If Chicago is to truly realize its potential in the interconnected world of the 21st century, we must ensure that no child is left unconnected and that no family must choose between putting food on the table, and paying their internet bill.
My Toxic but Open Relationship With Education Activism
As activists and storytellers, we have to break it down and make it make sense to the communities we’re fighting for.
Supervivientes de Chicago dicen que la educación sexual crea comunidades más fuertes
Lo que realmente necesita nuestra ciudad es una profunda inversión para evitar que la violencia se produzca en primer lugar. Esa prevención comienza con la educación sexual.
Survivors in Chicago Say Sex Education Creates Stronger Communities
Lea este artículo en español aqui. Chicago has a gender-based violence problem. Less than four years ago, a report exposed how Chicago Public Schools (CPS) failed to support over 500 survivors of sexual violence. Last month, we learned the Chicago Park District is dealing with a similar problem where decision-makers ignored the voices of survivors speaking out against systemic sexual…
Our Kids Need Flexible Learning
Until the pandemic forced us to rethink learning, the structure of school went unchanged for decades. Educators certainly refined their craft, incorporating new tools and knowledge about how students learn, but if Rip Van Winkle fell asleep during math class in 1919 and woke up a hundred years later, he would have no trouble recognizing the rigid structures and routines of the school day.
School Discipline Is the Modern Day Chattel Slavery and Damn Near Everybody Is In On It
This post originally appeared in Hope + Outrage on March 5, 2021. Let me drop some numbers on y’all real quick. We know that starting as early as Pre-K, Black students are three times more likely to be suspended and expelled from school than white students and represent 31% of school-related arrests. To add to that, Black kids are five times more likely to be detained…
Dear Pandemic Homeschooler
Dear Pandemic Homeschooler, Nobody in your family has done this before. Take a minute and take that in. It is back-to-school time and there are a lot of questions surrounding what that looks like for children. Many parents, after losing faith in their school system, are eager to explore homeschooling. So, they turn to the internet and discover it is…
Critical Race Theory Bans Are White Supremacy’s Trojan Horse
This post originally appeared on Hope and Outrage from Tanesha Peeples on July 15. Y’all, are they still teaching Greek mythology in schools? Interestingly, it used to be one of my favorite subjects in grammar school. Now, in retrospect—and with an abolitionist mind—I realize it was just another subject taking up space that could’ve been used to teach real history.…