The Blog
Addressing difficult or tense conversations in a classroom is difficult enough, without being prepared with a set of norms or protocol. Not only can the topics be tense, but the process of the conversation can be challenging if people are not aware of what is appropriate or how to...
Still on Island Vibes and Processing…
Our family went on a family vacation recently to Dominican Republic. We took our three kids (7, 4, and 1 year old) and it was their first time out of the country. It was their first time seeing the land where I was born and where both of...
Taking anti bias and antiracist (ABAR) ideas into practice is something like reinventing the wheel. Most of us didn't experience that in our own k-12 educational journeys, so we need to reimagine and reinvent teaching and learning in order to dream what ABAR teaching and learning might look...
Unit themes are at the core of most English Language Arts (or ELA) classrooms, which begs the questions: what are you teaching beyond books? How are your course themes also a proponent of social justice and critical literacy? This is what #DisruptTexts means when they explain that work...
There is often confusion about what it means to teach socio-political context.
It’s actually a skill builder for students and leads to deeper learning, both content-based and social emotional learning. It helps with developing the core SEL competencies and it builds critical...
The elimination of the NYC gifted and talented (GT) program is an important move in education to observe, because it sets an important precedent for the fight toward educational equity. The main issues, as reported, on why the GT program is harmful and inequitable, includes that it sustains...
In 2016, at the Montessori for Social Justice Conference we delivered a keynote that focused on joy as a form of resistance. This was two years after the death of Philando Castile. That death rocked us. The conference was in the Minneapolis area. The Mississippi River runs through that city. The...
Sharing books with children is one of the best gifts we can offer. It builds relationships, literacy, and a love of learning, among other things. Sometimes turning the book gifts into something fun and active can be tricky. One time, a friend gifted my son the book Jabari Jumps...
It is Indigenous People’s Day! We love to celebrate this day with education and resources because we know how under-represented and ignored these nations are in schools, curricula, and general U.S. society. For this year, we invited Trisha Moquino, member of Cochiti Pueblo, to join us in a...
