How To Talk About Race, Class, Gender, and Ability

  Have you ever had your ant-racist beliefs questioned, and were unsure how to explain why you feel the way you do? Here’s a way to organize your thinking so you never have to feel “stumped” again.     JOIN MY NEXT CREATIVE WRITING CLASS!  

Poetry in Spaces of Recovery

  I love the photo above because you can’t tell which hand is mine. Just like if I was standing together with these women in the Magdalene house, a safe place for women recovering from addiction and a life in the sex trade, (whether being trafficked or deploying their labor in instances of surv...

Why A Black Woman Named Fannie Lou Hamer Matters Now More Than Ever (BONUS: Audio!)

Who was Fannie Lou Hamer? When one thinks of the millions of souls lost during the transatlantic slave trade, the missed potential immediately jumps to mind. All genocide robs us of the few geniuses that each culture produces.  At the beginning of the previous century the pernicious system named...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #5.The Writing Classroom is Uniquely Suited for Finding Undiscovered Gems

In part four of this series – “Our Classrooms Benefit from the Voices of our Most Marginalized Students” — I discussed (partly) how valuable the “marginalized voices” are in our classrooms. But really, I was speaking to the notion that the “marginalized” is the majority. I encourage you...

The National Women’s March: Sisters, What Are You Willing To Destroy?

What follows are the remarks and the poem (“Oath: 1957”) I delivered on Saturday, January 21, 2017 at the St. Louis arm of the National Women’s March. When I was first asked to participate in the national women’s March, I declined because I thought it was just another example in the long line of...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #4. Our Classrooms Benefit from the Voices of our Most Marginalized Students

  In last week’s blog, “The Students are Co-Creators In the Classroom,”  I emphasized how important envisioning a future past the classroom for poor students and students of color is. But often times, when educators and activists discuss “poor students and students of color,” it is as ...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #3.The Students Are Co-Creators in the Classroom

In the last entry in this series, “Students Are Not Empty Vessels,” the general point could be summed up as “the students have a past.” A past that can be unpacked and surveyed for what is usable and valuable in the classroom. This week’s blog, “The Students are Co-creators in the Cl...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #2.The Students Are Not Empty Vessels

One of my favorite photos of Fannie Lou Hamer is one of her in front of a mass meeting teaching freedom songs. Mrs. Hamer came from a spiritual tradition that included countless songs. Some of them can be heard on the album Songs My Mother Taught Me, and I often devote a portion of my interactiv...

The Feminine Pronoun Series: Poetry. Pedagogy. Justice. (No. 30)

The tagline on my website for Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC is “Poetry. Pedagogy. Justice.” Those three powerful terms almost encompass my life/work philosophy. I say “almost” because Parenting is also a major part of my life’s work, as it were, and each of the terms inform each other and tak...

The Feminine Pronoun Series N. 27: Teachers Will Save the World

I work with perceptive school leaders who want their teachers to understand Diversity and Inclusion & seek the confidence and classroom results that knowledge produces. I was invited to talk with the dynamic faculty at the Times2 STEM Academy in Providence, Rhode Island. My presentation was follo...