A politically conscious and active friend of mine teaches in an early college program in Queens, where teenagers learn from him about U.S. history and great literature. This weekend, we chatted a bit about his work, how wonderful and inspiring it can be, as well as how uncertain in terms of greater consequences. My friend…
Educators as political participants, sanctuary as co-authored activity toward radical hope: Politico article about CUNY professors and our syllabi
On Wednesday, Politico published an article about the opening statement I and other professors use on their syllabi at City College, Hunter College, and other CUNY campuses in New York. The statement, which I adopted in January 2017 and have included for all of my classes since, reads: As an educator, I fully support the…
Education and civil society: a mini-festo and a short reading list (for starters)
I’m starting, with several fellow graduate students at CUNY, a Working Group on Philanthropy and Civil Society. We come from the fields of sociology, political science, social welfare, and other disciplines which, we argue, do not speak to each other nearly enough and share learning and language around the core questions we must face as…
Swamp Monster Betsy Devos: Nominee for Secretary of Education
Going to protest the possibility that Betsy Devos could become the Secretary of Education of this country tomorrow at BMCC in lower Manhattan. Watch her avoid responding substantively to any questions about equal protections for all students who have disabilities, who suffer bullying, who take out student loans, who are taken advantage of by for-profit…
“GOP Gov. Snyder’s office says Detroit school kids have no right to literacy”: an opportunity to develop media literacy
The post title comes from an article a friend of mine posted on my Facebook feed, alarmed and asking what I thought of this situation. Photograph by Herbert Russell Below is my response… It’s a very interesting proposition. Checked out the story on the CBS website and this is what was included: “The lawsuit says…
Getting started
It’s a funny title for a post, since I’ve been writing this blog since 2014. However, what began as a scholarly exercise, to be executed faithfully but unhurriedly, has shifted in my mind. The stream of conversation now, in the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, has become a torrent…
Relying on “experts” and the problem of expertise
I teach a class about emergent bilinguals and bilingual education in the United States. This week, we’re talking about what constitutes a “successful” program, a highly polemical topic stemming from Civil Rights Era-challenges to the status quo, though the debate about the official language of America and what language to school our children in has origins…
Immersion and the bilingual “every-child-USA” narrative
Students who are first-language speakers of a language other than English are, in America, categorized as English Language Learners, or ELLs, and our country’s history of working with these learners has been complicated and politically fraught. Oftentimes, references to federal decisions such the landmark Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols in 1974 or state-level legislation such as…
Undocumented immigrants and schooling: a class discussion
I’m teaching a grad course on Bilingualism and tonight we discussed the important but under-explored issues related to working with students who are undocumented/unprotected. Students in my class come from all backgrounds, some of which include being children of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, and some have even been undocumented at some point in their own…
The “I don’t know” of student data collection
I mentioned a podcast I listened to recently called Clearing the FOG, a left-leaning independent radio station that explores a variety of issues that revolve around corporate avarice, inequality, and the ways in which democracy as we know it is being bent to the will of the few. In this podcast, entitled “Education Under Attack,…
