Teacher stories, interviews, and videos related to language arts education.
I went to high school here in San Leandro, at the school where I teach. We have three ‘academy programs,’ where students can apply to go through 10th through 12th grade in cohorts focused on multimedia, business and finance, or…
When I was in eighth grade, I had this very eccentric English teacher. He would whack the desks whenever he wanted people to answer — and sometimes he would only call on the kids who were reliably the ‘smart kids.’ …
I was in high school at the height of the AIDS crisis. And as a 13- and 14-year-old, I would sneak away into the city to meet up with this group of people, mostly gay men and Black women, who…
I remember being in a conversation with my mom in high school — I don't know if we were driving somewhere, or just talking in the kitchen. But I remember her telling me that I was ‘a real people person’…
When I was a teenager, I had summer jobs as a custodian. It paid pretty well. So when I got to college, even though I was working as an office assistant in the pharmacy department, I decided to look for more hours cleaning schools. I figured I could do that until I got my degree in communications.
It's hard to view my career in stories. Maybe it's not even my story. Maybe it’s the story of my dad. I grew up in South Chicago. My dad was a preschool teacher. And everywhere we went, it was like, ‘El maestro, el maestro!’ And so that made me a celebrity by extension: la hija del maestro.
When you remove your children from this arena, you are not only stopping them from hearing other points of view, but you are stopping others from hearing your child's point of view.
One of the differences between learning from an AI program and learning with a teacher in a dialectical manner is that you don't have that empathy, connection, dialogue. All of our kids have so much potential and deserve for someone to have high expectations of them and to help them improve and grow, whatever that means for them.
I think it was the first time that I realized how much impact teachers have. The experience that you give the learners in your classroom can change the paths that they walk for the rest of their lives.
I was pretty close with my brother. He ended up going to jail when I was in fourth grade. We were having morning meeting at school, and the question that day was, ‘How are you feeling?’