverse Teaching Force Matters — And What He’s Going to Do About It.
Today the New York Times’ Dana Goldstein has an article on a new trend: advocates taking states to court to demand integrated schools. In the piece she quotes one particular education advocate who questions the assumption that integration is a panacea for inequity. That advocate is Khulia Pringle whose daughter attended a St. Paul charter… Continue reading If You Can’t Teach My Black Children, Admit It and Move On.
