true believers

I will never again book 20 school visits for one month! but I’m grateful for each and every opportunity to meet students and educators across the city. Yesterday I spent the morning at a school in Park Slope and after my presentation on Ship of Souls, I was treated to a feast—the parents put out [...]

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more, please

After my presentation up in Harlem this morning, the students actually begged their teacher for more homework—they wanted permission to read ahead in Ship of Souls! This class was selected by Behind the Book to receive copies of my novel, but they’d only read the first two chapters by the time I arrived today. Their [...]

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listen up

Having a quiet morning in Toronto—as usual, it’s freezing outside but it IS sunny and I’ve been having a pretty great visit so far. I had to run through the airport to catch my flight on Thursday, but my cousin’s wedding was lovely and I got a chance to catch up with relatives I haven’t [...]

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light a fire

The only good thing about waking at 4am this morning was finding this email from a former student in my Facebook inbox. You’ve probably heard about the teacher in Michigan who was fired for mobilizing her students around the Trayvon Martin case. Radical teaching—which is what we NEED to achieve social justice—should be celebrated, not [...]

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young, black–and HUMAN

Up before dawn on the first day of spring break, hoping this headache doesn’t bloom into a migraine. Lots to watch online (episode one of Great Expectations at PBS.org) and Amy Bodden Bowllan has posted Part 1 and Part 2 of our conversation about race and representation in the wake of the murder of Trayvon [...]

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talking back

The only good thing about bigots is that they usually hang themselves if you give them enough rope. That’s just what happened on The Daily Show when Al Madrigal traveled to Arizona to interview a school board member who voted to ban Mexican American Studies in Tucson schools (based on “hearsay,” not facts). If you [...]

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remix

Yesterday was not my best teaching day. I try to let my students express themselves in class, and I try to listen patiently even when problematic ideas are coming out of their mouths. After all, the point is to figure out where they’re starting from—what they know now so that we can try to move [...]

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planting a seed

Today I gave my last Black History Month presentation for the Brooklyn Public Library. An auditorium full of 8th graders! Each class was named for an ivy league college, and one boy from Dartmouth came up to talk to me afterward—he had developed a sequel for SoS! “What if the netherbeings pursue Nuru into her [...]

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Looking Ahead

Each year The Brotherhood/Sister Sol co-sponsors an educational panel that focuses on solutions to the educational crisis we face in New York City – and indeed throughout the nation. The inadequate level of education provided to the children of this nation who are most in need is the pre-eminent civil rights issue of our time. [...]

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tune in!

Tonight I’ll be a guest on The Gist of Freedom, a web radio show with a focus on African American history founded by Lesley Gist. Tune in or call in if you’d like to join the conversation. Yesterday at the African Burial Ground National Monument we had a fantastic conversation with Ranger Cyrus Forman about [...]

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