My soul is heavy today. Marking the anniversary of the death of Dr. King is crucial and painful, horriffic and important, just and necessary and deeply, deeply personal. Dr. King wasn’t just an ideology, he was a real person who inspired other people and who, at the end of the day, had faith in the…
read more »by Lil Wayne My Long Division song will be written to the tune of 6 foot 7 by Weezy. I’m going to force my nieces and nephews to be in the video, so it should be a lovely family affair. As I was working on the lyrics I was thinking about teaching and gimmick-ness and…
read more »by Mateo My late (and wonderful) boyfriend used to always tell me I should be a principal. I swear he could tell the future. Anyway, now that I’m reflecting, he mentioned something about the scarcity of women of color teaching math and how I’d be the perfect person to teach good, solid math and to…
read more »by Death Cab for Cutie Math education in this country is disappointing at best, terrible at worst and in districts that serve primarily brown / black kids, it’s even worse. Racism and classism make it okay for this to happen and for millions of people to go about their daily lives like it doesn’t even matter.…
read more »by Louis Armstrong. So this morning, on my way to work, some lady who felt I cut her off decided to drop the n-bomb on me. Obviously she did it because it was the most offensive thing she could think of to say and she wanted to do as much damage as possible without actually…
read more »by Jay-Z. Nerd alert!: I’ve recently become all about understanding the cognitive processes behind student learning of mathematics. I’ve also discovered that there’s very little research on math learning in elementary grades. I’m so NOT down with this reality because math is not only a really important tool for social justice (because if you understand…
read more »by Bobby Darin. Google scholar let me down for the first time in a long time. I’m trying to find out (from a developmental psychological / neurological THEN pedagogical perspective) how exactly younger children best learn math and so far I’ve found very little. I want to know how elementary school students LEARN math, rather than how teachers tend…
read more »by Jay-Z. Living in Brooklyn really makes any other city pale in comparison – including LA. I grew up and went to college in Massachusetts then lived everywhere (most major US cities and a few international ones included) - but was most impressed with Brooklyn (I also lived in Manhattan and would pick Brooklyn over the…
read more »by Aventura. When I was living in the Dominican Republic – I had the extreme privilege of getting to know the most amazing young men I’ve encountered in my life. I used to kick it with them on our block shooting the breeze about this, that and the other thing. One day one of these…
read more »by Miley (or course). Florida is seriously considering merit pay based on teacher performance. Love it. New York might like to do the same BUT apparently its measurement tools are plagued with myriad troubles – bummer. Integration is intentionally undone in North Carolina – but in a way that leads to academic integration. This is…
read more »by Juanes Just as a point of information I wanted to say a couple of things (not in response to anyone in particular, just as part of the teachforus conversation). All TFA CMs have privilege (just based on the fact that we all went to college. college is obviously a different journey for everyone, but…
read more »by India Arie. Thanks y’all – today I found out that if you search google for “bilingual education social justice” you find my resources page in the top 5 results! Woot! Gracias for the links (in addition to the great conversation and the thought provoking posts). I’m learning a lot and I’m glad to be…
read more »by Justin Timberlake. I’m kind of a commitment-phobe – making my decision to join TFA that much more epic. Long time readers will remember that I started to apply to TFA 3 times before I could reach the level of commitment necessary for me to finish the application. I knew I wasn’t ready to be…
read more »by Adele (if you don’t have her new album, I’d stop what you’re doing and buy it immediately, for real). *In case you’re wondering – all of my posts are song titles (or the occasional line from a song). I do this because I’m really only capable of understanding the world through music. I might…
read more »by Will Smith. Today was both an amazing and terrifying day. Let’s start with the weather (which is how many a good story starts in New England). Now I consider myself to be a hearty New Englander, I’ve pushed cars through snow storms, driven in white-out conditions and literally laughed in the face of blizzards.…
read more »Back in the day, when I was teaching ESL and Spanish literacy in Argentina, my good friend and curriculum writing buddy (who is French) was explaining to me in French why she found American pedagogy to be lacking (so excuse if I misunderstood ever so slightly amiga!). Basically she (somewhat ironically for those of us…
read more »by The Neptunes After working in a 3rd grade classroom for 2 weeks, a student disclosed sexual abuse to me. In the movies – you how everything slows down and the character in question can’t talk or think and then everything fades to black. That’s kind of how I felt. I was stunned and surprised,…
read more »by Busta Rhymes Last night my dad got nailed by the stomach flu. It unceremoniously woke him up in the middle of the night. What did he do after the dust had settled at 3am you ask? Go back to sleep? Call the doctor? Drink some water? Nope – he went to school. Yep that’s…
read more »by TLC Once you get accepted into TFA you get lots of love and many warm welcomes. Then you get a bunch of work and administrative details to handle. What you don’t get is the following invitation for a mindframe switch: Dear Adrilicious, you’ve been accepted into TFA, that’s so great and we’re glad to…
read more »by Esperanza Spalding (congrats sister on that grammy win!). After I got accepted into TFA I was of the mistaken mindset that I would sit pretty until institute. How wrong I was. I realize that following through with deadlines and developing creative solutions to problems, a good teacher makes, so I get why TFA throws a…
read more »by Jay-Z My dad has been a teacher for 38 years. He just won an award actually, among many of his others, and he’s done amazing things for his students and his community. Teaching in the same system, in the same classroom for 38 years awards him a level of autonomy many teachers never encounter.…
read more »by Jay-Z (all my posts are titled after songs / other pop culture references) I was re-reading the archives of my personal blog the other day. It’s pretty funny, if i do say so myself, but alejo del tema – let me get back to it. I’m sharing a post about an agregious find I made in a 6th…
read more »***i updated my social justice education page and now it’s filled with wonderful information, resources and love and you should totally read it and tell your friends!*** Now back to our regularly scheduled programming: So today I wrote a bilingual literacy unit for 4th graders on the Mirabal Sisters. I want to teach it very, very…
read more »I actually really like math (nerd alert!). In fact I like it so much that I’m writing a trigonometry 101 packet for a genius kid in my dad’s 6th grade class. Awesome. I’m also a hip-hop-head (mostly of the old school variety) so I was browsing YouTube looking for cool math hip-hop inspired videos. I’ll be making…
read more »I love organization and scaffolding (the academic, behavioral and inspirational kind), bilingual education and hip-hop. I think I’ve developed the first of many combinations of these things I love. “I Can” by Nas has been in my head all day today. I love Nas so this wasn’t entirely a surprise. I was humming along and…
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