If you watched the Women’s SEC Basketball Tournament this past weekend, you saw some of the league’s best female players engage in amazingly electrifying basketball in pursuit of the coveted SEC Championship title. Each team, regardless of seeding, showed up prepared to achieve one of the goals that have been on their vision boards since […]
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Posted inSpecial Education
Teaching with empathy to drive differentiation
Differentiation: For less than $20 an hour, I was regularly – to name a few – choked, bitten, spit on, and scratched, yet any time the words “Long-Term Substitute” were followed by “SPED” or “Emotionally Disturbed” (the diction used at the time), I accepted the position as quickly as the slowly-loading website would allow. As […]
Posted inConfessions of a Teacher
Abbott Elementary and the amazing portrayal of Black male educators
As Black History Month comes to a close, I would be remiss if I didn’t share my thoughts with the world about the global phenomenon that is Abbott Elementary and the amazing portrayal of Black male educators on the show. A Thank You Letter to Quinta Brunson and Tyler James Williams, Every Wednesday night millions […]
Posted inBack to School
Amplify black voices: The unconquerable journey of a Black educator
Amiri Baraka once said, “Hope is delicate suffering.” As educators, we can relate to this all too well. This system seems to be a never-ending road of suffering, constantly finding and losing hope as the pendulum of uncertainty plagues our broken systems. As a Black teacher, this suffering is amplified by the strength and hope […]
Posted inEnglish Language Learners
How to Navigate Censorship in a High School English Classroom
At a faculty meeting, a colleague once whispered to me, “So, what do you actually do in your English class if everyone already knows how to read and write?” Though it was an innocent enough question from a chemistry teacher, it brought me to the halting realization that the abstract nature of a high school […]
Posted inCOVID
And Now They Are Seniors: The Covid Class of 2024
“Ms Lamons, do you remember meeting me online? Honestly, that whole year is a bit of a blur.” It just hit me. I met my incoming seniors for the 2023-2024 school year for the first time online. I met them behind the infamous Black Square Boxes. I engaged with them for an entire school year […]
Recap for 2023
This year showcased both the peaks and valleys of our education, from banning books from Black LGBTQIA+ authors to issues of spending federal funds from COVID relief.
Posted inWriting
The Power of Authentic Audiences
Authentic Audiences: Late one Wednesday morning, my seventh- and eighth-grade multilingual learners with emerging English language skills were emphatically complaining about the amount of writing required of them as we read and answered questions about teenage screen time usage. This work prepared them for an argumentative paragraph assignment on whether kids have too much screen […]