Our weekly staff meeting begins with shout-outs. It’s the one part of the meeting that will never be skipped, never be rushed. It’s raucous and loud–sometimes with actual shouting. Everyone unmutes. The chat fills with emojis and capital letters and exclamation marks. Being invited to notice, name, and appreciate what my colleagues are doing has…
Even as a child, I never liked nicknames. And yet my parents gave me one. Betsy. Which I shrugged off at fourteen. The ‘s’ in Elisabeth is an affectation I picked up at the same age, when I asked to be called by my middle name. Somehow the ‘z’ looked too harsh to me, especially…
Yesterday I taught in my new classroom for the first time. It was a quick visit, a low-stakes test run during advisory to prepare for two full days of teaching in the building next week. I was only there for thirty minutes, but it was more than enough time to fall in love with my…
A few things you are guaranteed to experience during any class I teach on Zoom: Poetry. Hearing me say “Ok, I’m going to share my screen now” approximately 12,000 times. Cats. Surely I’m not alone in thinking that pets–more specifically, cats–are the best thing about Zoom school. Only one of my six has never made…
Before, I drove sixty miles across rolling prairie to work. My eyes watched for deer, much more of a danger than other cars. Often I was the only one on the road for long stretches, and my mind wandered. To the details of the landscape, to the podcasts or audiobook that kept me company, to…
Since last March, I’ve moved to DetroitA city of surprising beautyA city of murals and unexpected greenA city resilient and determined. Since last March, I’ve lived through a screenLearned, taught, shopped, worked through a screenDreamed, planned, connected through a screenSurvived through a screen Since last March, I’ve said goodbyeGoodbye to students, colleagues, friends,Goodbye to prairie…
Normally by November, independent reading would be well established in my classroom. I’d still be working with a few students to find that just right book, but most students would have finished a couple of books by now and pleasure reading–in class at least–would be part of our predictable routine. But with the upheaval of…
On the blog: A short slice about feeding the feral cats in my new neighborhood In reading: I’ll start with the best book I read this week, Angela Narciso Torres’s poetry chapbook, To the Bone, available as a free download from Sundress. These are gorgeous poems, full of insight and lush language and imagery and…
My mother thinks that I must hang a neon sign that only cats can see outside my house. Wherever I go, it takes the neighborhood cats all of ten minutes to find me. I’m afraid the sign works more like this: I see a cat from my window and I run outside to feed it.…
On the blog: It’s not to late to join The Sealey Challenge I have been having fun with my new Detroit Public Library card today! One very mild pandemic benefit: closed libraries in Michigan meant that all I had to do to get a temporary library card was type in my new address and ten…
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…
