There I stood in a room full of grey black and beige business suits, as plates of sushi and glasses of champagne I could not have swirled around me in my bright red maternity dress. Continue Reading

In 1896 the Supreme Court said “separate” was legal as long as it was “equal.”

Then in 1950 in the infamous case of Brown vs. The Board of Education, the ruling was over turned. Separate but equal could not be legal. Basically because the equal part of the equation was completely a lie. White schools were far superior in every way. And students had to be allowed to enroll where they chose. Continue Reading

I taught middle school for six years before I had my first child.  And every year that I taught there were more and more tests that we were required to give.  In the end we lost over five weeks of class time to testing.

This was also the time when the idea of “No Child left behind” began to hit schools hard.  And teachers were required to be “highly qualified.”  I watched as some of the best teachers I knew were made to jump through hoops of material that they never even taught in order to prove that they were qualified to do the job they had successfully been doing for many years.  While teachers who had been screwing up for the past ten plus years were allowed to continue peacefully because they had tenure and an old teaching credential from back in the dark ages. Continue Reading