There is little I love more than a monthlong daily challenge, and poet Nicole Sealey created a good one: read an entire collection of poetry or a poetry chapbook every day for the month of August. This is the fourth year that readers have gathered together online to share daily poems across their social media…
You’d think that in the month I’ve taken off of blogging I would have read so many books. Sadly, no. Moving slowed me down as a reader. Entire days where I didn’t so much as open a book! But I have unpacked enough book boxes now to fill a couple of shelves, and I am…
Thought-provoking piece from Eve Ewing about why she now capitalize the “w” in white (note: Black should always be capitalized). Ewing explained on Twitter that her goal in the piece isn’t to make anyone change their mind but rather to ask people to choose intentionally and meaningfully. (Zora) It’s really demoralizing to see that so…
For the past few months, ever since I read Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Cultivating Genius and began learning from her articles and presentations, I’ve been thinking about a question she frequently centers in her work: why don’t we use a “Black and Brown model as our framework of education,” especially when we are educating Black, Indigenous…
On the blog: Six articles worth sharing I’ll be starting Dream Job #4 this fall In reading: I was listening to Stamped on audio when Covid hit and my commute time/audiobook time decreased to zero. I just managed to finish the last 60 minutes this week. Jason Reynolds’s “remix” is really an amazing achievement, and…
Here are six important reads that came across my social media feeds in the past couple of weeks. YA novelist Tiffani Jackson reflects on “this pivotal, purposeful moment” and gives advice to young Black women who are observing and protesting and wondering what next. (Cosmopolitan) Crystal Marie Fleming shares 10 Practical Steps for Building a…
My first dream job was my very first job when I was still in high school: working at a bookstore. It was a mall bookstore, small, full of flashy commercial titles, popular series, and the occasional serendipitous discovery. I still remember the day I plucked Kendall Hailey’s The Day I Became an Autodidact from the…
My reading totals are down this week, but packing was up, and since we have a move scheduled in less than three weeks, that’s probably a good thing! Katherine Bomer’s The Journey Is Everything was a reread for me and welcome prep for thinking about how to incorporate essay more organically and less formulaically in…
I haven’t read the article yet, but I appreciated the challenge in the title of an op-ed a friend shared yesterday: “When Black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs.” I think there’s something true about that. More than anything else, what I’m seeing online right now as a response to this…
On the blog: A links round-up of six good articles from the past week A request to teachers to stop assigning harmful books In reading: The whole time I was reading Rebecca Stead’s new middle-grade novel, The List of Things That Will Not Change, I kept wondering if there would be some kind of unexpected…
I learn so much from organizer and prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba on Twitter. Her opinion piece for the New York Times, Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police, packs so much history, knowledge, and persuasion into a small space. (Bonus read: I also loved Eve Ewing’s interview with Kaba, Everything Worthwhile Is Done With Other…
(Note: This post has been in draft for a few weeks now. I’ve felt more urgency to finish in the last couple of days–especially as I see The Help trending on Netflix. That is NOT the film we need right now. Or anytime.) The other day I saw a tweet from a teacher asking for…
On the blog: A Few Reflections for White Teachers Newly Committed to Equity, Justice, and Anti-racism In reading: Clap When You Land is a verse novel told in two voices. The tragic event happens right at the beginning: a plane from New York bound for the Dominican Republic crashes, and all the passengers die. The…
First, welcome. I am so glad you are here. There is a lot of work for us to do. I hope you can build your stamina and capacity for anti-racist work. In case you’re just discovering it this week, this is an emergency. And it has been an emergency for awhile. For lifetimes. We don’t…
I can’t recommend “We’ve Been Doing It Your Way Long Enough”: Choosing the Culturally Relevant Classroom highly enough. Written by two elementary teachers and a teacher-educator, this book is grounded in theory and full of invitations to self-reflect and begin or deepen the internal work necessary to become a teacher who is committed to anti-bias,…
