I’m questioning things in this blog and hope you will, as well. It’s Fall, 2020 and I’m writing about Education as a white person, a teacher/learner, and a Jew. Questioning is central to Jewish thought and our sense of intimacy — with the divine, other people, and everything. There is a tradition, called midrash, of […]
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What is Grassroots Learning?
I am thinking about learning as a form of grassroots organizing: change at the root, within a person and thus, necessarily, between people. It can also start with change between people that creates change within them. It works both ways! Learning links people up, anew, within and around themselves. In Donna Haraway’s words, “We become accountable […]
Is It Sustainable?
Sometimes the question, “Is it sustainable?” is posed in the name of being responsible, measured, sober. Not getting carried away. But it’s a more complex question than it seems, a question that depends very much on timing, scale, and context. If you’ve ever started something, you know that it’s usually a messy process — glad […]
What is Understood? From White Gaze to Black Study/ies
In the film “Toni Morrison: The Pieces That I Am,” Toni Morrison speaks about writing outside the dominance of the white gaze: “I have had reviews in the past that have accused me of not writing about white people. I remember a review of Sula in which the reviewer said, one day, she, meaning me, […]
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Talking with Students about Ungrading: What is the Real Deal?
This week, I talked with three of my students from last year. Margo, Alexandra and I taught them in the course we created and led with a group of co-educators. “Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership” (otherwise known as Education 200) is the first in the Education sequence, designed to introduce students to the […]
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Can Mentoring Create a Bridge to Institutional Change?
I love being a mentor but I am uneasy about the slide into a one-way, top-down notion of authority. I like the idea of friends as co-mentors, mutual learning, an egalitarian, feminist approach. It’s true that a mentor with more experience in a given context can de-mystify and foster access, and that’s important. A mentor […]
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What is Language Justice?
My grandmother was born on the Lower East Side of New York City, following the emigration of her parents, my great grandparents, from Russia. Their only child, she often told the story of the rabbi in their town telling her father he could annul the marriage if he wished “because her mother was barren.” Her […]
Starting from a Different Place?
Last Friday, a third grader read an epic comic in our Zoom group. Trying to follow without easy access to the images, I asked a follow-up about one of the characters: “Is he the hero?” “Oh, yes,” the reader answered, “he has to bring balance to the world.” What an amazing definition of the hero! […]
What Does Antiracist Literacy Do?
It’s easy to assume that literacy means the ability to read and write words in a specific language. But in this case, common sense is not really practical. A more useful definition? Literacy means the capacity to use knowledge and skills to interpret (read) situations and participate in ways that make sense to others who […]