Change is in the air this summer. All three of our children will soon be in college – one transferring from community college, one entering her junior year, and our “baby” who just graduated from high school, attending her first year of college. Our middle child will also be heading to Buenos Aires for a semester abroad from the end of July until December. I always thought I would be a complete wreck as my kids became teens, then graduated from high school and left home to attend college. I have been surprised that as they get older, I am excited to see who they are becoming. It fills ..read more

I grew up attending marches and protests, making posters and chanting for human rights, against discrimination, violence, and oppression. From my early teens until the age of about 20, I didn't touch a grape because of the 1980s grape boycott to support farm workers. Our protest themes varied from this to demanding the end of apartheid in South Africa and the U.S. government involvement in Central America. I corresponded with Lolita Lebron, a Puerto Rican political prisoner, and then met her when she visited my school along with other released political prisoners. My father was a feminist and ..read more

I have struggled to continue blogging regularly this year, and I've been thinking a lot about why that might be. As things often are, it's a complex answer involving grief, exhaustion, my doctoral studies, family needs, and challenges at school. Grief has changed my writing audience. Since my dad died, I have been writing to him - one long letter processing what's happening in my family and with my grief. 16 months later, his death is still very raw, but writing to him helps me feel close to him.  This year I started my 29th year of teaching. I'm happy to report that 1) I still like what ..read more

Keeping up with my blog was a struggle this fall. In other years, I churned out posts easily. This year has been hard because for so many reasons: educators all over the country are struggling with the challenges of teaching, and on a personal level, I am still grieving, and will be forever in various degrees, my dad. It was hard to focus and find something I felt was worth writing about. But last week, I started a unit I love to teach and talk about: Immigration Stories*. I change it a little every year since sometimes I have the same students 2 years in a row. This year, I needed a movie to ..read more

 It is already week 5, year #18 in this school, and year #29 teaching, and I am constantly struck with how quickly time went by, and yet how every year has me feeling like I am a new teacher, with the worries, anxieties, and hours of preparation. I don’t remember my very first day of teaching, but I know I must have been queasy with anticipation. I was only 8 years older than my oldest students, and 13 years older than my youngest students. I remember that every day I would go home and prepare for 2-3 hours for the next day, until I finally got the hang of it and learned to prepare for a ..read more

My blog has been put on the back burner, but not forgotten. This year, it is all I can do to just make it through the days, and the days are A LOT. There is preparing and teaching, working with my student teacher, completing my work for the graduate course in my PhD program, my family, not to mention keeping up with healthy life habits and so on. I had been lucky in my life to not experience too much grief until December of 2021, when my father died. The pain I felt was unlike anything I have ever felt. It was searing, painful, brutal, huge. My tears were endless, my heart physically ached. A ..read more

Sometimes a student asks you for help putting his unruly curls in an elastic because he doesn't know how. So you do it. And then you give the kid a packet of natural hair conditioner from your classroom toiletry station to help with the dryness.  Sometimes a student tells you that they want to "fail" their yearly ELL test so they can stay in your class.  Sometimes a student says "Can you adopt me?", and even though you know they're joking, it touches your heart.  Sometimes you are sad to have a student teacher only because it means you will be teaching less and you love that ..read more

I’ve sat down at least 6 times in the last month to write this blog. For some reason, I never get past the first paragraph. The urge to write is there, but the focus is absent, as is the ability to organize my thoughts and feelings about teaching in September and October. A lot of this has to do with my father’s declining health (he was diagnosed with congestive heart disease over the summer) and different events in my childrens’ lives, but it is also related to school.  Statements I keep hearing and reading from teachers this fall:  “It’s only October and I feel like it’s May” “I ..read more

As summers always do, this one sped by. On the positive side, I had more of a chance to rest and recuperate than last summer because of all the meetings and planning we had. In fact, I made a wise decision this summer and backed out of a few committees I thought I would work with on different projects, and I am so glad I did so. More than any other year, I needed to forget about school for a while. In our house, lots has been happening, making it a busy summer in other ways. Helping 2 of my 3 kids prepare to leave home (one for a Coloradan adventure, the other for college) has been very bitte ..read more

 On the longest day of the year, I'm counting the days of the longest school year in history. I have written about how well my students have done this year, and it's true - they have. They have been amazingly resilient, they've grown, they've learned, they've adapted, and they've kept me going. At the same time, I know we are all reaching our limits. The monotony and chaos of teaching remotely and navigating an in person group and a remote group are starting to get to me; the students are definitely getting antsy as well. Teaching this year has confirmed a lot of things I already knew ab ..read more