Stories

My Parents Didn't Make It Past the Third Grade. I'm Working to Change That for Families in San Antonio.

My personal story begins with my family. I was born the youngest of seven children to a migrant farming family. My parents’ education did not extend past the third grade. Sadly, education was a...

Charter Schools

There Are Charter Schools Run By the Community and For the Community

Three decades since the passage of the first charter school law, this movement of extreme promise has fallen out of favor with many of its original supporters. A growing list of educators, civil...

Achievement Gap

That’s Right, I’m on the Roland Martin Bandwagon

Outrage: Access Still Denied Last week, my mentor and sister in the struggle, Kenya Bradshaw, dropped a gem at the LEAP InnovatEd Summit that really made me wonder if people are really down for...

student achievement

We Need to Keep Talking About Serena Williams and the Dignity of Black Children

By now we’ve all seen the headlines after the most recent U.S. Open in which Serena Williams lost to Naomi Osaka. Yet the headlines weren’t about the match itself, they were about the courtside...

Parents

Here's What Hurricane Florence Is Teaching My Kids

The other day I found myself, just like all the other teachers in my school, leading a monthly character lesson. This one happened to be on empathy. My students and I talked about the novel,...

Achievement Gap

When Love Is Grounded in the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations, It’s the Wrong Kind of Love

Teachers love their students. We see the joy they show every year as students return back to school, despite constant beat downs on their profession and struggles for fairer pay. We see it when they...