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Making A Win Possible for All |
Whitman
yearned to shout from the roof. His barbaric yawp. Me too. For right now I am sitting on the
grass, my back resting against a fence, wanting... |
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After the Silence, We Need Strong Voices |
Scattered
across the cinderblocks of our middle school walls are some new faces, photographs
of kids who have been silenced.
Lee
Simpson on... |
|
For Tomorrow |
The opening scene of the 2004 film Yesterday shows a mother (named Yesterday) and her daughter Beauty,
walking down a deserted South African road.... |
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After the Screaming Stops |
Shrinking there on the stool
in the science classroom, I just want to gather my ungraded quizzes and my
dignity and flee to freedom. But, I don’... |
|
Book Club Inspires a Rich Conversation |
My
third-grade daughter has no idea what it’s like to have a brother with autism.
Neither
do I.
So
we are lounging on this Sunday afternoon in... |
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Knowing When to Advocate for a Student |
Today, I got a laptop. Not for me. For
Aeesha.
Let me flash back to about six weeks
ago. A team meeting took place around a table in the science... |
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N-Word Or No N-Word? That is the Question |
By now, most people have heard about the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being released next month. In it, the n-word has been... |
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What to Throw Away in 2011 |
For me, the main activity of the first few days of 2011 has
been the big “P.”
Purge. Purge. Purge.
Together, with my two children, we tossed... |
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Getting Educated About Homeless Students |
For 20 nights, Kate has collapsed onto a
different air mattress in a new space, a strange place—none of them home.
The 15-year-old, her parents and... |
|
Tootin’ My Own Horn |
I
really should be practicing Aura Lee
right now—or Merrily We Roll Along.
I
will soon be marching on stage, balancing my sheet music on the stand,... |
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Am I My Brother’s Keeper? |
It is not easy for my students in suburban St.
Louis to connect with the characters in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The novel is packed with... |
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Viewing History Through ‘The Rock and the River’ |
I am still
thinking about Sam Childs.
And I cannot
wait to introduce him to my eighth-graders.
Sam is the 13-year-old
narrator of Kekla Magoon’s... |
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Looking Past the Disability to the Person |
I do not bark. I
do not swing open my mouth and chomp my teeth six times while telling a story.
The n-word does not dart suddenly from my mouth. And... |
|
The First Day of School |
They blaze into Room 309 at 8:16, sporting new t-shirts and vintage ones, silver watches and Silly Bandz, first-day-of-school garb.
I hand them a... |
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Lessons from Grandma About the Holocaust |
Last night, two children, Max and Sarah, vacationing at
their grandparents’ home in Boca Raton, Florida, traveled far, far away from
there. They... |
