This summer, my family and I went on a tandem biking expedition in Connemara, a rugged area in County Galway, Ireland from which part of my lineage traces. We rode 20-30 miles a day in a rare Irish heatwave, through rolling green hills and endless pastures of sheep, with nary a car in sight. By [...]
Math teacher/teacher leader Demian Martens reimagines the equity landscape of his school through our arts integration experience. Our first open-call Brave Spaces Institute last week was a wonderful and humbling experience. We brought together teams from across California and as far as Minneapolis for a deep exploration of what it means to be [...]
Teacher strikes erupting in five states have got me all verklempt (Yiddish for too emotional to speak). I’m a career educator and married to an Oakland high school teacher. While I’m not currently in the classroom, teaching and learning remain my core passion and my professional “why”. And this I know for certain: high-quality instruction [...]
In my work with schools and districts, I hear a lot of talk about the need for leaders to “have a vision.” Central office folks often decry the absence of vision among principals they support, and teachers clamor for a “leader with vision.” But what does this really mean? What is the purpose of creating [...]
Racial incidents and hate speech are on the rise at school campuses across the country. In October alone, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks media reports of hate incidents in schools, found more 90 incidents across 30 states. Many more incidents go unreported. At one school where I have worked closely for the [...]
About a month ago, I did my first sprint triathlon in Santa Cruz, California with my coparent Manny. This entailed a half-mile open water swim, a 12-mile bike course, and three-mile run. I trained, sort of, for a couple of months and was feeling pretty confident about everything except the open water. I have always [...]
I recently traveled to Detroit with my colleague Victor Cary, Senior Director of the National Equity Project, to lead a "shared equity experience" for the Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning network. Each year, Hewlett convenes about 200 grantees who are thought and action leaders in the field of progressive pedagogy. Deeper learning might be considered a [...]
Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) has become a central concept in the education world. My colleague Zaretta Hammond offers a brilliant and accessible framework in her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students (Corwin, 2014). One of the questions that my book, The Listening Leader, tries [...]
Signing a book for Tuyen Tran Last Thursday, I officially welcomed The Listening Leader into the world with a book launch hosted at my former employer, the National Equity Project. I was surrounded by 70 people from every leg of my journey: students I taught in the late 90’s, early teaching partners, teachers and [...]
This year’s Academy Award-winning best picture “Moonlight” moved me deeply. I reflected on the film for days, retracing its finely wrought characters and quiet moments of transformation. It is a movie about pain and suffering and oppression, yes, but it is also a movie about healing and redemption. It is a movie about the power [...]
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