Retaining Sanity

I f*cked up today and all I could think of was the time I read the wrong chapter a decade ago. When I was 15, I took AP Psychology online, through the University of Missouri. Despite my love of psychology, it was a miserable class that I suffered through for a few months. That said, I learned an invaluable lesson that had plenty to do with psychology and nothing to do with what I learned in class. A few weeks into the class, I was averaging a 2.0 GPA (C), the lowest average grade of my entire academic career, before and after. I had done well on our weekly quizzes and my writing assignments averaged in the A to A+ realm, which was helping prop up my GPA after I earned a C- on our first exam. In my eyes --and, in many ways, the eyes of my parents-- this class was highlighting my greatest fear: that I was inept, a failure. The week after my ego-trashing exam, I read the wrong chapter. Every week, we read a chapter from our psychology textbook and then took a quiz online. We had ...

Today, we walked out. At 10am, half of the school turned silent, the other half turning to hushed whispers in an instinctive understanding of respect --respect for those turned silent, and respect for those silenced, those we honored. A conglomerate of coats and poster board, of children, teenagers, and teachers, we filed out onto a sidewalk that was slightly too small, on a March Wednesday that was a bit too cold for Maryland, and braved a wind that was more characteristic of Chicago than Silver Spring.  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The raised voices, shrill squeals, and constant calls for walking in the halls, from just five minutes before, had been exchanged for a silent power; and, for many of us, an overpowering silence, a reminder of the silent schools, silent for the voices wrenched from them. A reminder, too, for how quickly our voices could be silenced. We stood on the sidewalk for 17 minutes, shivering, as students held posters for passersby to read. Students excha...

Baltimore, MD—I came to Baltimore as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 20-year-old college graduate. I’d grown up in the Chicago suburbs, surrounded by people who looked like me and were raised like me. I’d attended a private college in Wisconsin, courtesy of a scholarship, financial aid, and, of course, my parents. And I’d applied to TFA (Teach for America) out of a desire to “give back to the community,” a desire no doubt fueled by the culmination of my “white and Asian guilt.” I’ve always believed that every child can succeed. As a lifelong homeschooler, I have always held that success comes in different hues. And as a liberal arts graduate, I promoted the notion that success is what you make it, that success is in the eye of the beholder. Baltimore City would challenge everything I believed. In 2015, I entered the classroom with approximately one month of teaching under my belt, no exposure to IEPs (Individualized Education Programs), and about as much training in class...

"Faggot" is among many words students in my classroom are not permitted to use. Variations such as "faggy," "fagbag," and "fruit" are similarly banned. Further, I do not allow my students to say things such as "That is so gay. " Though originally a difficult rule to implement, students are now better at monitoring what comes out of their mouths. But why? Why aren't my students allowed to use these words? This "why" question is what we frequently neglect to explain to students. We tell them that they shouldn't say things. We lay out the consequences for saying those things (apologies, letters explaining that what they said is wrong, push-ups, etc.). We tell them how they should speak and what they should say.  But more often than not, we forget to tell them why they shouldn't say them. And when I say we forget to tell them why, I mean that "because it's wrong" isn't sufficient. "B...

Looking for Alaska  is a staple novel in many high school curriculums. According to a recent article published by The Guardian , a high school in Kentucky has joined the list of schools attempting to ban John Green's Looking for Alaska.  As in similar cases of attempted curriculum censorship, a parent wrote the school stating that the novel encourages students " to experiment with pornography, sex, drugs, alcohol and profanity." See articles detailing similar cases in New Jersey , Tennessee , and  Alabama . I could say what many high school teachers have said: this is ridiculous. To assume that teenagers know nothing about sex, drugs, alcohol, and profanity is ridiculous. To claim that a novel which accurately examines the teenage mind while simultaneously delving into the complexities of grief and loss will preach unhealthy behaviors is ridiculous. To state that teenagers are so mindless and impressionable that they would blindly follow in the footsteps of the p...