Black Cats and Red Balloons

A message about school shootings from a k-12 veteran

Sometimes when you can’t get the news cycle out of your head, it’s time to say something. I just finished 13 years as a k-12 teacher. I am headed to Temple in August to enroll in a master’s in journalism program. My heart bleeds for every Philadelphia parent who has lost a loved one; every Philadelphia student who has lost a classmate; every Philadelphia teacher who has lost a student; and all…

The only thing “normal” about the “new normal” is it isn’t new

I’m a high school teacher. I keep thinking: “God, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to grow up through this.” The insanity and cravenness of our politics. The drumbeat of daily disaster. The unraveling of social ties. 

  Tonight I realized: Someone thought that about me. 

They must have. 

I’m the 9-11 generation. 

That was my first week of high school. 

The mother of one of my volleyball…

When adults asked high school me what I wanted to be,

I told them I wanted to be a journalist,

because I thought that meant being a writer with a paycheck.

  Now, when friends act surprised at how many questions I ask,

I remind them I’m a journalist – and they wonder if that part of me ever turns off.

  It doesn’t.

  Why turn off your why?

  (more…)

Here's what it feels like to be a teacher in the era of school shootings

When I was 22 and a first-year teacher, a Creative Writing student told me in the middle of a lockdown that it was my job to stand in front of the door so I would get shot first. Then one of my students decided to hide in a cabinet so he could bang on its door. I was proud of myself for not visibly jumping. I had absolutely nothing productive to say. That day, I had a 45-minute class that was on…

In lieu of New Year's Resolutions, I offer this piece in honor of my birthday last spring

In lieu of New Year’s Resolutions, I offer this piece I wrote in honor of my birthday last spring:

30 Things I Learned by 30

If you tell Creative Writing students they can write about nonhuman characters, one of them will write a tragedy about the doomed love between a pencil and an eraser, and it will be worlds sadder than anything Shakespeare ever dreamed of. 

2. When you go to write down what…

One Year In: My Thoughts on Trump's First Year

There are two Onion headlines that define for me the transition from Obama’s America to Trump’s. On Nov. 4, 2008, the Onion’s main story was “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” I remember reading it and thinking, “That’s the most accurate description of presidential politics I’ve seen in a long time.” There was a knowingness to it – the cynicism that comes from watching a young go-getter go get…

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

What’s Hidden from Hidden Figures

I can’t say I in any way watched a full slate of Oscar films this year; I almost never do. I am excited to go see I Am Not Your Negro tomorrow. Anything I’ve ever read by James Baldwin has struck me as incredibly poetic and profound, and I know I haven’t seen enough film of him to understand what he was like in his own voice, so I look forward to starting to rectify that. I have already made time…