“To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. In order to change and transform the world, they must change and transform themselves.” Honestly, I wasn’t looking forward to NCTE this year. In the past, NCTE has been a complicated space for me, one that is as exhausting as it can be […]
Month: November 2019
A Moment of Silence
This time, I cannot go to a vigil. Despite all the offers of support, I don’t really want to talk through it. Sometimes, with some moments of grief, all I want is to be alone, at least for now. I believe in the power of collective grief; I believe that people coming together to grieve […]
How Do You Move Forward When the World Keeps Shattering Around You?
I don’t claim Santa Clarita often. I have a complicated relationships with my hometown. It is a place where I struggled to find self-acceptance, a sense of true belonging, and where I lost my mother. But, it is also the place where I grew up, that inspired my understanding for the importance of educators, where […]
Grief and Mothering
Let me first off say that last week was an amazing week. So, so, so, so many great things happened. I was selected as a speaker at our spring TEDx talks on campus, a chapter proposal for a book project that I’m excited about was accepted, a call I’ve been waiting on for awhile happened, […]
Mirrors, Windows, Hopes and Dreams
Almost 30 years ago, Rudine Sims Bishop published an essay on windows and mirrors in children’s books (which was a keynote address delivered at the CSU San Bernardino Reading conference). In this piece, Sims Bishop talked about literature as existing “to transform human experience, and reflect it back to us so that we can better understand […]