America hates teachers. There’s no other way to put it. I’m not interested in massaging language to say what is quite obvious to me and so many of my fellow teachers — especially when nobody cares to massage their language when they’re out there bashing us! America has a very toxic relationship with teachers and… Continue reading America’s Toxic Relationship With Teachers
Black and Brown children are too often denied their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by teachers and school officials whose unfulfilled purpose is to support these children, not harm them. All children go through hardships but from my vantage point (the only one I can in fact speak from with… Continue reading Mental Health Awareness and Help for Black and Brown Children Is a Need, Not a Want.
This week, a veteran teacher on Long Island gave an assignment to her students that required them to create “funny captions” for Reconstruction Era photos from United States history. The teacher is white and, yes, that is very important to note. The assignment would have gone unchecked, had it not been for the grandmother of… Continue reading In This District, Teachers and Administrators Are Complicit in the Mental and Emotional Destruction of Black Students
Summer 2019 was one for the history books. Now, it’s back to school and, in preparation for our students’ return, New York City public school teachers sat through a series of professional developments early this week intended to prepare us with information — some necessary, some not — for the pending school year. Any teacher… Continue reading “Observe This”: A NYC Teacher Has Doubts About the New Teacher Evaluation System Negotiated by UFT.
The New York Times reports that “[a] group of selective schools and programs geared to students labeled gifted and talented is filled mostly with white and Asian children,” even though the vast majority of the 1.1 million students in New York City are Black and Latinx. And so a “high-level panel appointed by Mayor Bill… Continue reading NYC’s Gifted and Talented Programs Need Accessibility, Not Elimination.
Why is it a problem for some when academic spaces are comprised of more Black teachers than White teachers? I continue to be baffled by the resistance to this change, especially from White teachers. The reality is that many Black teachers function in predominantly White academic spaces for the entirety of our careers, often without… Continue reading An Impassioned Plea For The Purposeful Hiring of More Black Teachers
How exactly do superintendents get evaluated? After all, holding our top school district leaders is, in my experience, just as important — if not more so — than how teachers and other staff get evaluated. These questions led to my nterview with Dr. Constance Evelyn, Ed.D.author of Evaluating the Superintendent: The Process with Collaborative Compromises… Continue reading “Working Shoulder to Shoulder with Teachers, Parents, and the School Community Builds the Trust To Move To Excellence and Equity”: An Interview with an Expert.
I’d planned to write about the literacy for this week’s blog post, but I could not do that in good conscience without acknowledging a literary genius who affected my life so greatly: Dr. Toni Morrison. Where do I begin? When I found out that she died, I immediately thought of my professor, Dr. Hedda Marcus… Continue reading An Ode to Toni Morrison — And How Teachers Can Continue Her Legacy.
School suspensions are a part of the childhood experience for some students. That’s nothing new. Much has been written about the overabundance of Black and Brown students — especially male students — who are funneled through this early entry point of the school-to-prison-pipeline. However, it appears that the tides are changing and, according to the… Continue reading If We’re Under-Reporting School Suspensions, That May Be the Perfect Antidote.
In Thursday’s post, I indicated that racism, bias, and discrimination are as much a part of our educational system in New York as they are in any other formal institution. Although some would like to quench the thirst of those — like me — who are eager to expose and eradicate the misery of this… Continue reading Lean In. The Disruption Has Begun.
