Tag: Children

Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way

For many years, my school district hosted an annual Academic Diversity Institute prior to the start of the new school year. At this institute, teachers had the opportunity…

Do Migratory Birds Also Have to Leave Their Friends Behind?

This is an image drawn by an unschooled refugee child living in a camp in the outskirts of Chtoura, Lebanon. She is from Syria but has lived in…

Quotidian moments

A note I wrote from April 16, 2020 From my dining room table: My two children, ages four and six, have now been at home for 35 days….

Reading and its Superpowers

I cannot remember who first introduced me to the work of Roald Dahl, but it is his books that sparked a lifelong love of reading for me. I…

Broken Glass and the Path to a Career in Education

In 2003, while deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, I went on various convoys and used to see many children in small towns and neighborhoods running around…

An Invitation to a Community of Musicians

Crawford recalls how a potentially traumatic move to a new high school at the age of fourteen could have been a distressing experience, but ultimately showed him the…

Saving the World May Just Mean Saving One Person’s World

My Humanities Moment starts off years before I became a teacher, but it culminated when I realized what my ultimately mission was as a teacher. When I grew…

Hearing an Orchestra for the First Time

Charles Frazier recalls when the North Carolina Symphony traveled to the small towns of western NC on their annual state tour. The symphony’s visit to the rural and…

Placing Our Family in the Story of America

Actor John Cho shares how the humanities reveal answers to the most important questions in life. He notes his fondness of reading and how, during his childhood, the…

Remembering the Music

When I was in elementary school I didn’t know anything about racial conflict or even recognize there were racial differences between the kids at my school. My classmates…

Baseball, Jackie Robinson, and Racial Identity Formation

As I grew up in rural South Carolina in the 1980s, baseball was my favorite hobby and pastime. For most of my 7 year Dixie league/recreational league baseball…

The Second Shelf and Beyond

In elementary school, Kathryn Hill itched to move beyond the first shelf of the library books. When she finally reached the second shelf, a new world awaited her:…

“You don’t just run, you run to someplace wonderful.”

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler turned Deborah Ross’s world upside down. Kongisberg’s book chronicles the adventures of Claudia and her brother, who run away…