The Mills Korner News

How Enacting Equity Can Decrease Holiday Trauma

As a kid, I didn’t look forward to the holidays as much as my classmates did because it meant more time in a home that was filled with trauma and inequities. My anxiety increased before breaks and I was probably much more difficult for my teachers to manage. School...

How to Avoid (Unintentional) Online Racism – and Shut Down Overt Racism When You See It

Whether you’re running an online business, browsing the web, or participating in an online community, there’s a solid chance you’ll run into some form of racism. It’s not that everyone’s racist — although that argument could be made.* The problem is that racists tend...

In These Uncertain Times, Schools Must Focus on Mental Health First

After 20 months of the pandemic, students are burnt out. The result is increasing mental health struggles among many, which has schools around the country scrambling to prioritize school counseling support. This is all during a time when students are being expected to...

Should Schools Offer More Remote Options?

As schools across the country return to in-person learning, parents are divided. We thought the pandemic was over and, suddenly, with the surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19, it’s not. We thought school closures were history and we’d return to in-school learning...

I’m Afraid of How Many Black Students Have Been Convinced They Are Stupid by Educators Who Lack Equity Training

On the last day of third grade, all my classmates and I huddled onto a carpet much too small for children of our size, waiting for our teachers for the next year to be announced. There was an obvious consensus about the best teacher. Students screeched in excitement...

Wealth Inequality Eating This Country Alive

How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control Elon Musk’s wealth has surpassed $200 billion. It would take the median U.S. worker over 4 million years to make that much. Wealth inequality is eating this country alive. We’re now in America’s second Gilded Age, just...

To Bring Lost Kids Back, We Need Schools to Partner With Their Communities

It’s no secret that students have suffered academically and emotionally throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But should the brunt of the recovery process be borne by schools alone, or is a more comprehensive, community-wide approach the best path forward? Cue education...

Why We Can’t Just Shut Up and Teach

It is no easy thing to help high school students become better critical thinkers. Especially now. The very act of engaging students in the events of the world and helping them to understand and evaluate the complexities of competing narratives has been termed...

How Open Educational Resources Can Boost Equity in the Wake of the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the profound inequities in education, especially for Black and brown students. The upheaval of the past year presents not only an opportunity, but also an imperative to improve teaching and learning. Rather than just...

You Don’t Have to Be a Critical Race Scholar to Apply a Critical Race Lens to Your Practice

In education, we have a tendency to overcomplicate things by getting caught up with sophisticated academic jargon for things that, I believe, are common sense.  Differentiation, culturally relevant pedagogy, scaffolding … the list goes on and on. We can now...

Critical Race Theory Bans Are White Supremacy’s Trojan Horse

Y’all, are they still teaching Greek mythology in schools? Interestingly, it used to be one of my favorite subjects in grammar school. Now, in retrospect—and with an abolitionist mind—I realize it was just another subject taking up space that could’ve been used to...

Sha’Carri Richardson Was Tossed Out of the Olympics the Same Way Black Kids Are Tossed Out of Public Schools

Sha’Carri Richardson is the newest poster child for the obstacles every Black person in America faces—especially in the public school system. Let me get this out the way, first. Everybody that dragged sis after learning she’d been disqualified from the Olympics for...

Here’s How ‘Nice Racism’ Shows Up in Our Schools

The other day, I stumbled upon an online MSNBC interview with Dr. Robin DiAngelo about the release of her new book, “Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm.” At first glance, my eyes immediately zoomed in on the book’s title, which gave me...

Whether in Public or Home School, Black Families Continue to Fight for Civil Rights

As a Black homeschooling mom, I am most irritated by the mere thought of my children being trapped in a failing school. But there are a couple of recent misconceptions about Black homeschooling families that have also been getting on my nerves. First, the media...

Community Partner Chat: Mills Korner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuiQvP1IlNY  

Black Students Are Not ‘Marginalized,’ They Are the Center of Our Work

So many headlines these days are about how Black students are “falling behind” during the pandemic. They’re “missing” and “lost.” But the truth is, Black students aren’t lost—the question is, do you see them? BLACK STUDENTS ARE STILL UNSEEN IN SCHOOL. While there are...

Don’t Buy Into the Hype Around Learning Loss

I get it: “learning loss” is scary. Considering the unprecedented overuse of the word “unprecedented” to describe what our nation’s K-12 education system has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, we all get it. Sudden school closures in spring 2020. Drastic inequities...

It’s Simple. We Need More Black Teachers.

https://citizen.education/2021/02/17/its-simple-we-need-more-black-teachers/

I Love Teaching, But I’m Not a Martyr

I have been navigating majority (or all) white spaces for a very long time. Whether it was the tracked gifted and talented classes or my time at university, I’ve always sort of been an outsider. In a state with 96% of its teaching staff being white, choosing teaching...

EXPLAINED: The American Rescue Plan Gives a Huge Boost to School Funding

What is the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021? You may have heard it as the “second big COVID stimulus,” but the actual name is The American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, and it was signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021. The whole package is $1.9 trillion....

The Government Is Still Preventing the Rise of the Black Messiah in Schools Today

I was gifted an advanced screening of “Judas and the Black Messiah” earlier this week and it affirmed just how much education equals power, while simultaneously being a threat to “power.” I’m about to make it make sense. Real quick background for those who are unaware...

Inside the Decade-Long Plan to Recruit, Hire and Retain 9,000 Black Educators Across the Country

Across the entire United States, there aren’t nearly enough Black teachers inside classrooms. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, less than 7% of teachers nationwide are Black; only 1.5% of teachers are Black men. That is a problem because Black...

America Has Lost A Generation Of Black Boys

There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of black boys. It is too late. In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young black men....

Kayla Goes National

Kiara Hits A Homerun

“There may be people that have more talent than you, But there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do!”

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