( Tomdispatch.com ) – It feels odd to admit this, but I miss the stillness of the first few disorienting and terrifying weeks of the pandemic, when the noise and hustle of my world quieted down. In March and April of 2020, spring somehow seemed more riotously colorful and gratuitously lush. Choruses of birds replaced […]
Covid-19, our Public Schools and the Real-Time Lessons of Civic Democracy
By Belle Chesler | ( Tomdispatch.com) – It seems appropriate that the 2020-2021 school year in Portland, Oregon, began amid toxic smoke from the catastrophic wildfires that blanketed many parts of the state for almost two weeks. The night before the first day of school, the smoke alarm in my bedroom went off. Looking back, […]
Is the Trump Administration Trying to destroy our Public Schools, Too?
( Tomdispatch.com) – Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay […]
De-Funding the Great American School System for the 1%
(Tomdispatch.com) – Three weeks ago, I sat in a cramped conference room in the large public high school where I teach in Beaverton, Oregon. I was listening to the principal deliver a scripted PowerPoint presentation on the $35 million budget deficit our district faces in the upcoming school year. Teachers and staff members slumped in […]
The Kavanaugh Hearings Just Won’t Leave Me Alone
( Tomdispatch.com) – It’s been three weeks since Dr. Christine Blasey Ford gave her testimony before the nation and I’m still struggling to move on. As talk turns toward the impending midterms, I find myself mentally pushing back against the relentlessness of the news cycle as it plows on, casting a spell of cultural amnesia […]
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